One Road, Twenty Trades: Life and Work in a Trading Centre

1Before you read

1. Think of the nearest trading centre or shopping street to your home. List five businesses or services you can find there.
2. Which of those jobs would disappear first if everyone shopped online? Which could never disappear?
3. The essay is called One Road, Twenty Trades. What do you expect a "trade" to be here?

2Reading: One Road, Twenty Trades

A personal essay of about 740 words by Keza, an imagined S5 student. Gatare is an invented trading centre, but centres like it line roads all over Rwanda.

1 At half past five, before the first bus has passed, the road outside our house is already talking. I hear the scrape of a metal door as Mr Habimana opens his tailor's shop, the cough of a motorbike that refuses to start, and my mother counting crates of soft drinks into the front of her shop. I have lived above that shop for all of my seventeen years, and I have learned that a trading centre keeps a timetable as strict as any school's. Nobody prints it, but everybody keeps it.

2 Gatare is not a town. It is one tarmac road with about forty buildings along it, a health post at one end and a school at the other. Yet almost everything a family needs can be found within five minutes' walk. Mr Habimana has been sewing school uniforms on the same black machine since before I was born; in September, when the school year begins, his queue stretches out of the door. Next to him, Mrs Uwase runs a mobile money kiosk, where farmers collect payment for their maize and parents pay school fees without travelling to the district town. Across the road, the SACCO opens at eight. Its teller, a young man called Eric, knows half the account holders by name and the other half by their parents' names.

3 Some of the most important work in Gatare happens away from the road. Mrs Mukamana is a community health worker. Three days a week she walks from house to house with a notebook and a set of scales. She weighs babies, reminds mothers about clinic appointments and sends anyone who is seriously ill straight to the health post. She is not a nurse, and she is the first to say so; but people trust her because she is a neighbour, and a neighbour notices that a child is losing weight long before a doctor ever sees the child. Every second Monday, an agronomist from the district visits the maize cooperative to advise its members on seed, fertiliser and pests.

4 By midday the centre slows down. The moto drivers park in the shade of the market shelter and argue about football. The carpenter, whose workshop smells of eucalyptus, is planing a door for a new house up the hill. The hairdresser is busier than anyone, because Saturday weddings mean Friday hairstyles. At one o'clock the school releases a river of blue and white uniforms, and for half an hour the road belongs to the young.

5 Gatare is changing, and it is changing fast. When my mother opened her shop, the centre had no electricity, and she kept her drinks cool in a tub of water. Today there are lights along the road, a welding workshop, and a phone-charging business that is already disappearing because almost every house now has power of its own. The road is busier than it used to be and the shops are better stocked, but the centre is also noisier, and on market days it is far dirtier. Wednesday, market day, leaves behind more plastic bags than all the other days of the week together.

6 Evening is our leisure time, and it is the part of the day I like best. On the school pitch, mixed teams play football until the ball is too dark to see. The church choir rehearses on Tuesdays and Thursdays; my best friend sings alto and says the choir is the only place where she is allowed to be loud. My younger brother has joined a reading club that meets in the school library, while I prefer drawing, which I do on the steps of our shop, sketching the faces of people who pass. Under the avocado tree, the older men play igisoro slowly, commenting on every move as if it were a national event.

7 People sometimes ask me whether I would rather live in Kigali. I am not sure. A city offers more choice: more schools, more jobs, more ways to spend an evening. But in a city you can live next door to someone for years without learning their name, and in Gatare that is simply impossible. Here, if Mr Habimana's door has not opened by six, somebody goes to check on him. That, I think, is what a community is: not a place where everyone agrees, but a place where people notice each other. The question for my generation is whether we can keep that habit while the road gets busier.

3A map of the essay

Keza describes Gatare as if she were walking along the road. The sketch map places every business she mentions. Use it to answer the first comprehension questions.

Figure 1.1 Sketch map of Gatare, drawn from the essay.

4Comprehension

Answer in full sentences. Questions 1 to 6 ask what the essay says; 7 to 9 ask what it means; 10 asks what you think.

1. Which three sounds tell Keza that the day has begun? (paragraph 1)
2. Name three things a family can do in Gatare without leaving the trading centre.
3. Why is Mr Habimana's queue longest in September?
4. How does the mobile money kiosk save people time?
5. What does Mrs Mukamana do when she finds someone who is seriously ill?
6. Give two leisure activities that take place in the evening, and say who does them.
7. Explain what Keza means when she says the trading centre "keeps a timetable as strict as any school's", and why she adds "Nobody prints it".
8. In paragraph 4, what is compared to "a river", and what does the comparison suggest?
9. Why is the phone-charging business "already disappearing"? What does this tell you about the way Gatare is changing?
10. Keza defines a community as "a place where people notice each other". Do you agree? Support your view with one example from the essay and one from your own community.

Show answersHide answers

1. The scrape of the tailor's metal door, the cough of a motorbike that will not start, and her mother counting crates of soft drinks.
2. Any three: buy goods at a shop; have a uniform made; pay school fees or collect a payment at the mobile money kiosk; save or borrow at the SACCO; get treatment at the health post; have their hair done.
3. Because the school year begins in September and children need new uniforms.
4. Farmers can collect payment and parents can pay school fees there, so they do not have to travel to the district town.
5. She sends the person straight to the health post.
6. Any two: mixed teams play football on the school pitch; the church choir rehearses; Keza's brother goes to a reading club; Keza draws; the older men play igisoro.
7. Every business opens, closes and gets busy at regular times, so life follows a fixed pattern, like a school day. It is not written anywhere ("nobody prints it"): people simply know it and follow it.
8. The crowd of pupils in blue and white uniforms leaving school at one o'clock. The comparison suggests a large number moving together and filling the road.
9. Most houses now have electricity of their own, so people charge their phones at home. It shows that the changes are recent and quick: a business that was only made possible by electricity on the road is already out of date.
10. Open answer. A strong answer agrees or disagrees clearly, uses an example from the essay (for example, neighbours check on Mr Habimana if his door has not opened by six; Mrs Mukamana notices when a child is losing weight) and adds a real example from the writer's own community.

5Vocabulary in context

Work out each meaning from the sentence around it before you look at the table.

6Talking about jobs

The essay names more than ten jobs. To define a job, use the pattern A ___ is a person who …, and say where the person works.