I think in patchwork these days, so here is a string of totally unrelated moments you might appreciate:

I Think I’m Turning Japanese

It’s mid-afternoon. I’m ravenous, exhausted, and eager to get home, and one of the neighborhood kids is approaching on a bicycle. I rev up for a hasty exchangeof “Mwatandala uli,” but he races by with a cheery “Konichiwa!” – and from the grin he shoots over his shoulder, it’s clear he knows exactly what he is doing.

Sister Act

Time is fluid, schedules are negligible, but the morning greeting ritual is sacred. Anyone entering the teacher’s lounge must be asked individually if he or she woke up well, if the family woke up well, and if everything at home is going well, and then he or she must ask the same questions of everyone else in theroom, and if anyone fails to adhere to this pattern, the social glue starts to ooze and the entire fabric of the day collapses. (I’m just guessing here – but it’s such a highly prized ritual that the consequences must be dire.) The pointis: ever since I jokingly referred to Annie and Elsa as “bana wane” (my children), it has become customary to ask me, “Mwawuka uli? Na bachona balongosi bawuka uli?”(How did you wake? And how did the sister-cats wake?)

“Lloyd. JULA CHIJARO SONO.”

My neighbor’s three-year-old son, Lloyd, trapped me within my own fence today by locking the gate from the outside. I had to stand on my chicken coop and yell to passers-by for help while Lloyd sat eating peaches. I hope to draw a picture of it someday.

We Did, In Fact, Start The Fire

Shortly after sunset on Sunday night, I was lying on my reed mat and lesson planning when I heard a rhythmic pounding on my roof. In the time it took for me to wonder, “…Is that rain?” a knock came at my door. I stepped out to find a weird yellow glow, a loud crackling sound, and Mrs. Wanda trying to explain something to me about fire, questions, and snakes. What I thought was the early start of rainy season was actually the sound of windswept embers pelting my little house, and those embers were blowing from an enormous brushfire approaching (quite swiftly, I might add) right in my direction about thirty feet from my house.

So, picture me standing awkwardly in the dark in my pajamas, uncertain whether the fire was started intentionally or accidentally, whether it was in its last throes or just getting started, whether the people around me were ecstatic or panicked, and whether I should be carrying my cats to safety or doing anything to help. (Slowly I pieced together the story: my Indian neighbors had started the fire on purpose to clear the fields, kill the snakes, and prepare the ground for their cricket practices. It was under control, even if it didn’t look like it.)

Picture, also, middle-aged men beating the ground with branches, sending red-hot cinders flashing and shooting twenty feet into the air. Picture kids prancing against the amber glow, shouting, “Moto! Fire! Moto! Fire!” and laughing maniacally, their cartwheeling silhouettes making abstract, barely human shapes in the smoke.

And picture me sorting it all out, ruminating on the same feeling I got when we cornered and killed a rat in the dorms during the first week of Peace Corps training, which is the same feeling I always get during football games: “I really don’t get this at all.” I don’t get it, but I feel it: the visceral charge in the air, the ancient rush in our blood, and the knowledge that none of us own it.

Soon the flames were beaten into ash, the soil was left black and smoking, and the only light left was from a few red sparks, twinkling across the field like bioluminescence on a beach. But still, people lingered. I stood on my chicken coop and watched what looked like shadow-puppets in a play about human nature, re-enacting a scene that could have taken place at any point in our history, whether that be thousands of years ago or (in this case) just last weekend. We’re still the same animals, still scared of the other animals hiding in the grass, and still emboldened and electrified by our tenuous mastery of fire.