Shia

I am just getting used to the village life. I’ve learned to keep my cell phone off, drew each hut in the village so I know the layout, and spend hours a day walking from hut to hut, bent at the waist like a movie maitre’d, greeting. From what I’ve seen, there is one English speaker. Her name is Karima, the same as the word for reading. Her hair is cut short for school, covered in what seems to be a winter scarf, transplanted from some chilly elsewhere. She ignores the boys who court her, telling me she must finish school before she marries. She adds that she hopes she gets an educated man so he won’t beat her. She is from bustling Tamale, and says she hates the village. She only comes back to visit Zeinab, her closest friend. When Zeinab tells me she will be a nurse, Karima nods so quickly her veil falls to the side “me too, I will be a nurse” she says. Zeinab seems pleased. She tells me that the Fulani, a nomadic tribe currently living outside of Tunaayili, have had a baby. We decide to visit. Fulani children tend to have bright eyes, set in beautiful triangular faces. They are lighter than their dagomba neighbors, with hair that curls long. Outside of the village sits a Baobab tree, flanked on all sides by neem trees. It seems to touch the sky, and the neems are so thick that the ground is always in shadow. It hums like a living being. I’m drawn, but Karima stops me. “Our ancestors live in that tree” She says. “The humming?” I ask “Shia” she says softly, like a prayer, “bees.” As drawn as I am to the brilliant baobab, I never feel quite right crossing the trunks of the neem trees that protect its roots. But I walk just on the other side, letting the hum pull me in as far as I dare.