All Part It

Death seems to be part of life here. The newborn we brought from the health center to the hospital, whom I held against my skin to help him regulate his temperature, and whose brave and loving mother gave him drops of precious breast milk, died this morning. That makes me sad, even though he hardly had a fighting chance to begin with. She will probably ride back with us to her village on Monday, empty handed. I can read her eyes. I wish I could speak Haoussa.

My last Grandmother was buried and commemorated this week, and even though it’s good and right that she is at rest, I feel a mist of sadness hanging on after the sun has burned the chill out of the air.

Living here one is quite often aware that life holds few guarantees. The nearness of the elements and their power are constant reminders: the fierce energy-dense sun, the wind that brings dust and protein-rich grasshoppers, the ornery but nutritious and milk-producing animals, the open air breezes that allow you to survive the heat, and yet demand that you face the winter’s cold unprotected. Your fields may produce or they might not if the rains don’t come; The chance for employment means you leave your fields, but the pay may not be enough; the chance to study may be available, but then there may be no job to use it.

There’s no doubt about it that life is, at best, precarious. Something I appreciate about the atmosphere of Africa is that this precarious situation doesn’t stop the music we’re dancing to. You dance in the face of any odds, under the rule of any thumb, inspite of the pain of life’s losses. My western mind might interpret that and say “Life is too short, so live it up”. But being here, I wouldn’t strap the idea of time-pressure on this culture. Perhaps they’d say that “Life is life, so celebrate because it's good to relax and enjoy living!”

*any Africans reading this? How do you see it?