My Neighborhood

This 2 bedroom house shares a compound wall, which is about 8' tall with the house next door, owned by the same landlord. That house sets at the corner of Kiwafu Road and Kansang Hill Primary School Road. At present, both roads are dirt and marrum. Traffic includes pedestrians, bicycles, bodas (motorcycles for hire), cars, taxis (mini vans carrying 14+ people), pickups and lorries (big dump trucks, charcoal trucks, etc). There is a lot of dust when it's been dry for more than 2 days. Lots of mud if it has rained in the past hour or so.

Kiwafu Road is 2 lane, and carries a great deal of traffic. When it is tarmacked, which may happen next month, there will be very little easement on either side, and no side walks at all. Most of the property owners have their compound walls built right at the edge of the right of way.

The road in front of my house is one lane, with several 90 degree turns in its 300 yd length. There is a water drainage ditch along one side, but much of the water drains down the middle of the road making deep ruts and ridges. This road, about 10' from edge to edge, is a connector to Lower Kiwafu Road, and is used as a short-cut by commuters headed to the large, developed area on Tank Hill. The distance from my wall to the road is less than 18 inches. I have fantasized about selling hot coffee and donuts to the communters who often have to wait a few minutes to make the turn onto Kiwafu at the corner.

The plot directly across from me has 4 mud and stick houses, a cooking room, a bath house and a large open compound where the little ones play and the firewood is chopped up each morning. I'm not sure where they find firewood, as there is little dead wood on their plot and not much around. One of the women living there has a small table near the edge of Kiwafu Road where she displays some fruits and vegetables for sale, with tins of charcoal near by. They make a little money, but their prices are higher than the man with the small kiosk who is selling about 50' away.

There is a walkway behind our compound wall that leads to two small houses. The family there keeps chickens, goats and recently added some ducks. So we have all the barnyard noises and none of the work or worry.

About 150 feet towards Heritage School stage there is a small shop where we buy staples when we run out. Christine's shop has flour, sugar, bread, margarine, rice, potatoes, soap, matches, cooking oil, sodas and beer, eggs, along with a few other staples. She used to sell airtime for the cell phones, but found her losses for that item too high. Guess her kids were using and not paying for the airtime cards. She is a great source of information about the goings on in the neighborhood as she has been in that location over 10 years. She and her family live in a house about 20' from the store, which also has a sleeping room in the shop. This past year or so they plastered the house, put on an iron sheet roof and painted it all. It looks very nice from the outside. Christine also has a water tap and sells water to those who don't have one, like my neighbors across the road.

It takes about 10 minutes for me to walk from here down to Heritage School. The eMi office is also close, but takes me a bit longer to walk as it is uphill, instead of down. Of course, given the chance I take a boda to either place, especially if the movement is uphillor rain is threatening.

There is a herd of native cattle (raw boned, big horned, beautiful animals) that sometimes move through the neighbor when being shepherded to new pastures. There are about 20 in the herd, young ones, the moms and a bull. But it is hard to tell the bull from the cows (for me anyway) as they are all about the same size.

Almost all compounds have trees of various kinds. We just have 2 kinds of banana trees. The plot across the road has several paypaya trees, some shade tree and a few bananas. My former neighbor, Petonella, has many bananas, jackfruit as well as some trees with bright yellow flowers that the birds like to eat. There are mango trees in the neighborhood too. Too bad they don't hang over my wall.

Anyway, that is my neighborhood....a good place to live.

PS All three places I have lived in the past 4+ years are within 250 meters of each other.