amateur african almanac, 1 sept 2008

It's burning season again. One of the most extraordinary feelings is driving at night through the snaking terrain of Manica Province, and all around, as far as you can see - all you can see - are illuminated islands of low intensity flames casually eating up the landscape. It's like a night sky of comets fallen to earth. Once Joel, Jenny, and I were heading back from Beira together and dusk fell while we were still winding through the foothills of the Mvumba mountains. The fires and smoke grew denser and denser, our headlights barely pierced through the haze, until finally flames were licking both shoulders of the road at the same time. The heat pressed in on us, the crackling and popping muffled our conversation and - in a courageous burst of speed - we hurtled through it, all of us screaming, exhilarated, like fire jumpers at a circus. If you could package an experience like that, you'd make a fortune.

It's really creepy outside today. The sun is extinguished beneath a heavy curtain of ash and dust, like Apocalypse has come, the sky casting a deathly, rusty pallor over everything. All the color has been sucked out. The wind is strong but not fresh or life-giving, raises a frenzy of dirt, whipping around anything not staked down, painting everything gritty. Looking out at it makes my eyes water.

A window carelessly left ajar could be the death of your computer on a day like today. Jenny's chapa broke down just outside of town and she walked back to our house on foot, about 20 minutes. Stepping inside, hair in a furvor, her skin was tinctured the unnatural hue of fake tanning lotion. We're back to twice a day showering, though for reasons of choking dust rather than humidity.

Mozambicans purposely burn this time of year to clear their fields before the rainy season, to flush out small game (like cane rats), out of an aesthetic preference, and (we deeply suspect) because its kind of fun? It's super dangerous on a tempestuous day like today though: fires can leap so easily, zagging and zipping out of control. A tragic sight is passing somebody's small mud and stick house burning to the ground, rebellious flames streaming from its humble thatched roof like the battlements of Thornfield itself.

Its wily how Mozambicans approach group psychology, actually. They glance out over these coming months of hunger, such dry, wild days of ever-rising temperatures, and with a cool flick of a match, render it even worse by scorching everything to the ground. The net result, however, after so many months of desolation, is a feeling akin to ecstasy when the unrelenting rainy season finally erupts over us in December. Think the scene in Shawshank Redemption when Tim Robbin's character finally escapes from prison.


Genius.

Until then, though... It's fortunate I don't mind the smell of smoke.