As the boulevard heads towards a gated area, a right turn off the road reveals another boulevard except this one has no street scene and the central median is replaced with a channel that is a combination of open sewer and storm-water drain rendering the view out of the window of the trees and flowers slightly less pretty the air is rank with the odours from the open channel. Motorcycles pass by on both sides families and in many cases three men who seem to be stuck together like ‘Gummy Bears’.
Heavy corrugated iron shelters form bus stops along the roadside with a few waiting passengers and no sign of approaching buses. At a busy junction crammed with vehicles so close not that you could not get out of the car even if you wanted to and there is a bus with curious faces peering out of the windows. Through the honking and pushing across another unruly stream of a traffic donkey protests against being forced into what must seem like a moving wall as the driver skilfully finds a gap in the traffic to turn right, as if finally accepting that they had no choice but slow down, cars give way to the long suffering donkey.
The journey is held up once again as a herd of cows are crossing the road seemingly streaming out of the low rise urban sprawl that lines the side of the road driven by a girl to must be no more than seven years old, confidently in control. Turning right to follow the herd and eventually passing alongside them. A narrow side road with mature trees running along the centre and the ubiquitous blank high walls, gates an security guards along the side, at the end of the median a barber has set up shop beneath a tree with no more than a wooden chair and is busily shaving a customer.
Driving along the wrong side of roads to avoid a puddle and taking a left alongside a patch of waste ground with sheep grazing on scrubby vegetation. A screen is being erected in green fabric. On the opposite side of the street a group of girls appear from a gap in a sea of parked cars alongside a row of trees that appears to be a school entrance across the road and into screens enclosure looking every part like a cricket team. I am told that the screens at there to prevent boys from watching. Further along the road on a patch ground that appears to have been cleared to become a construction site, a young family take their morning bath, children play in the water while their mother washes clothes in a muddy puddle.
The back story is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris — Do We Need ARCHITECTS? A Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture
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