Near my home in a suburb of Kano, in northern Nigeria, there's a big neem tree at a crossroads, and the open ground underneath it has become the evening meeting place for the whole street.
All sorts of people go there. The older men sit on a long wooden bench that someone built years ago and discuss politics and football. Young boys play football on the sandy patch nearby, using two stones as goalposts. Women stop there on their way back from the market, and there's a lady who sells fried bean cakes and roasted corn from a small table, so there's always a smell of cooking.
It gets busiest just after sunset, when the heat of the day finally drops. People drift over once they've finished work and eaten, and they might stay for ten minutes or two hours. Mostly they just talk, swap news, argue in a friendly way and watch the children. Sometimes someone brings a radio and they listen to a match together.
I think it matters to the community much more than it seems. It's where news travels. When somebody is ill or has had a baby, everyone knows by the next evening, and people organise help without any formal arrangement. When my father was in hospital last year, neighbours I barely knew came to our house with food, because they'd heard about it under that tree. It also gives the older men a sense of purpose and company, which I think keeps them healthy. I'm a university student, and I sometimes go there to escape my books for a bit. It reminds me that I belong somewhere.