You can find them all over the former British Empire; clean, sparse and functional. They don't even differ much from Kenya to Sri Lanka. You can wake up in Nkarta Bay (Malawi) and happily believe that you're in Bartica (Guyana), where this picture was taken.
Bartica is a typical specimen; utilitarian 1950s furniture, and run by two elderly la
dies, both fiercely religious. Whenever I went near they’d start muttering in proverbs (‘And thou shalt smite every male thereof! And eat the spoil of thine enemies!’).
I think the only time they spoke to me in post-Apocryphal English is when I asked for a key. ‘The door doan lock,’ they said, ‘The watchman goan come.’