Tanzania

I miss Tanzania: Africa is complicated. The sun there had a brightness and heat that helps shed light on the memories I might otherwise forget. They seem drenched in color, and I can still taste the dust in the air. I can smell the green of foliage and feel the cool heat of inland hills rising into the sometimes mist--with tiny white veins of water falling high above rice fields. There all things moved with a comfortable pace--pole' pole', (slowly slowly, take it easy). Walking down uneven rutted roads with friends, far from highways, we would take refuge in moments of shade offered by trees. Our nostrils and lungs often filled with dark smoke--trash burn-piles set the air on fire. The ocean was sweetly salty and the hospitals all looked the same--long open air covered corridors, courtyards filled usually with nothing. Nothing but people, sometimes--staff walking and working, patients and would be patients, resting and waiting in the corridor's shade.