Dust

Last night when we went to bed it was so excruciatingly hot and still that I fell asleep with a soaking wet kanga wrapped around my back and stomach. The air was so parched though that it was dry within an hour. At this point in the year almost all remnants of the last rains in November have disappeared and everything looks thirsty. The stain left on the ground by dirty dishwater is covered in trembling swarms of mud-colored butterflies within minutes of it being tossed out. Candlelight showers are getting better and better as our bathwater, brought on donkey carts each day from the hafira, gets browner and browner. My nasal passages have been cracked and sore every morning and I have to slather in lotion after every shower to keep my skin from looking like the the bark of all the leafless trees outside. We have even heard UN reports of lions on the main road out of town, only ten kilometers away. People wonder if they are moving in to look for water.

I left my watch in the shower last night so I don't know what time it was that the wind picked up. Now that we have our tent staked into cement, we have been sleeping more soundly through the occasional wind gusts. But last night things got crazy. In my half-conscious state I felt like the mouse from one of my childhood story books who took his bed out to sea and got caught in a storm. It felt like we were trapped between the open water and a invisible coral wall. The wind would roll in like a tidal wave, wide and long and loud. But once it hit our tent it would shatter up into a hundred smaller waves crashing into each other from different directions leaving us bobbing around, trying to keep our heads above waterless air. The tent shuddered and shook so violently that the poles themselves screeched and threatened to snap. Tent straps rattled, cans of bug spray clanged around on the floor and the curtains knotted themselves together, allowing dust to spray freely in through the windows. A couple of times I thought I saw flashes of heat lighting, but that may have been my imagination. Like my mouse alter-ego, I eventually just pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes as tightly as I could. I really did. It went on like this all night long.

This morning we stepped out onto a different planet. Chairs and wash basins were strewn around the yard and a chunk of our fence had fallen over on one side. Half the Sahara was deposited in our kitchen (okay, that one really is an exaggeration) and our poor chickens looked like they had lived through a tornado. The really bizarre thing though was the dust still hanging in the air. Mountains we can normally see at least four tiers of had completely disappeared in the haze. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the yellow full moon setting on the horizon, but later realized it was actually the sun rising out of the dust.

Bryan and I walked around this morning a little dazed and a little amazed. Just when we think this place is beginning to feel like home, we have humbling moments of wondering, "Where in the world are we?"