It is funny how solitude can bring out the madness in a person. One finds themselves lost in thought as they dwell on the monoliths occupying their mind. Take for example the ritual afternoon walk that begins with walking out of the gate and ends with the cool drink bought at your favourite shopping outlet before you get your ride back home.
As you’re leaving home you do the final checks on your appearance, your hair, your face, your shirt – no stains, your pants – clean enough, your shoes – clean enough – not too tight – nice and comfortable, but then your hair, are you sure it fine – but there is nothing you can do about it now, and your face; you give your chicks a quick brush with your hands – no crumbs. But who will notice and why does it matter if they do. Then, after a few turns, in the distance down the road you spot a young lady coming towards you. You’re the only two walking on this road; greeting won’t be necessary, not because you don’t want to but you simply don’t know what to say. Saying hello to a stranger in English is unconventional if not unusual, yet it sounds wrong when I say it in vernacular: it doesn’t roll off the tongue well. Just walking by without saying anything will simplify things whether or not she initiates the greeting. Meanwhile you’ve been looking at her and analyzing her silhouette, but as she gets closer you look straight ahead and ignore her until she has passed by. Another few steps and the woman that appeared behind her becomes the subject of your next thought – more specifically, how irregular the shape of the body beneath her apparel is, but that too quickly passes.
As a neighbourhood of some sort draws near, you begin to examine some of the details of the houses your able to see. Since you pass here routinely, you only look for changes if any. You walk on dribbling past bumps on the uneven road, and leaping over puddles and little streams that have riddled the walkway. The sights and sounds fade in from solem calm neighbourhood to loud roadside tradingcenter. A crude mixture of cars racing on the highway and loud conversation in and around shops draws towards you. With a sprinkle of music pouring out from base speakers to top it all off. In a the yard behind the shops some kids play a game under a tree sitting on broken branches, a game that you will never understand, and meanwhile a trespasser approaches and walks right passed you. Up ahead, you reach around the front of the shops and look at the people there, but there are only women and children and maybe a man, all absorbed in their own activities, even as they look back at you.
It is now on to the main road, nice and broad, quite ideal for the walk, that is, if it wasn’t for the traffic; from the large grumbling commercial vehicles raising dust into your nose to the zipping motorcycles and squeaking bicycles racing past you and having near-misses with your elbow. But today vehicles are few allowing for a relatively comfortable walk. This also allows you to scrutinise all that meets the eye. Like the bored-to-nothing shop attendants that now sit outside their shops and look at passer-bys like myself. The men hidden under an umbrella at a bar, who on closer scrutiny turns out to be a couple of friends just passing away the afternoon over a game of cards, it’s quite possible that one of them is the bar attendant also bored with no customers. These shops arranged in a line of about 5 – 7, with their doors facing the road, are all covered in the company colours of a mobile phone services company. Except a clinic, which is dawned in plain white paint, though not any different in dimension or frontage design from the pub or the hair salon or even the grocer’s shop. The frontage up to the road is being used as a playground by some children, as a feeding ground by some chicken and as a display ground by those selling bulk fruit or charcoal and anything else that can be displayed here.
Since there is nothing new and nothing of interest, my attention goes to the people dispersed along the road ahead, then to the road itself. It has recently been upgraded from gravel to a coarse tar-mark material. Though incomplete most of the road has been worked on and it is a much appreciated improvement and nicely done job at that. The dust floating about has been considerably reduced, and now everyone can breathe more easily. However, cars can move faster, and they do. Taxi cars come racing past hooting like it is a matter of life and death, and it is, for people are almost spilling out of their windows as they cruise past almost smashing motorcycles that are also racing about with their own plans.
Each walk that I have taken on this route, and there were many, has had an odd surprise for me along the way. Once a man asked me for directions to some Taxis, and when he realised that he had taken a completely wrong route he then asked me for some money to help him get back to town with a taxi. When I told him that I didn’t have any, he turned around and we walked together for about a kilometre in silence, all the way to town where I then bided him farewell.
Another time a motorcycle carrying a passenger with his trunk and mattress burst its rear tire while racing past a car parked partly in the road. While the passenger sat as still as a rod, the driver managed to steer it back into his control, after wriggling about and almost tumbling to the ground. The motorcycles following behind it had some well managed near-misses considering that it was at the bottom of a steep slope and oncoming traffic was moving like it was a matter of great urgency.
I suppose in the end the walk really sums up to a form of meditation where I escape from my surreal life and instead go into the realm of the reality that surrounds me. But in there I’m a dreamer and it seems like “in reality nothing is of any consequence to me and I can explore it in its intricacies and marvel at all the fascinations, after which, I cool off with a soothing drink then get a ride back to my surreal existence.