Aisha Leathers

Our place is on Perianna Maistry Street, right in the middle of Park Town. If you know the area, you know how tight the streets are and how hard it is to find a place to park a scooter. We’ve got number 40/2, and it’s basically just rooms filled with stacks of leather. The smell of the hides is the first thing people notice, but to us, it just smells like work. We spend a lot of time sorting through the skins, looking at the grain and the thickness. It’s dusty work, and my hands are usually a bit stained by the end of the day. We don't have a big sign or anything. Most people who come here already know where we are. We have a small wooden table where we sit to talk to people and write out our receipts by hand. It feels like time moves a bit slower inside these walls compared to the chaos outside in Park Town. We have a regular routine of checking the stock and talking to the guys who bring the material in. There isn’t much room to move around when we have a big delivery, so we’re always shifting things from one corner to the other. It’s a simple setup, and it works for what we do. No bells or whistles, just leather and hard work. I've been here since I was a younger man and the street hasn't changed much at all.