Welcome to Chicken Street, where the ladies perch on boxes with their goldie chains and Louis Vuitton watch straps, sitting outside shops called Paris Afrique or Africa Paris or Paris Exotique or just Africa with no further explanation.
On Chicken Street, where the gutters flow with burned corn and floor limes, past the graffiti on the bins and the bed sheets hanging from the open windows and the fast hotel for the lovers in a hurry, all the way down to the Chinese bar where the drinks are cheap and the floors are dirty and the toilets are always out of order.
Out here on Chicken Street, with the men selling Yankees caps and knock off Jordans, looking around nervously for customers and police. The bargain butchers with the tripe sweating against the glass and the hooves of pigs and cows and goats, cracked open to show off the juicy marrow.
On Chicken Street, the fishmongers with the live crabs and dead catfish, the grocers with the mangos and the manioc, the plantains by the kilo and the fresh herbs by the bin bag, the oil cans and the onions, the phone cards and the foreign money transfers.
Down Chicken Street, the butchers stroll like kings in bloody aprons, past Beauty Land, Beauty World and Beauty Universe. There’s a wall of African beers, Cameroon’s finest they say, whisky bottles full of peanuts next to weaves and combs and beads and wigs.
In the corner on Chicken street, under the covered front for a store that is now gone, a lady has a small bowl with carefully stacked baby aubergines. They are in a perfect pile, absolute order, too good to sell. They are a work of art. A still life on a street that can not or will not stay still.