A Little About My Neighborhood

As part of my exposure therapy, I am supposed to walk up some streets which I have been avoiding forever. This I have done for about a week now exempting yesterday. Okay, I did walk the street but at night. This was because I had no opportunity during the day to do so.

It has been therapeutic but challenging. The greatest challenge I have encountered so far is meeting people and talking with them. Perhaps, that was what I feared most subconsciously. I do get tense after a while talking with them.

As I walk, at times I wave at people or even go meet them.

Before I continue let me give a brief breakdown of neighborhood.  My upper middle class neighborhood is right beside a poor and rough one. The street I am to walk is in the poor neighborhood and it’s densely populated. You have families of up to 8 living in just a small room and there might be up to 10 rooms or more in a bungalow. All occupants, numbering as many as a hundred usually share only a toilet and bath. Some occupants wake up as early as 4am to take their showers before a long queue forms. Add the heat of their individuals rooms which often have poor ventilation or a leaking roof and mixed with hunger, you have combustible material for trouble.

Unemployment is a high with as many as half the population either unemployed or under-employed especially amongst the youths. Delinquency amongst the youth is rife with fights breaking out among boys as young as 15. The use of bottles in fights are common. Guns are rarely used. I have been in this neighborhood for over 30years and have never heard of a gun fight. Only armed robbers utilize guns and use them only during their dreadful operations. Young ones are consistently trying to prove their manliness through violence.

However, the neighborhood is still quite safe with deaths from homicides extremely rare unless you believe in witchcraft that persons can be killed by casting spells. News from that too is mercifully rare. Opportunistic acts of violence on innocent ones too are not too common. It however pays for young ones not to incite trouble, and to have people ready to stand up for them in case of them being bullied. Bullies are easily intimidated when you have back up. Their preferred prey are the isolated. Bullies are human wolves and move in packs when picking on their prey making them vulnerable. Countering them with your own “pack” is usually sufficient or the threat of the police. These cowards always run away.

Most often, it is best just to ignore bullies until these perennial wind chasers get bored and move unto someone else.

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