Just another day
Today is Christmas Eve, and it hardly feels like it. Even though I started running before sunrise, tripping over holes in the dirt road, I feel like I have sweat about half my body weight. It’s the dry season now and the harmattan winds are blowing ever so slightly, creating a haze in the dawn sky. The rising sun is red, gradually warming to a glowing orange. Soon it will be a brightly blazing white-hot yellow, baking down onto the clay earth. A dry, fine clay that filters into your shoes and covers your feet with a film of red grit as you walk.
Rising sun, I salute you and your illuminating rays that I must soon seek shelter from. Here, you rule and mankind must labor in thirst or find refuge in the shadows created by trees that drink your burning nectar. You scorch the earth where trees no longer grow, dusty deserts.
When evening comes, the sunlight will turn to amber, filtering through the dense green leaves of the trees and creating dappled pools of gold. Everything will come to life again after hibernating from the daytime heat that only the lizards endure. The birds will flit down from their trees and people will stretch out of their shadows to gather, talk and eat. Like yesterday and the day before here at the equator, there will be that fleeting hour of golden spun time, as the sun becomes a crimson ball again in the distant haze and leaves the thin sliver of moon to guard the night sky as it shines elsewhere. The crickets and bullfrogs will sing their lullabies endlessly into the thick darkness.
