25. July. 2010
I feel like I should start this post with “I once had a farm in Africa”.
It looks to be a busy Sunday with a pile of work that needs to get done before this hectic week starts, so I wake up early and do an hour of Yoga. Laying in Shivasina I give thanks to my higher power, my creative consciousness, my spiritual light. I thank my teachers – those that have inspired me, brought me to my knees, kissed me on my lips. I give thanks for the challenges that I have surmounted and grown from. This morning, I was lucky enough to reach that great balance of inner peace and physical exertion.
After my shower, but still in my post yoga calm, I chop up a half a pineapple, some papaya, a few bananas and squeeze some passion and citrus juice over the top. I fix my Sunday morning instant mocha (instant coffee, instant milk, instant chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and hot water). I take my breakfast and a relatively recent Economist that old visitors had left at the house and sit out on the porch to catch up on the worldly events and enjoy the morning light.
After reading about the election in Rwanda, blood diamonds in Zimbabwe, and about halfway through the article on American democrats’ ineptitude to lead in wartime, I start to hear the crackling of fire. It is a pretty common background noise, hardly registering in my brain. It gets a little stronger and I assume that it must be one of the guards cooking some breakfast in the fire pit near my house. When I finish the article, I decide to look down the rocky hill that falls off quickly about 4 yards from where I am sitting. During the dry season, the valley is on fire, the hills shrouded in smoke. People believe (falsely) that burning fields is good for the soil. They also believe that the longer your fire burns, the longer you will live. Or that the ability to light a fire is the hand of God acting through yours (but really, if we are going to get detailed here, isn’t it God’s hand typing with mine right now?). Anyhow, I decide I should at least just check and see if there is a fire getting close to the compound. I walk out to the edge and look over. There is a strong fire, and it is nearly at the foot path about three yards down hill. “Jessicaaaa,” I call to our house keeper “njoo tafadalhi! Haraka!” (come please! Hurry!) she peeks her head out the back door, wearing her apron over her nice church clothes “moto inakuju. Ina karibu!” (fire, it comes. It is close!). She looks over, “Hamnashida” (there is no problem) she says matter-of-factly, totally unfazed. She slowly saunters down the hill to walk along the footpath and examine just how far it goes and to make sure no children are in harm’s way. She pauses occasionally to unhook her skirt from the thistles of the bush. I take the moment to snap a few pictures.
This would be a good time to describe the surroundings. Our compound of three houses and the office is well maintained with the grass cut short. But just past our boundary, which is really just delineated by where short grass meets long grass or sometimes a bush line, is wild, overgrown and dry bush. At the best it is grass to my knee, at worse it is grass to the shoulders and brambly bush.
Jessica returns after her leisurely walk and tells us everything is fine, that it has slowed, and will stop at the footpath. She brushes it off and goes back inside to her work. I am not so easily persuaded. Maybe it is because I am from California where wild fires have claimed my favorite camping spot and nearly taken my family’s homes. When the fire gets this close, we evacuate. But here, in rural Tanzania, there is no fire department to call in to protect your home. Here, if you leave, you lose your home. And so, you fight. I start to think of all of the what-ifs. Of the millions of shillings of highly flammable product we have in our store room. The home that I have grown to love. The 400 artisans that depend on our poorly financed NGO. My livelihood. I decide to knock on the door of Heidi, the founder of my org, who is in town for the month and just ask her what she thinks. Worst case scenario, she laughs at me for being unseasoned, nervous about such a commonplace occurrence. Best case scenario, we save our compound from being burned to a crisp.
