Shopping ... yes, please

I love shopping and most women do ... well I love shopping in my style. I don't particularly like going with anyone else who wants to drag me to their choice of shops. Just the awkwardness of me I suppose. Anyway, here I have to go with the driver and preferably a member of the family. I can be taken to the best places and nicest shops, they obviously know the area like the backs of their hands.

They speak the language of the area (although everyone speaks English - I don't want to get ripped off) and they haggle. Not a British trait that I have ever heard of. Haggling is like food to the local people. Without getting something knocked off the price they feel cheated, depressed and they will not shop at that store or market stall again ...
The driver takes us to the nearest town and we prepare to go shopping ... then I remembered to reach most of the shops entails limbering precariously across creaky wooden boards, pallets or metal grills placed from the roadside to the front of the shack ... er, I mean shop.

No, shack is probably the best description. That is to say some of the shops are made of a roughly built wooden structure, others are built from blocks and rendered and painted, and the actual goods inside are usually fine to purchase.
Concrete Block built shop.

I am not knocking the products just the whole set-up - there appear to be no regulations regarding Health and Safety of customers nor employees ... nor anything at all that could constitute Public Health or Consumer Rights.

I visited a business centre on the second floor.
It was like the nursery rhyme about the old man who lived in a crooked house. The concrete steps were sturdy and strong. It was just that each step was a different height ranging from half an inch to 12 inches and on a slope downwards of about 100 degrees, instead of sitting at right angles of 90 degrees, so that you are walking on a flat surface, the step being at 100 degrees means that the step is sloping back downwards.
I learned the technique to walking up or sliding back down these public staircases all by myself !! I am proud of this achievement (- and this is the style in most public buildings-) hold onto the railings for dear life and pray they aren't loose - unfortunately that is also a frequent occurrence !!

These boards linking road to store front, stretch from the ''hopefully'' tarred road where the car is parking, to the shop door, as there are no pavements ! Anywhere! At all ! That's why I returned home as deaf as a post, cars use their horns to inform just about all living things that they are approaching, or overtaking or just on the road in the vicinity ! Wow. Imagine using your horn non-stop in the West, you would be arrested pronto.

Talk about a walk on the wild side. A friend of mine said 'don't get eaten by the Lions'. I don't think there are any Lions here but he should have said 'don't get knocked over by a dangerous driver', that I could understand ...

Now some of you may be wondering what the big deal is about walking on a wooden board? When you realise it's perching over a 3 foot deep gutter that is around 2 to 3 feet wide you may agree with my anxiety.
Impressive eh ? Water 'an' all

If you are lucky the gutter is empty, letting yourelf risk the 'half run' across the boards, or would it be better to go slow, which one would make the wood break the fastest ? Decisions, decisions ...

Or you may be unlucky and the gutter is full of stinking sludge, where the rubbish has blocked the free-flow of the water that has now accumulated in it.

And don't forget mine is the only white face for miles so if I fall in I am going to be the talk of the town for years to come ... I wouldn't dare show my face, nor anything else in public for at least an eternity !