This narrow street I walk is always busy. Road space is a battle, viciously fought over by pretentiously beeping taxis, by tro-tro busses laden with packed benches, by confident motorcycles and fearless bicycles. Unfazed pedestrians drift between the blending lanes of traffic, women in bright skinny jeans or traditional wrap skirts and children in loudly patterned uniforms walking home from school. One side of the street is strung with cramped stands advertising local dishes or African hair styling; the edge I walk is lined with gated homes and businesses. The rush of traffic hums behind conversations in which local tongues and accented English are so fluently intertwined they are nearly impossible to tell apart. I walk this route four times every day, each time ducking under the stretching palm frond that whips with the wind and skirting the gravel pile jutting out onto the lip of the road. I’ve become accustomed to the rush of hot air that comes from a car speeding a foot away from me, to dodging the hands and elbows sticking out of rolled down windows. The eight o’clock sun threatens of the inevitable and unforgiving noonday heat, yet quiets to mellow orange shadows by five thirty, my favorite time of day. The bustle of the street refuses to cease even as the light dims, but the sights and sounds become muted as I walk four minutes to the compound and slip inside the gate. Here I walk down the middle of the road, only waiting for the feel of headlights on my back to move to the side. The chaos of the street dampens in the distance, fading to nothing as I slowly walk home.

Some evenings I turn right around and return onto an even busier road, this time gifted a sidewalk on my twenty-minute trip to the nearest gym. Accompanied by the familiar voices of NPR podcasts, I dart across two lanes of careening traffic, pause on the median, and repeat to the opposite side, proceeding much more cautiously than the street vendors who make their living between the cars. They rush up to truck windows slowing in the gridlock with goods effortlessly balanced on their heads, heavy metal bowls of water or soda, bags of plantain chips or groundnuts, racks of sunglasses or earbuds. Even young children of eight or ten years old run into the traffic, yet just as other sellers, they are mostly ignored by the drivers. Litter is strewn everywhere; garbage sticks to the stubs of bushes and collects in the ditches of the train track and stream I pass over. Goats and dogs and chickens rummage here, rooting around in the wasteland of discarded food wrappers and old shoes. An ever-growing pile of hacked coconut shells compromises the walkway as I turn onto a dirt road that widens before me and turns my toes brown from its dust. By the time I finish my workout and walk home, the sun has set and the sky is quickly darkening, and it is hard to tell the speed of the headlights rushing towards me. Yet as the night emerges so do the stars, and I find myself continually glancing up to the same although displaced constellations that I see back home.

This is my little pocket of the city, the structure I’ve composed around my days here. A structure that I rely on, yet one I hope to occasionally break as I grow more confident and begin to explore. I exercise to release any stress or loneliness (which has been very successful thus far), yet I think these simple evening walks are just as therapeutic. It’s the interaction not just with the people, but with the inclusive character of the streets themselves. I’m working to embrace my life here as fully as I can, and joining this lively confusion helps me to feel like a small part of the ever-pulsing energy. I think the more streets I walk down, the bigger this feeling will grow. So I’ll try it. 

Nungua Streets