Lines in the Sand

by Ashia Gallo (United States of America)

Making a local connection Mozambique

"I’m sorry." I lifted my eyebrows apologetically toward the adolescent girl staring at me with perplexed exhaustion as my bicycle tires disrupted the carefully crafted lines she had just created with a rake in the thick, speckled sand in front of her home. It was 6am in Chicumbane, a time for house chores and cooking in the quiet farming village. Many Mozambican women would start the day using rakes to design patterns in the sand, creating an aesthetic manicure not dissimilar from the satisfying visual and feel of freshly cut grass. Except for Mana Elisa’s yard. Her house had not had lines for weeks. I’d been living in Chicumbane for a few months as a health volunteer with the local rural hospital, I was attempting to create a daily ritual of early morning bike rides as a form of meditation and exercise. The rides were introducing me to new paths and people outside of the work bubble that was beginning to form. I wanted to make friends with Chicumbane natives, not just the hospital workers who mostly commuted to the village from the nearby provincial capital, Xai-Xai. Additionally, it was the only timeframe of the day with air cool enough to exercise without feeling as if one was trapped inside a sauna and overheated to the point of insanity, as it was late January and the height of the summer season in southeast Mozambique. The indigo sky still flirted with the sunrise, as the roosters crowed, and the cows were herded through the crowded streets to exercise their legs. Beyond the residential neighborhood was a clearing that revealed the Rural Hospital of Chicumbane, the primary school, and the secondary school. Vast open space with packed sand from footprints exhibiting the congested routes made this an especially easy stretch of my course. Farmlands emerged after the schoolyard and hospital campuses with organized stretches of crops lining carefully manicured lanes stretching far and long. I gripped my fingers tightly around the handlebars to steady myself as the terrain grew more difficult with every peddle. The sand was starting to loosen as I entered less populated stretches of land, causing the muscles in the tops of my thighs to constrict as they put forth maximum effort to catapult me forward. I felt my resolve and body getting tougher as the sweat began to pool around the nape of my neck. The rows of cement houses came back into view and as I slowed to prepare to turn into my yard, the tires skid and I tumbled off of my bike into the soft, untended sand in front of Mana Elisa’s home. She sat on her porch calmly, preparing a meal with a dull knife in one hand and a bushel of potatoes at her feet. She smiled at me, and I felt the upsurge of panic in my body. I stood as grains of sand fell in every direction off of my body; I used my hands to brush away the residual dust and nervousness as I walked my bike toward her veranda. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Mana Elisa, ashamed of my recent absence and what it likely communicated. Mana Elisa’s son had died from malaria. I was unaware of his death weeks prior, and therefore had not visited in those first three days after his passing to grieve in the traditional fashion. I should have been here with the other women in the village, crying and wailing alongside a childless mother as we made space for each phase of grieve to pour out of our beings and into the atmosphere. I was ashamed for having missed the opportunity to show my love. “Ja passou,” she finally responded slowly, her eyes filled with sincerity and understanding. Her words reflected a common Portuguese saying meaning “it has already passed”, which encompassed much of the Mozambican cultural norms around loss and letting go. A young country with a very recent civil war past, plagued with current public health crises due to HIV and malaria; how does one move past generations of witnessing death at such a rate? I sure was not faring too well. So, I biked. “Sit,” she insisted. And so I did.