It’s 17:45 at Bellville station in the eastern suburbs of Cape Town. I stand waiting for a train, the same one I’ve been taking three days a week. I’m waiting for a church train.

The locomotive rushes into the platform, and gospel hits my ear from one of its carriages.

Set off some fireworks, don a costume, prepare the feast. From revisiting the past to welcoming new beginnings, celebrations are ingrained in every culture. Some remain fixed in traditions centuries-old, while others shift as they spread to new audiences and environments. But the biggest jamborees aren’t spontaneous; it takes serious [...]

In back alleys, street markets, and hidden workshops around the world, microentrepreneurs churn out new ideas and products to help them get by or improve the world around them. We could philosophize on this all day. But here in Observed, we ask our correspondents to say nothing. So for the [...]

This week, we bring you an intimate photo essay comparing the most prized toys of children around the world, a couple who took matters into their own hands to carve space for themselves in an expensive real estate market, and one masked man’s crusade to make Mexico City’s streets a little safer.

Like most vagoneros, Abel played samples of his wares through a portable speaker. Unsatisfied with the audio quality and appearance, he decided there was a better setup waiting to be invented. Through experimentation and testing, he designed audio backpacks powered by rechargeable batteries, powerful enough for a long day’s work keeping Mexico’s subways rocking.

For the Communication installment of Observed, we meet a chalkboard blogger in Liberia, an interactive drone in London, and one of the thousands of vendors in Lagos who have enabled the rise of communication in emerging markets. We receive godly messages to stop pissing in India’s streets, send information out of one of the world’s most dangerous locations, and read some cross-cultural free speech in Cairo.

200 computer screens, stationed one foot apart, flicker through smoky air and fluorescent lighting. Some have as many as four males huddled around with their arms hanging on each other, mostly shirtless. It’s 11pm on Thursday, and even though discounted night hours haven’t started, the Internet cafe is near capacity.

This week: a tour through Somalia’s turbulent history as witnessed by a print shop’s 45-year cache of documents, a trip to Canada on a two-inch-tall train, and a vending machine filled with surprises for curious readers.

From the Makery is a weekly roundup of inspiring stories of making collected from around the web. Follow our Facebook page or our Twitter feed for daily updates. Afghan Box Cameras The Afghan ‘kamra-e-faoree’, a wooden box camera, was once a staple of street life. The camera uses no film, [...]

In India, jugaad is an electrical cord, split and stripped at the end, each wire pushed directly into one hole of an electrical outlet with half of a toothpick wedging it in place. It’s a short log used as a cutting board for the evening’s vegetables, the middle hollowed from [...]