“Côte d’Ivoire?” I shook my head no. “Cameroon?” I shook again. “Nigeria?” Now he was reaching; unsure but determined to figure it out. “American,” I offered with a smile. His turn to shake his head. “you are African,” he grinned at me, confident in his assessment. He wasn’t alone in noticing me or in guessing […]
The dun colored expanse below was obscured by the thin haze of clouds. But the longer I gazed down at the ground speeding by I realized that it must be sand…not just sand but the sahara. And while I experienced my first taste of the sahara’s vastness in Egypt, there it felt contained. In cairo, […]
The humid air snuck through the thin cotton of my over-washed shirt and clung to my skin like a scared child. In the distance, thunderless lightning sparked like a dying flashlight in a dark room and I pulled out my sweater, unused in the last seven months, and wrapped it against the early morning chill. […]
He meant it as a surprise. Casual conversation destroyed that hope hope but still the sentiment remained. A kindness. A token to take with me wherever I go. And so last night was the party long in planning. People gathered in plastic chairs around a stereo system and I wondered exactly how it would go. […]
It burned my finger, forcing me to drop it back into the bag to wait for it to cool. Impatient, I picked it up again, and when the heat became too much I put it between my teeth, blowing out to speed the cooling process. A few seconds later and the soft yellow-brown flesh succumbed […]
“he’s inside, sleeping,” she called to the vehicle. We had settled to a stop in front of a mud home with a woman, colorful lapa held loosely at her waist, bare-chested except for a red bra. She had been bent over cooking something on the open fire in the front yard. “that is my older […]
The mine Dark and dingy, we sat down at a table in the middle of the sparse room and were immediately greeted by one of two women behind the counter. Beers were ordered, and at insistence, a fanta for me. I eyed the place knowingly. Despite the two women and sundry kids – including a […]
They were scattered beneath the sprawling shade of a lone tree reaching for the far-flung gray clouds in a blue sky. When our Toyota pulled up and we all clambered out, no one shifted anything more than a gaze. A child continued to suck from her mother’s breast, another crawled away from his twin, and […]
Scents seize me. Hold me hostage to a moment- a memory. Sometimes the relationship – time and smell – is uneven, smell weighing so heavy against my senses that I can’t recall the memory itself. Cloaked by the heady emotion, I find myself pulling at the edges of my mind, coaxing that morsel of my […]
Last night I had a small meltdown. This was not a “no wire hanger – ever” kind of affair. In terms of melt, it was like stubborn government cheese; it gave around the edges but stayed mostly as it was. But still… It wasn’t anything spectacular or big or especially heinous. Instead, I found myself […]
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