seco (dry)

Right now is the dry season, which, fortunately, is immediately followed by the wet season. It's really dry here in Chimoio; our well has been empty for a good while, so Sara and I often lug buckets of water to various parts of the house for washing, cooking, all the things you need water for. It takes a lot of time, water does, but it's nothing for us compared to everyone else. At least we have Vumba, our young Barney Fife-ish dayguard, who fetches it for us every morning from wells not yet dry. It costs 1 metical per bright yellow container (recycled cooking oil cans), the equivalent of 4 cents USD. We process our drinking water (filter it and set it on the roof for at least six hours to let the sun kill any potential bichinhos, bugs), and we ignore the floaties when taking our bucket baths.

Which compels me to say: The summer I spent in Zambia, in 2004, I slept in a tent on the property of the Simunzingili family homestead. They had migrated "out West" to the Zambian frontier, so I lived in the middle of nowhere (or right in the middle of everywhere, depending on how you think about these things. The stars were startling.) 

There we also filled our yellow canisters with water from a borehole, like here in Moz. The Simunzingili youngsters had constructed a typical open-air grass structure for us, about four feet squared, where we could bathe in privacy (excepting the curious goats that often wandered in). Having experienced both Out in the Wild Blue Yonder bucket baths and Standing in a Normal Shower Inside a House bucket baths - I choose Wild Blue Yonder, hands down. 

The grass smells achingly sweet. The water paralyzes your will to live when it first cascades over your wretched, naked body (that's common to both scenarios) - but in the open air, that quickly transforms into a feeling of exhilaration. The sun warms you up again, really fast, and the contrast between the water freezing you and the sun's plump rays enveloping you in a bear hug does something. It makes you happy, is what. In the open air, as you soap up, you can chat with people passing by if you so desire. You can peer down at the goats, their heads stuck through the grass, casually chomping away at the edifice fragilely protecting your modesty, and you can think back to your friend who breezily informed you, "Modesty is overrated", right before you both took off all your clothes and ran into the lonely river, that sultry summer afternoon, at the state park. You can smile.

I guarantee those things won't happen when you bucket bathe in your dank and molding indoor bathroom.

Tony says there are only two seasons in Mozambique: 1) Hot and 2) A Little Bit Less Hot. I think of them as: 1) Really Quite Lovely and 2) So Hot That Shoving This Spoon Into My Brain Might Feel Nice Since I've Been Storing It In the Freezer.

Driving the three hours or so between Chimoio and Beira yesterday - by myself, in a bad-ass stick-shift 4WD truck, on the left-hand side of the road - singing along to "The Sound of Silence" from a half-melted mixtape someone left in the glove box, I looked out over the wide open expanse of... what... Africa, that's what, the land murmuring songs hallowed, stories sacred, whispered, flung out across the wind, consecrated in the dirt - chanting that comes low - no, low - low - but I could not hear their meanings. I could only feel the thumping, measured, look out and see the dancers, invisible. I saw them by the dust devils that rose up in their stead, swirling on the horizon. Two, no, there were three, there, just there - and one loomed up right beside me on the empty highway, pulled thin, like spirits, sinewy, dervishes of the land. I saw two Mozambican children stood alone in the tall grass - where are their homes? - arms outstretched, reaching, watching, unflinching and silent, as the turbulent dancer passed a meter away. The dust was thrown far, up, up, seethed, circled, fell, raining dryness, raining land, soil, Africa, back onto herself. The three dancers, solitary, widened, I could see all three - I pulled ahead, they were lost in my mirror, I was alone, I was mute. I stared out onto the road, beyond the heat mirages rising from its surface. The radio crackled and sputtered, it told me:

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls!/And tenement halls...

But I knew now that wasn't true. Not here.

Not when the land is dry.