The rainy season has begun and everything has turned a deep shade of green. I thought about that yesterday on the chapa that took me through the hills to the south, on my way home from another small town where trainees are staying. The last weeks have passed quickly. I've been here long enough now that I forget how incredible my everyday experiences are. When I remember the land back home I realize that, except for the last eight weeks, I've never seen anything so green before in my life.
Some volunteers have told me that if you pay attention, sometimes you can see elephants in the hills along this road. I'm not sure if that is accurate; my host family tells me that they've never seen elephants except for in reserves (though they do occasionally see a hippopotamus or a gazelle in the wild). What I see instead is a boy running along a dirt path herding goats with a swatch with still-green leaves. On occasion, there are single-file lines of skinny-looking longhorn cattle that appear above the bush-line. A backdrop of pine and banana trees. Women wait on the road-side, babies strapped to their backs in papooses (made of patterned capulanas, which also make their wrap-around skirts and headwraps) and bundles of sticks balanced on their heads. Men are laughing and drinking at tin-roof baracas painted red with the Coca-Cola logo. Chapas honk and whiz past the windows on the right side.
I sometimes take all of this for granted. I've traveled this route a couple of dozen times now, and every time the view is the same.
Today, however, I realize that I'll only see this route maybe half-a-dozen more. This afternoon, at a potluck Thanksgiving celebration attended by the standing ambassador and other Americans, I received word of my job placement for the next two years. Two weeks from yesterday, I'll be on a plane flying north to a small town in the province of Sofala. After that, I imagine this place will seem less commonplace again.
