From School to Home

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Kovas writing…
When school ends at 3:20 we go to after-school clubs till 4:30. These clubs include basketball club, soccer club, chess club, table tennis club, volleyball club, and a puzzle/games club ect. At 4:30 we get together and do the seven minute walk to Bole Bras, a line taxi station. We listen intently trying to figure out which of the fourty plus taxis are going to Haya Hulet, our destination. Once we have found one of the taxi is going to Haya Hulet, we cram in and wait for the twelve-seater taxi to fill up with at least fifteen people. When the taxi fills up it drives its route. The fare is sixty five cents, but because we are white the conductor (person who collects the money and screams the destination) sometimes tries to cheat us. Ussually it is just twenty cents or something, but after a while it adds up. If you want your twenty cents you have to make a big fuss that is not worth fifty cents. To make things more difficult the conductor usually doesn’t know English. There is usually someone on the taxi that knows English, but we’re not always that lucky. Along the way home people yell out waraj which means stop. When there is an empty spot in the taxi the conductor sticks his head and shoulders out the window like a dog and yells the destination. If some signals that they want a ride, the conductor hits the van twice which signals the driver to stop to pick up the passenger. When the passenger is in the van the conductor hits the car once to signal the driver to start driving again. When we reach Haya Hulet we climb out and go to the bakery to get five loaves of bread. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do the fourteen minute walk to our house. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we have soccer, so we walk five minutes to the soccer field. While walking uphill to our house almost everybody stares at us even though we walk there every day. We also get the occasional person who “accidently” bumps into one of us just to touch a white person. We walk past the soccer field on our left and the electrical stores and bakeries on our right. Further up we walk past the little butcheries that have cow sized pieces of meat hanging on a wall with flies buzzing around them right next to the road which constantly has dust flying everywhere. If that’s not enough to dissuade you from buying it, it may be that it is not refrigerated and it’s in the sun. As we walk on we cross a big street which has no street light or stop sign. We then walk on an unpaved road which very little cars go on because of the rocks which make the trip very bumpy for cars. There are many shops which have things like batteries, thread, cheap little soccer balls, biscuits, ect. When we reach the street that leads into our compound we look both ways three times because the street is on a hill, so some drivers go on neutral to save gas, and we can’t hear their engine. As we walk into our compound we are greeted by the guards and get an acknowledgement nod from the two dogs that lay by the entrance of the gate. We ring the bell at the right of our gate, and finally we arrive home.

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