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.
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