Woodsmoke for Life

Some days waking and missing Kenya.

How unearthly for an experience to be far away and yet, nearer than the white bed sheet tangled between your legs and nestled beneath your cheek.

Today I remember the guttural, rolling trill of colobus monkeys at dawn and the gritty caw of the sacred ibis. Woodsmoke for cooking, for heating, for life. Laundry on the line, red dirt in my teeth, chapti at every meal. The highlands are covered in tea bushes and no where else does the air smell that pure. Sun up a 6 and down at 6, every day, all year. Life on the equator explodes in all directions. There is a lesson there.

I remember the goat roast and how it brought all the people together – some sitting on grass grateful for the chance to eat, kids enjoying the steep slope of the hill, tumbling and laughing, Kenyan's teasing the mzungu children about eating goat eyeballs and brains, though not really teasing at all....

Tea and 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. per sacred colonial tradition. Shaking out rugs and beating them with paddles. Checking the giant cisterns in the attic for rainwater levels. Avoiding the raucous habits of rats at night. Everything was deliberate work and yet, every thing was in balance and live-giving. Well, not every thing as it turns out. But if you really look deeply into it, it's not hard to see that even in the violence and unrest, there was more balance than here.

But there is only here.

And Kenya is not here.

Nor is the life one dreamed about living when she was 8 years old.