Our evening walk is quite a ritual. We go after 6, when it cools down to the 90s and there is a slight breeze. For the past several weeks the fields are being burnt for the next growing season, leaving the land like looking like a moonscape. The air quality is bad with all the smoke and the sun is a brilliant red in the haze as it begins to set. There is plenty to see and appreciate, despite the rather bleak clear cut and smoldering landscape.
The usual route is down a dirt road past a few houses where the children cluster at wells to get water and yell “pumoi, pumoi” (“white person, white person”) as we pass by. A few weeks ago some of them were absolutely terrified to see us and now they come to us wanting hugs and caresses. Their grubby hands grab ours and we walk together for awhile and then we continue onwards. We see several women (wives) at one mud hut sitting by the fire with chickens and chicks running around interspersed with a gaggle of children. The man/husband is to be seen sitting off to the side, relaxing and talking on a cell phone. Several young boys go by carrying huge loads of firewood on their heads, some of them carrying roosters too. When they put down their loads to chat, the evidence of their hard labour is etched in their permanently furrowed brows from the weight of their loads.
A few egrets poke around in some rice paddies. Tiny red spiders abound and scurry about in the rusty dirt at our feet. Tonight Julia and Jenny spotted a yellow horn bill and we saw hawks...a relief to see some "nature".
For the past two evenings I’ve felt like Santa Claus as I set out from home carrying an enormous sack full of old tins, bottles, jars, Clorox bottles, cooking oil bottles, etc. which we had accumulated over the past few weeks in our house. One person's trash, is another's treasure was certainly demonstrated as I emptied it in about 5 seconds with a crowd of appreciative adults and children scrambling for the goods.
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