“Hodi” I call into her house. “Is that Rachel? I am in the bath” she replies. “Oh… okay… I was just wondering what you do if the fire gets too close…”, “is it near”, “well I think so”, “I’ll be out in a few minutes”. Ruth and I run back to the hill near my house. The fire has moved quite a lot, and the wind is picking up and it is moving close, it is definitely too close for comfort. “Jessicaaaa! Ina karibu SANA!” (it is VERY near). She runs out, looks down the hill, and without saying anything, runs to the nearest green leafy tree and with one swift movement rips off a young stem with a lot of leaves on the end. I do the same, though, it being a green tree and me being new to this, I struggle a little more. I say an apology to the tree for taking its life. But, I guess the fire would have gotten it anyway. A small sacrifice. She runs towards the bottom of the fire and start swatting it out with the green leaves. Hardcore. Mind you, she is a plump lady still wearing her apron over her Sunday bests. Definitely a sight. I stay top-ward and start mimicking her. It is definitely working! But the fire is faster than my incessant swatting. My mind is thinking, there has got to be a better way, but my survival instinct just keeps swatting. Eventually my leaves wilt off and I am not making much headway with the remaining tree stump and branches, and I realize I am backed against a rock face. I decide to get out and run up to the house to start fighting with buckets of water. About this time, Heidi walks up with her two kids, 3 and 5. We send the kids up to the balcony, yelling at them to stay put. I pass off the bucket and rip down a new green tree to start swatting again. Heidi decides to call for backup, because us four women are having a difficult time keeping the fire at bay. It has now reached the rim where I stood to look down at the fire – about 4 yards from the house, with nothing but dry grass in between. There is even a nice pile of dry trees sitting conveniently near the shack housing our generator and fuel…smart. I am running all over, swatting, calling for water when I hit rough spots, occasionally burning my feet (I am wearing chaco thongs. Didn’t have time to put on proper foot wear…). The smoke is intense. I am trying to breathe out while looking at the fire and breathe in facing away. Not much help. I am short of breath but keep swatting. Eventually we get this part of the fire at bay and head off to the end of the compound to check on it. Ruth stays back with the kids, and Heidi, Jessica and I walk to the end. The flames are big and hot, and moving fast. At this point, facing massive flames and heavy smoke, coughing, I flash back to a Grey’s Anatomy smoke inhalation patient and suggest wetting bandanas to cover our mouths. Manase, our back up arrives, and he and Jessica run off with their trees. Heidi and I don’t think we have enough time to swat out the fire before it gets to the house. I suggest we start digging (firefighters dig trenches right?). She doesn’t think there is time. So we start creating a water boundary. Eventually we call some other people in, and we swat it out, but it is now heading up the hill to the church compound. Heidi calls our friends up the hill to warn them. We keep swatting. Eventually we get it out. Kids come out and marvel at the mzungu female firefighters. We are a sight. We breathe a sigh of relief and head back to the first house to have some water, breathe semi clean air and assess our battle wounds. Thinking that we are safe now that the house is nearly encircled by charred earth, we relax. We take a celebratory picture of the firefighting team. Manase even heads home. We break out some roasted ground nuts and enjoy some homemade coffee icecream I made the night before. We joke around and drink gallons of water.
In about 30 minutes, Jessica bursts in and in frantic kiswa tells us the fire is back, strong, near the last house. Heidi and I, again, leave Ruth with the kids and take off at a run. Immediately we hear the crackling of the fire. Before we see it, we already know we are in trouble. As I run, I think about how my house could have burned down while we were eating icecream congratulating ourselves. When we get nearer, it is in an L encroaching on the house. It has jumped the ground burned earlier and is nearly on top of the house. It is more than we can handle. We call for backup and yell at the people up hill from us to grab a bucket and do something. We are about to lose my house. I run through bush and charred earth, burning my toes and hoping that all snakes have evacuated the area earlier. I swat like I have never swatted before. The fire is intense. The smoke is white-out conditions. Eyes are burning. I have to run out to get some air. We are not keeping up. My foot falls through a hole between two rocks. I keep swatting and hope nothing bites me. They yell at me to stop and reposition at the top. We finally get the big flames out, but it is a double front. It’s relentless! (yes, I actually yelled that) Half of us stay to finish putting out the first fire, and the rest of us go to the other half of the fire. I repeatedly curse these foolish people who light fires. Now that I am closer, I can hear the organ of the church uphill, playing like nothing is happening below. We have now put out the main fires and walk around, slowly, heaving for air, with buckets of water cooling off smoking embers. This time we are really done. Though, there are no news reporters updating the thousands watching on TV. There are no celebrating crowds. Just the calm of knowing we are safe, the pride of having done it with our own hands and the ache of our muscles and the smell of smoke that lingers on our clothes to remind us that it was, in fact us who did it.
Now that the fire is out, I can clearly hear the music from the church. The beat goes on. I joke about how the pious should be thankful for those unholy among them who don’t go to church. We just saved their asses.
Heidi and I don’t waste much time getting to the work we had planned for the afternoon: planning meetings and filling out our application for the World Fair Trade Organization. In a few hours, I am still light headed and just exhausted, so I head home. On my way home, Manase shows me a large snake hanging in a tree that he just killed near where my foot fell through the hole. I ask if it was poisonous. Very, he says. A shudder runs throughout my body that I can’t shake. What an insane life I lead.
