Foreign hours, foreign people

The bright light in the bus shows all the tales,
Especially those of fatigue and to pay bills on the faces,
But I don’t see fatigue,
I see irony.

As we wait at the bus stand,
We stuff earphones,
In and on our heads,
We dance.

Some nod,
Some whisper to the tunes,
Others speak in foreign tongues,
We all might as well be thinking in some foreign dialect.

Foreign dreams,
Foreign jobs,
Foreign hours.


Visibly tired people,
yap away on cell phones,
In foreign tongues,
To people perhaps in foreign countries too.


A lone man walks about picking cigarette butts,
Burnt out and thrown away,
On the ground.


The Indians walk far off the Bangladeshi,
The Filipino away from the native,
The Ethiopian away from the Somali.

The awaited bus arrives,
Off go the cleaners,
Nurses,
Cooks,
Kitchen hands,
Factory workers,
More cleaners,
More foreign people.

Because the work shift is over,
And the bus shift must start.

Kagame