The Way Home

Even in the driest of seasons – so dry that watering holes dry up to reveal a bottom contoured at first from mud that’s been trampled on by feet and hooves then cracked dry – the Monduli Mountains remain green. These mountains are the backdrop to the stage of other things that pop out in front on our way home – towering candelabra trees with a hundred arms that curve up like the cup of a wine glass; acacia trees in all these varying forms; springy agave plants lining the disruptive dirt road; kanga-clad women walking tall despite the pile of wood balanced on their head, like an equal-weighted seesaw, one end in front of them, the other extended far behind; stark bomas out from which children run eager to see the vehicle and its contents; our red and navy students who keep to the side of the road, wave as the vehicle passes by, and then get swallowed up, literally, by the ever-blooming cloud of red dust – poof, they disappear; herds of slow moving cows, lost looking goats, and fat-tailed white, black, and brown sheep followed by a boy, sometimes as young as four years old, with a stick that bounces back, or breaks, when hit hard against livestock; soul after soul begging the passing vehicle for a ride – sometimes the vehicle stops but mostly it doesn’t; yangulus or all-blacks, blacker than black, but young and trying so desperately to act the part of warrior; and the divide on the road, a contrast of brown and grey, rough and smooth, between dirt and tarmac, a line not only seen and anticipated but physically felt that indicates we’re more than halfway home.