Chasing skirts/ a holy thirst

This morning I left my house before eight in the morning, determined, as on most other weekdays, to find someone useful (village government, health clinic staff) to ask questions to help garner information for the report I must prepare about my village. But as I made my usual loop passing offices, residences, and the health clinic, not a soul was to be found. Which seems, most unfortunately, to often be the case in this month of Ramadan. My hopes of an eventful morning were rapidly dwindling. 

So I went to my default destination of my old guesti sister's place. I found her cleaning sporadically and huddling inside her bedroom, telling me how cold it was this morning. I laugh and chat with her, and her friend from up the hill arrives too, while the electric crew file in and out and cast their typical joviality over the place. 

My ears perk up when my dada mentions that there is an mnada, or large traveling market, today at a village on the other side of the small mountain range. I have been searching for any excuse to take one of the many paths over the mountains to the other side, so I jump on this opportunity. The female urge to beautify ourselves sets in, and my dada dispatches me and my friend to our respective houses to put on our best clothes for our appearance on that side of the mountain. 

What seems to be about three hours after our first inkling of going, we finally depart. We take a gentle walk through a gradual incline, we pass two low creeks, up some more, sight the village's water tank at the peak, then start the steep and rocky descent to the village and plain below. Over a narrow tree-bridge over a dried gorge, down into a dried gorge of a riverbed, then flat going until we reach the mnada. It takes us about two hours to walk here. 

I don't actually need to buy anything, I've only come to satisfy my desire to cross the mountain range. However as always in these shopping situations, I question my ability to refrain from buying anything. I stop to greet the fabric vendors I recognize from our local mnada, as I consider it very important to maintain good relationships with this gang of people. The sun is brutally hot, and I definitely overdressed for the occasion - I tie my black jacket around my neck and adjust my "thick cotton" kitenge wrapped around my dress. (Though I secretly laugh at the concept of cotton keeping you warm in the cold - many women here tell me that I must keep warm by wearing the "heaviest" cotton possible, which is the wax kitenge that is not very heavy at all. In my opinion, cotton is not really the go-to fabric for warmth or insulation...)

I also question my ability to keep "closed" today - to continue my Ramadan fast. As the afternoon wears on my mouth and throat are going dry, and I feel my breath going stale for want of water. My few packets of koolaid at my house are occupying my thoughts intensely. 

At about three in the afternoon we depart, taking a more direct route this time over the mountain. We climb the rocky surface of the mountain, pausing once, then once again, to rest and to look back at our progress - through the trees you can see the blue tarps of the mnada, far down and far away below us. It is almost inconceivable how high and far we've climbed. 

Most of the way back I follow closely a woman who brandishes an eight-foot-long piece of sugarcane, a common thing to buy at the mnadas. She alternates between using it as a walking stick and holding it horizontally in her hand. Up the mountain I follow her steps closely, the only things in my vision being her flip flops and long skirt, a steep patch of trail about three feet long, and the blunt end of her sugarcane, which comes dangerously close to tapping me in the head on occasion. 

And it is the most natural thing in the world to be thirsty, and to be walking single file through the ups and downs of Africa. But I could be anywhere, as we enter the precious little microclimates of cool oxygen in the shadier parts of the forest. I could be anywhere with anyone and I am here.