Sundays we are notoriously lazy, but yesterday we decided to get out of the house for a change. We went to the Marché Medin, a market on the northernmost edge of town, just under the hills. We parked a little way down the Rue Nelson Mandela and walked in.

East of Medin, Rue Nelson Mandela is flanked by huge fields of scrap metal and garbage. The area to the north fills with water in the rainy season. Sometimes when E gives me directions, he says, “Remember when we saw the bus in the middle of the pond? Take that road.” Well, this field becomes that pond.

I don’t know where the bus went. Maybe it went to the other side, which is filled with heaps of scrap metal. This may look like garbage to you, but I’m certain it belongs to someone.

The road we walked in on is lined with shops in permanent cement buildings of cement.

But the heart of the market is dark, narrow paths winding through a forest of wood-frame stalls, under a low ceiling of tarps.

Again, these beat-up foosball tables may look to you like their useful lives are finished. But (to quote Monty Python), they're not dead yet! This is the foosball-table rejuvenation center. While I was taken with all the bright colors, E spied strings of little wooden foosball men, freshly carved and ready for paint, hanging from a nearby pole. I wanted a photo of them but the young man refinishing the tables said no.

For every one adult who declines to have his picture taken, half a dozen children ask me to take their picture. They get a big kick out of seeing themselves on the camera's LCD display.