More From the Street

The other day I decided to walk home from the eye dr. My mother and Carl almost had heart attacks. But you know, I'm pretty street tough now. This from the lady who wasn't able to go get her mail after dark in Lake Highlands....

Anyways, a typical street and by typical I mean, not terrible, is home to lots of dogs, cows, and chickens. There are babies with no clothes on laying in the dirt sleeping while their mother's sweep. There are professional men and women at food stands getting breakfast and drinking tea out of little thimble sized plastic cups. Children darting in and out of traffic barefooted with backpacks making their way to school. There are portions that are paved and portions that are just dirt. There are great smells like the indian breads cooking and there are terrible smells like animal and human waste, and then there are just "indian smells" like insense and burning coconut shells. On that maybe 7 K walk I passed by doctors practicing medicine through a window, women and children dressed in rags begging for money and food, and all sorts of working people making their way to both domestic and professional jobs. There are fruit stands, mutton shops with the freshest slaughter hanging from a wooden pole, and there are caged chickens from which we get our eggs. There are temples to many different dieties all the way down the street and people line up to stand or sit inside the structure before the image itself.

And then like an oasis in the desert.....comes the entrance to our "compound." By the time I got home I had layer of dirt from head to toe.

The streets in Palm Meadows make you feel like you are miles away from what is just outside the gate......but listen, they can still be tough...