On the Eve of the Dust Storm

The last of the evening birdsongs were overwhelmed by the static of insects. The noise echoed in the narrow crucible between the mountains, a place that should have been a haven but, as it was, served only to collect layers of dust from the nearby peaks. However, as with all ungodly places, we will always find an inhabitant.

In the village they called him Umlungu, though some of the younger, more ignorant children called him "whitey-boy. His birth name was a thing of the past and thus no longer important. He lived a two-hour hike from the village, in the narrow valley we have just introduced.

Umlungu is glad when day settles and night comes. The day for him is a constant battle with the hot sun and the heavy sphere of sky that rolls and crushes everything in his little crucible valley. Everything mashed to powder. Thank God for the night, which opens the sphere with a weightless breath.

Tonight, Umlungu finds the exposed belly of stars to be rather vapid. It is true that he has been feeling depressed lately, or as he would put it, apathetic. And loneliness is no use as a consoling friend, although it always comes when we most need the commiseration.

He couldn't sleep. Instead, he lay on the ground, arms folded behind his head, and watched the lazy white arm of our galaxy brush across the face of the planet. Just like that, he thought, eyes wide.

It was then that he noticed the whooping of hyena across the hills. The voices were steady and low, giving way to a rising pitch. He was surprised to hear them; they never came so near the village. Imagination, with a little influence from fear, showed Umlungu a picture of the roaming hyena clan- dark and hunched, swinging heads and rolling eyes. They looked engorged on power, a power whose half-eaten carcass has yet to die and begs another feeding from the pack.

Umlungu would be the first to admit that he was afraid. As he listened, he heard a calf bellowing a distress call. The bushes thrashed and Umlungu shivered. A light giggle started in the thickness, then another joined it, then another. The cackling increased to a frenzied excitement. The calf's bellow was strangled. A residual silence crept behind Umlungu and tickled the hairs on his neck. Loneliness then whispered to him, It's over.

The next day, Umlungu did not get up until late. He felt apathetic still, or perhaps he felt the weight of the heavy sphere, the mallet-sky, above him. He had work to do, another trip to the village must be made. A windstorm had moved in during the early morning and was folding everything in dust. It swirled around him as he walked, grains of sand sticking in the tenderest crevices of his body. Bits lodged in his ears, too, and Umlungu could have sworn the dust was laughing.