Walking in the drizzling rain ☔

Today, I went off for a walk on my own, wearing my souvenir red I-love-KL T-shirt I got from Malaysia. I asked Musu, our office assistant and nanny, to take a picture of Janneh (our Office Manager) and I at the "Assembly Point". Janneh was waiting outside of her ride so I asked her to pose with me before I embarked on my rainy walk.

The rainy season is quite splendid. It rains the whole day and night and, then in the evening, it still drizzles. I walked through this light drizzle and, enjoyed the walk although I would have to stop now and then under some shade to wipe my glasses with the corner of my T-shirt. 

See the foliage. It's good to sometimes also look down and see what you are walking across.

Usually one finds someone or the other still working out on the hill, even in rain. But today, no one was around. What an atmosphere! 

I realised most of my photographs always show an emptiness: buildings, a car or two on a street, vast vantage points. My photographs don't show too much life. 

Are my evening walk blog posts rather boring? Photographs of the same route, same buildings, some angles dull? Why do I keep photographing my walking route and, the same one at that? 

I think it gives one a sense of satisfaction, to document our lives, and seemingly share it with the so-called world. It becomes part of our daily routines. 

At the bottom of the hill, I stopped to buy some veggies from my vegetable and fruit seller I usually go to. Tomatoes were $ 250 LD a pound! I complained about how expensive produce is here and, my friend said, everything comes from Ivory Coast. "We don't grow it here, " she explained. I said, but that's too bad. " I am fed up of how expensive things are," I said. She said things will improve. She said but most people don't buy tomatoes to cook. They need "one cup of rice." I asked, "but much is the cup?" She explained it's $ 50 LD. I said, "but a family will need more than 1 cup, no? one cup will just feed one person." She said, "yes, and, the family still has to buy fish, oil, greens." She said that things will improve. She said that things were actually good in Charles Taylor's time. I left it that, thinking and wondering about every day living costs and, how I could verify it. 

You know, besides Google, there's also Facebook. Have a question? Just ask and, you'll always get such interesting perspectives, comments, and opinions about a topic. So, I should post on Facebook: "My market friend says things were much cheaper in Charles Taylor's time. Is that true?" 

I remembered this scene from "Dil Se" and chuckled: Shah Rukh Khan's character goes to work for All India Radio in the mountains in Assam, I believe, and he first meets his new boss, the station manager, haggling with the sabzi wallah's: "Tum log bahut badmash ho gaye ho." 

And, then I reached home. Home sweet home.