A Wandering Stranger

What is the whole essence of street naming and house numbering in this city if one cannot locate the house that has a number and a street name attached to it? queried a visitor who had been invited to one of our cities. He was apparently quite worn out and exasperated after a fruitless search for his friend's house.

This is really the situation in some parts of our cities where it is quite a herculean task to locate streets let alone houses. It is not uncommon for one street to bear two or more names. Often, two, three or more streets in a locality have the same name. So when a stranger inquires about such streets, the chances are that he may be directed to the wrong ones.

This confusion is further complicated by the haphazard way the houses on some of our streets are numbered. In most parts of the world there is an ordered method of numbering houses especially in the urban centres. Usually, those on the left, from the starting point, bear odd numbers while those on the right carry even