Around Town

I set out yesterday to try to capture Zwedru in a few simple pictures. I got different reactions from the people I encountered. Some begged for their pictures to be taken again and again, some ran away and hid, and others started taking my picture with their cell phone cameras (fair is fair, right?).

There are a few main roads in town. This is the road I take into work every morning. No, the street lights do not work!

And this road leads down to the infamous triangle, where you see the green buildings. This road actually runs parallel with the road pictured above. There are a few houses (like this one) separating the two roads. They couldn't understand why I wanted to take a picture of an old car. And to be honest, I couldn't really give them a good explanation.

The infamous triangle: playground-by-day, bar-by-night:

The playground is closed in this pic. You can see the swing set is chained up to the bottom of the slide.

And here is the pastry shop (located in the triangle) where I buy my shortbread.

This is CASH bar, competition for the triangle bar.

Here are some pictures of the paintings inside of CASH bar. Way to promote gender equality...
This road leads away from the triangle into the bush.

There are quite a few carpenters in town (as far as I've seen, they are all male). Timber is a huge market in this part of the country.

This is a typical "shop on wheels." Kids fill the wheelbarrows with goods and walk around town selling whatever they have- usually things like flip flops, jewelry, or used clothing (like the kid here).

Some other places of interest in town include barber shops (one of many!), random stores, and the motorbike dealership.

And, how can we forget the market?!

This woman is selling bottles of gin at the edge of the market. Yes, GIN. As you can see, there is no shortage. A bottle of gin goes for $40LD ($70LD= $1US D).
Nor is there a shortage of cigarettes (about $35LD per pack)...

This is the entrance to the food market:

...where you can find hot peppers, coconuts (sometimes) and a selection of onions and little plastic bags filled with things like sugar, pasta, salt, dried peppers, and rice.

...And if you're lucky, unripe eggplant and green tomatoes. You can always find plenty of Kola Nuts (chalky and bitter)

Now for the WORST part of the market... the meat.

Chicken feet, heads of bush deer meat, and a monkey (I'll spare you from the worst pictures).

You never need to pay extra for the flies (which you can see here if you look closely).... There is also a lot of dried fish around:

But not so much green! This is the main (only) leafy green, which is ground into a powder...

Oh yeah, there's also rice....

Here are some pictures from outside of my compound:

And last but not least: It wouldn't be Africa without cute kids!