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.