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“You are drunk,” said Shani, laughing. “I’m not!” I collapsed on the ground next to her. “I’m just happy.” And it was true: the metal thermos of Konyagi and orange juice that my host sister had smuggled outside was still mostly full. The earth was fragrant and quiet, the massive silhouette of Mount Meru like a starless bite taken out of the night sky. We rolled onto our backs. “I think that’s Southern Cross,” I said, pointing, but every cluster of stars looked the same. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” said Shani. “Who you meet, and how, and when? We just met but I feel like I’ve known you forever. Do you feel that?” “Yeah,” I said, “totally.” I’d arrived in Arusha alone and anxious, but Shani’s family had made me feel immediately welcome. Maybe it was the pine-tree scent of Konyagi, faint on her breath, or the summer breeze sweeping up from the Serengeti, but at that moment, I believed in fate and kismet and connections. Maybe ten thousand years ago our souls were here, under slightly different constellations, bound up in ibex or Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or intertwining cowpea plants or the Hale-Bopp comet or the stars themselves. And we met there, at the end of the last Ice Age, Shani and Kate, ibex and hunter, cowpea and comet, and now as human beings we recognize something infinite and essential in one another. Somewhere to my right, Shani burped. “Did you hear that?” she said. “Yeah, maybe lay off the juice,” I laughed. “No, I am serious, someone is out there.” There was a moment of tensed muscles and total silence. “I don’t hear anything,” I said. But then we both heard it: the unmistakable rustling sound of someone walking through the grass behind us. I snapped on my headlamp, expecting to see one of Shani’s younger brothers swaying there in the breeze like pappus grass. Instead, a dark figure loomed in the ghostly glow of the LED bulb. We froze. He froze. His big, vacant eyes seemed to suck up the light like black holes; his heavy horns curved like the villain’s mustache in a melodrama. It was a massive water buffalo. “Don’t run,” came a whisper from beside me. “Just back up slowly.” We backed up a few paces in careful unison. Then Shani broke. She turned and ran, and then we were both running and laughing until our sides hurt so badly that we couldn’t take any more of either. In the morning, there were only piles of half-dried water buffalo dung and the impressions of two bodies in the grass—and the kind of friendship you carry with you into the next life.