and so it goes

I had a dream last night about hitting a little child with a truck. Except it wasn't me, someone else was driving, I was riding (on the left hand side of the road, of course), and it was two kids we plowed over, young African children shyly trick-or-treating in the neighborhood where I grew up in, not in Mozambique at all. I yelled the entire dream, shouting as we bounced and sped away over very African dirt roads, tires spinning, mouth full of dust. It was exhausting: we hadn't stopped, we needed to go back, what had we done?? It was terrible, this movie in my head, until I woke up, scared.

I take dreams seriously, I always have. They bother me a lot. It's not too hard to conjecture about this one. I was out late last night driving back from Gondola past 9 PM (which in Africa is equivalent to a North American 2 AM). Traveling at night is always harrowing because there aren't any lights around and beneath a cloudy sky, it is dark. Murky figures appear out of nowhere, floating up the highway's narrow shoulder, swiveling into your lane on their bicycles weighted with firewood and side-saddling wives. It feels like navigating through a shopping mall in a cave.

Also, I'm slinking my way through another death-and-destruction book, this one about war and landmines, child soldiers enrolled in football play therapy, dead sons and husbands. I call it the bare-facts approach to some African history. This is the only type of reading that appeals to me lately.

Finally, there are several unsettled elements in my personal life too, engorged little ticks waving their legs at me, lurking and nagging, seizing quiet moments to shout: You didn't stop, you need to go back, what have you done?? 

They all connived together, the driving and Africa and children, twilight, longing and guilt, wrote out a terrible script that scared the bejeebers out of me, and I didn't sleep very well last night.