Let it snow?

The crackling of the grass fires drowned out the chirping of crickets and the squeaking of the dark bats that circled high in the star-strewn night sky. The music of the night-the groggy rustling of the midnight risers, the whistling of the wind through the trees, the song of the gibbous moon spinning on its axle-were all squelched in the searing heat. Twas sometime between 2 and 4 am that the wind shifted from the stillness that prevented the spread of the fires to the stiff breeze that blew the ash towards the mission. So this morning when I awoke and went to my desk, I found my Bible, textbooks and scrap paper covered in what I thought was a thick layer of eraser shavings. I tried to brush it off only to see an inky smear replace the fine dusting. I glanced out the window. Our cold corpse of a compound lay at the heart of a giant snow globe. Only the snow, instead of frozen H2O falling from the clouds, was a silent storm of shriveled pieces of charred grass catching on the screen of the window, landing on the dying leaves of the neem trees, swirling through the rustling wind like butterflies flitting over a flowered shrub.

Tis the season for lighting fires. The rain has stopped and the grass in the fields is dry so it’s the best time for clearing the fields. To light the fields takes only a small spark, a lot less exerting than clearing by hand. Unless of course it gets out of hand and then you have to fight it back from your houses so it doesn’t destroy your home. It also chases the rats from their homes and into the traps, and consequently into the stew pot.

It is now 2:30, and I sit at my desk, trying to wrap my dazed brain around numerous complicated and sometimes completely senseless geometry problems. Mom stands out at the laundry line shaking the dust and ash from the clothes before putting them in the basket. The wind shifts and all of a sudden, the crackling is louder. The air turns into a thick, suffocating blanket of grey-ish orange. My nose stings of smoke. My lips taste ash. Pieces of charred grass which somehow escaped the screen on the window float in my coffee. Once again it is snowing. I think it just got hotter.

At 4:00 we stand at the fence line peering between the thorny branches of our compound, watching the red-orange flames ebb and flow with the wind. It almost reminds me of the ocean, its fiery waves rising and falling to a deafening roar and crash. The fire is far, yet near. Surrounding our compounds are the mission fields fences by wooden poles and barbed wire. On the other side of that is no-man’s land edged by cassava fields. As we watch, an entire WFP cassava crop is razed to the ground. The ravenous jockey of flame races with the wind to the south. We watch the tall elephant grasses just two feet from our fence line flare red, shooting smoke in our eyes.

Standing out in the smoke, Akol and Papa Lokwii, two generations of warriors, beat out the flames that threaten to jump the fence. Kites and eagles circle over head, darting down now and again, then returning to the sky with a rat or snake clutched in their talons. Now, hands on hips, the warriors stand in the field facing the wind. Waiting. Watching. They say the danger is passing, yet still they stand. They say it is traveling east, yet the wind blows south. They say the flames will not com, yet the blinding blizzard of ash still blows in my face.

We cross to the northeastern corner of the compound, meeting Akol there, trousers rolled to his knees, hands grey with ash. “Itemokin” he says, announcing the fire’s change of direction. The wind once again shifts, picking up the fragments of char it had brought to us, then turned right around and marching north. The snow embraces me one more time before slipping its shoes on and following its master. I see the men from Nakaale rush out with branches to steer it away from their homes. The flames fade, then crawl away, dejected. I sit on the cement-like dirt, a pile of dead leaves and ants hugging my toes, and watch the snow rustle away, dancing in the heat.