Emily's Worldview

The first hill we climbed, and the town of Homa Bay.

It is Sunday, a day off, so a group of us goes exploring around the town of Homa Bay. The town has these steep hills like the tips of volcanoes poking through the earth, so we clamber up one. On top we catch our breaths, sweat drying in the breeze, and we take in the panorama. It is a great view, with Lake Victoria shimmering silver, green shores in a haze in the distance. At our feet are the rusting roofs of houses in Homa Bay and to the West, neat, green fields as far as the eye can see. We also spot another hill, right on the water, that looks like it will have a great view of the lake.

We guess our way to the base and then ask a lady selling tomatoes how to get up. The path is gravelly and slippery, and occasionally weaves around places where big boulders have been scooped out. The bushes eventually get too thick and too thorny for me and I sit in the shade as my companions brave the jungle to the top. At the base of the hill a husband and wife are working. He breaks the boulders from the hill into appropriate sized stones for building—chink chink chink—and she carries the stones down the hill in a burlap bag on her head. It is noon on Sunday, and as we sweat and suffer for the exercise and for the view, this is what they are doing.

A brown and white sheep wanders by. Near me on the hill, I hear her bleating, the clicks of grasshoppers, chirping birds, and the sounds of the rock breaker. From below, the sounds of life waft up—rumbling trucks, babies crying, roosters crowing, and the dueling loudspeakers of a chanting imam and a fire and brimstone preacher. The lake, to my right and behind the hill, is silent, mute dhows plying its surface. Also silent, sorghum ripening in the field, the dogs asleep in the shade, the red dust rising, and butterflies, which have overrun the town of Homa Bay.