July 1st

There are over 4M people in this city! The poverty is tremendous! The women all walk so straight as they usually have things on their heads. These are some of the things I have seen on their heads. 100#of sugar, large metal bowl with a plethora of items from bags/bottles of water, a 2x3 wooden box filled with loaves of homemade bread, a full meal including a huge pot filled with food with other bowls that are also filled, clothes, fabric, household items ---new pots, plastic ware, toilet paper/towels.

Anything you can think of. We are traveling in a large bus with big windows. When we are stopped in traffic, people come up to our windows to try to sell us things. It's like Walmart on the go! This is how they make their living. You can get pretty much anything. I have seen candy, small office supplies (pens/pencils), household items, veggies, other food, water etc.

Venders in wooden shack-like booths sell their wares. Again, you can get anything - tires, appliances, furniture. We even saw caskets!! The main roads are paved but all the side streets are dirt. The dirt is red like Southern Utah. When it rains you can imagine that it is a total mud pit! When the rain clears though, they go around and fill up the holes just like how we fix our asphalt roads.

They have regular car taxis but also larger mini van type vehicles. They seat 15 people normally, but we have seen them backed in. We went to church and actually used one of these taxis but kept picking up people who were also going with us. We ended up with 21 people in our taxi! Apparently if you see a taxi coming on the same direction that you are going, you just flag him down, pay 1CD and get off wherever you need to. The currency is 3CD to 1US dollar. So it is pretty cheap. So of course the taxi drivers want to get as many people in their taxis as they can.