There was no longer any evidence of the vicious rainstorm which took place over the urban shantytown the previous evening. The soggy wet smell had evaporated and was replaced with a stale heat. Alleyways were taken over by a drowsy calm and lonely absence of children. If you strained, you could hear the muffled sound of distant traffic behind the murmured ambience of foreign soap operas flooding through an opened window of a store top apartment. It was eerily still; even the stray dog seemed content to be harassed by the flies as it slept in the lazy heat.
The toxic stench of half a million people’s filth drowned any lungs that were unfortunate enough to inhale it. The air was a breeding epidemic. The streets – if you could call them that – were plagued with innumerable festering insects. The occasional buzz would deafen the preyed ear and only cease after a series of violent swats.
Numerous bags being thrown into the air several blocks away momentarily blot out the sun; the locals call them ‘flying toilets’. The irrationality of such an action is ignored as any street nomad welcomes the brief shade. The temperature is unavoidable; every tin surface returned the sun and the rays are echoed until they are absorbed by their fleshy target.
The neighborhood has grown excessively; however, there is no one visible to support the population census. The poorest neighborhood is one of the richest. Its wealth has no currency; it is instead measured by the struggles, the injustice, and age. The history of inequality cuts deeply into the elderly but remains unacknowledged by the youth who have survived the first decade of misery. The new generation remains hopeful and refuses to let their environment reflect their ambition.
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