#3 Double dutch

 As I start to make my way down the rough incline of the hill, I see the stone steps leading out of the doorway of our little grey house. Stretched out in front of me are tin rooves after tin rooves of all the little houses on the hill just like mine. Everything is cast in an orange haze and red dust kicks up around us as trucks roll by on the road and people bustle all across my horizon. Men yell and blast music from their rusty radios. Tiny children skip and play in the alleys between buildings. Mothers and sisters in their vibrant skirts cook around the fires lit just outside their kitchen doors, just like Lily does outside mine. She is eight. To my western eyes she looks far too old and too young at the same time. Too young to be gently breathing the fire to life, or hacking at the dead chicken with that looks impossibly bloody in her small hands. Too young to be preparing dinner for the family, plus us their English guests every night after night. Then too old, too old to be eight. Too old to have a face so dewy and new, flushed with her rare, angelic smile. Too old to have a body so small and fragile that I feel the need to reach to her every time she heaves a huge water bucket onto her back. Too old to have such big, glowing eyes; eyes that have seen nothing yet. 

I have been in Malawi one week. Malawi: the warm heart of Africa. We are invaders here, we are strangers. We are cold with our big black suitcases, loud obnoxious accents and good intentions. We are meant to help. The ad said "No fees. No catch. Just six months of your life to make a change for good". I, with no money, no education, and no one of meaning in my life, had six months to spare. My new roommate, let's call her Libby, because she is just white enough and middle class enough to be named something like Libby, but not old enough or has seen enough to be called something like Grace, has different reasons. She is on the kind of do-good crusade that would be highly regarded in her circles, where everyone ignores the self-serving element and tactfully mentions it would sure look great on her Oxbridge application. Our beds are 6 inches apart and we do absolutely everything together. She is a fresh eighteen and fresh out of Shropshire. I am an ancient nineteen and crawling out of hotel laundries, bar cellars and stockrooms. Nothing surprises me and everything either exhilarates, upsets or embarrasses her. She is like a memory foam mattress, every teeny nudge making a irreparable dent. I suppose that makes me a rock. 

This evening is a special evening. Lily is not carrying her sister home from school, or preparing food by the fire, or sent off on some other errand. Today she is playing. Often children play on the bare patch of earth by our house. Their is an abandoned shack nearby where sometimes we see little babies wobbling around in the early morning, or a few people here and there who we assume don't have homes of their own. This means a square on unoccupied land that no one has claim to, where the children play. Two girls swing a rope in one hand and plastic line in the other, there's a rhythmic tapping as the unconventional skipping ropes hit the earth and throw dust into the air between them. Lily smiles then blushes as we come over the hill of the shack and into her view, like she's embarrassed to be there, to be seen by us. As if we might tell. Then she steps into the red cloud. She jumps and turns in exquisite sync with the beat, while the girls at either side laugh or yell new commands. We pause to watch, we cheer and clap, I think we must be strange and ridiculous to her. After a minute or so, she exits the ropes as fluidly as she entered, and scoops up her backpack running past us to the house.  Later, at home, she busied herself boiling rice and frying meat, zipping around outside making up for the time she'd lost before the head of the house returned. She didn't say a word to either of us, as usual, but she did hide a small smile under her lowered eyes and busy hands. She knew it, just like we knew it too; it was a perfect double dutch.