Drains.

As Oscar Wilde may have said: sooner or later we will end up in the sewer, it's just a question of time.

The walk to school each morning is a lesson in alertness and powers of anticipation. The pavement sits above the gully which serves as the main drain, theoretically just for storm water during the rainy season, but in practice just about everything finds its way into the gully at some stage in its life-cycle, and that probably includes humans. In places, the smell can be quite fascinating.

Every five meters or so, there is an access point for the gully, which covers the width of the pavement, and over time these covers become loose and start to rock, and then gradually degrade until they crack and fall into the gully. The trick is not to be standing on the slab when it decides to give up the struggle.

Walking along the pavement therefore requires a level of background mental processing: is that slab going to rock and trip me up? Is the crack in that slab going to become a fissure just as I apply my weight? If I avoid that slab can I also avoid stepping on that dead rat? Such decisions make up our daily lives.

Of course, one could just jump over each slab, as one would a muddy puddle, but then one would like a tourist, and that will not do.

The other hazards that crowd one's morning commute include:

- Dogs barking, chasing you or just drooling in a distracted, rabid sort of a way.

- Motorbikes driving the wrong way up the road and then mounting the pavement to avoid the oncoming lorry.

- Bemo drivers honking their horns, slowing down and shouting 'where you go, mister?'

- Taxi drivers honking their horns, stopping their taxi by slewing it in front of you and then saying 'transport mister?'

- Children pointing at funny white folk (us), giggling, and then shouting 'hello!' at the tops of their voices.

- Falling debris from any construction project, which may or may not be marked by the presence of bamboo scaffolding. If you hear any sort of hammering, look up, swerve, and then run.

- Crossing the road by dashing in between speeding motorcycles, planning one's route by assuming that as they are all moving at pretty much the same speed, a reasonably agile person should be able to bisect the line at a 45 degree angle.

- Slippery oil patches outside motorcycle repair shops, where most of the real work happens on the pavement. It is also important to sidestep ball-bearings, gaskets, discarded filters and random oil drums.

- Small 'Sajen' offerings (palm leaves woven into a tray and containing flowers and other items) to Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva abound, outside houses, at junctions, or just strewn on the pavement. Needless to say, kicking these carefully prepared offerings into the road is somewhat disrespectful, so one learns the Bali shimmy, whereby one steps over the offering at the last minute, and tries not to fall into the sewer, river or path of oncoming motorcycle.

The compensating factors for this plethora of dangers are that no one drives that fast, (afterall, what's the rush?), road rage is, amazingly, absolutely unheard of, (Even people knocked off their bike keep a smile on their face); and every day you see something that makes you laugh, gasp or just count one's blessings.