I should have been more scared than I was. Well, I was scared, but I made it through. The plateau between Lauren’s site and mine is full of small winding roads that go in and out of rocky fields. Some become larger roads, that temp you into turning on them. Some get smaller and smaller until they disappear altogether. I finally got one route down, but I am constantly persuaded to take the short cuts. I never actually took the ledgendary “school kids’ road” because every time I’d find myself twisting and turning until it took me twice as long as usual to get back.
But when Shaka declined an afternoon run to Koyan, I started on the 4.5 mile road myself. On the way, I picked up a litter of high school kids on their way home. We ran and laughed as they tried their new English lesson on me. Suddenly we parted ways. “This road is much shorter!” they told me. Ahhh… the school kids road! Assuring me they were able to hun the whole way with me, (two of them ended up doing so), I agreed to take this unknown path.
It was indeed shorter. It usually takes me about 38 minutes to run to Lauren’s at a steady pace but today it was just 32. Lauren looked beat. She had just been hit by the disenchantment of returning to Mali after a vacation to Spain with her parents. Homesickness, but even more so, heat sickness. “It snowed in Madrid,” she said longingly. With highs constantly 106 F or above, the heat was starting to get to all of us, even the Malians. It just slows you down. My relief is pouring buckets of water over my head throughout the day. Lauren is considering going all out and buying a car battery that she can hook a fan up to.
But now it was bearable. The sun was going down and it was time for me to make my way back to Dombila. Mistake number one- trying to take the “school kids’ road.” After a good 20 minutes I ended up on the plateau overlooking Koyan again. I gave it another try, which having brought myself back to a place where I could take a familiar yet longer road, was clearly Mistake Number Two. I ran and ran as the sun was quickly setting. At one point lost in the brush, I spotted some school girls and they pointed me toward a path I had long strayed from. “It’s just one road straight to Dombila!” That’s what they all say. It’s just one road when you’re used to that one road and you have your blinders on to block all the other dozens of intersections.
It’s night time. I can still see the trail but I have no idea where I am. I spot a fire in the distance- it must be a hut. If I can just make my way toward that settlement I can ask for help. If I find that I am a long way off from Dombila, I’d break Peace Corps policy and beg someone to take me to my host family on their motorcycle. Or I would just spend the night in the wilderness.
As that thought crossed my mind, I immediately thought of that night, in the second months of my service that I was lost in Dio at night. With Caroline out of town, I called Hunter hysterical. I was wandering around scared to death. It’s an experience I never wrote about on this blog because it would have sent Mom flipping out.
But here, I was just running, and running and running. If I stopped to get upset I would never get anywhere. I’m on this one road now, and I have no idea if it leads to Dombila. I can only pray it does, or that it leads my to a friendly village that can somehow help me get back. I can barely see and from that a Bible verse popped into my head. It’s one that I once chanted to myself during a track meet in college: “Guide my feet and light my path.” (Psalm 119:105). I think it’s the road to Dombila but I can’t be sure. I was just trusting that if I ran, I’d be ok. It did jump at the hissing in the trees though.
And then a crazy man started chasing me through the wilderness! (That last sentence is not true, but Shaka told me to add it to make for a better story as I explained what I was writing in my journal).
When I finally got back I almost hugged my host family. “I thought I’d never see you again!” They laughed and made me promise that I would never again take an unknown road when the sun was setting. Seems pretty intuitive after the fact.
That 32 minute run had turned into an hour and 20 minutes. I relaxed in the compound next to our nightly family fire. Shaka told a story, as we like to do, describing mystery person whom the others have to identify. “This girl has big hair. This girl has a big head” (They often call me “Kungoloba in village which literally means big head) “And she prays to God!”
“That’s me.”
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