A Toast to the Adventure from Jack Kerouac

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

The Women

I'm balancing on a tiny wooden fold-up chair in front of the house. The sun is just beginning to bleed across the sky, but already the dirt yard has been swept clean, milk separates on the porch, and Mama Kadzo is busy in the kitchen house. It smells like fire and dust and animals. I watch a woman walk serenely down the steep valley towards us. Like a stack of multicolored dishes, her hips and shoulders, the child on her back and the ten gallon bucket perched atop her head move in complete harmony.  Her long sinewed arms sway lightly at her sides and her feet find their places on the rock without a downward glance. Strength drips down her forehead and mixes with the grace radiating from her dark skin. I think about my own body, soft and white, and wonder what I look like to her, sitting in the middle of her yard, hair plaited, fresh blouse and skirt shifting in the breeze, waiting on breakfast.

When she nears, I catch her eye for a moment and she holds my gaze. Our two lives clash silently, and I wonder if there is any hope of us understanding each other. Suddenly her solemn face shatters into a smile and she begins to sing, Mungu ni mwe ma, Mungu ne mwe ma, Mungu ni mwe ma, ni mwe ma kuangu... It is a song we've been learning on the way to church these past few days. As I parallel her with the version I know so well, it strikes me that, though we don't speak the same language, know the same land, or live the same life, we are not foreigners to each other, but sisters in Christ. And we sing again, she in Kiduruma and I in English, different bodies with the same heart, God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, He's so good to me.

The Tarmac

I step off the little toy plane onto a tarmac wavering with heat; this is my first experience with the unpredictable nature of Africa. We’ll have to walk to the other side of the air port  carrying our bags due to miscommunication on the airstrip.

The air is heavy with the syrupy flavor of the tropics. Sharply musty, refreshingly green, yet sickly sweet. It smells like Mother’s Day, when Dad would take us to a greenhouse out in the country so that Mom could pick pansies and marigolds and wild sweet grass and a dozen other flowers that would jiggle madly in her arms as she gathered them from their beds. Once I found a little petunia, half bent, with no promise whatsoever, dumped in a pile of refuse in the corner. I got to have it for free. 

By the end of the summer, it sat overflowing from the corner of the deck, purple trumpets blaring their message of survival.