'La douche' junction attracts

Many a city dweller visit the area for leisure at all time.

The importance of leisure to a city dweller cannot be over emphasized. Hot climate in such regions as in Douala is never an issue to smile at. As the city becomes hotter with the onset of the dry season the need to find airy and spacious areas to escape the choky and polluted airtight neighbourhoods is a daily requirement.

As the Littoral Region continues to shift towards much hotter periods of the season, the life pattern of city dwellers is changing to cope with the new exigency. Open spaces like junctions deliberately planted with natural flowers and lighted by night have become choice places where most people spend time. A glaring example is the junction 'La Douche' in Akwa, now attracting as many people as are newlyweds, leisure seekers, idle people and photographers both in the day as in the night was recently equipped with flowing decorative showers by the City Council of Douala.

The junction gains the popularity and particularity of being the nearest equivalent of a beehive, having an influx of visitors from the surrounding three interurban travel agencies, hotels, worship grounds, financial institutions, a market (Marché Congo), as well as an illegally operating roadside 'Marché Chinois', a nagging feature to commuters. Jean K., who was on a leisure jaunt to the junction yesterday afternoon, told CT how the beautifully flowered and airy junction provided with seating niches offers a comfortable escape from the hot, choky weather of his industrial Bassa neighbourhood where closely knit, poorly ventilated houses and residential structures worsen matters for low-income families who cannot afford air-conditioners.

Before the decorative showers were put up recently, it has over the years suffered acts of vandalism both from robbers who stole the pumping machines and hooligans who tread on the beautiful flowers. Elangue Guillaume of the Urbanisation, Construction and Environment Services of the Douala City Council paid allusions to several occasions where such equipment was stolen overnight from the junction, Parc Din Same Junction (Bonaberi) and Grand Carrefour. It lost in all some FCFA 3 million. He advised that the use of such junctions should be as any other state property in civility, good morals and caution of the public.