If I forget thee, Jerusalem

In the almost finished fenced garden the women’s association we celebrated our success, the women thanking me over and over for completing the project as we danced to the djembe; my cheeks sore with grins. Wonderful. Incredibly awkward. I did dance bit and was surprised with how naturally I fall into their dance style now; my body leans and my feet swish and I move easily, not like the awkward days in the beginning, and I get laughs and ahs as much as the next muso. We did lots of dance-walking in the circle where the women grabbed my arm up high in recognition, “shooow!” We stopped when the hot sun was high for dinner and baths, later reconvened after in the town center. This time it was dark, and the drums seemed to beat more passionately as the younger girls danced and kicked up dust, backlit by streams of flashlights and hazy, like some dark sultry jazz dance – easier to dramatize the animalistic fervor in the dark. The fires of hay were sometimes lit to soften the animal hide drum tops, it smelled of cold and moist and sweet smoke. Finally after a few hours we marched together to greet the village chief and danced and sang in his concession. His old bent wife came out in her wizened excitement and sang “Dugutigi ma bo – mga a b’I fo!” The chief won’t come out, but he greets!

I step outside later to pee – the dust swirled in front of my headlamp, and I smelled the dust-desert, acrid and deep, it seems dark and dry in my nose and I remembered sleeping in a Bedouin tent in Israel and always at night the sand still holds the heat scent of the desert despite the night breeze. Love studying here, yes, even MCAT prep is okay; even the ugly orgo, the awkward carbon chains seem friendlier, more digestible than before, and I remembered first learning this under the fluorescent lights with the projection so far ahead, so inhuman and antiseptic and now there is always a child with his head resting on my lap or jumping over my shoulder as I try to explain what this is and here this is a brain – the head owner – and they grasp and laugh so that I can’t help loving these heavy MCAT books even though I’m scared shitless of my future I’ve got these bright white teeth giggles glowing in the bonfire to remember.