Walking out the town along "the road" we find a large shady tree to sit under directly in view of the deserted bend, and when the people of the last house at the outskirt send their kids to carry out seats for us, our maximum hitchhiking comfort is assured. It seems almost absurd how agreeably we are set up. Gladly, we really have a lot of time to enjoy our cool nook, since cars are scarce enough to amount to a total of nought vehicles disturbing our morning siesta. We sit and we read, and we think that
Suddenly Kati makes a discovery: one little ant that is crawling over her appears of special colour. Grouping around her, looking closer, Kinga and I confirm the astonishing discovery -the ant is of a distinct silver tinge -in my eyes, it seems entirely covered in silver spray! I even wonder how it managed not to stifle when it walked under that teenage boy's graffiti can, but already we are discovering more and more of these beautiful creatures crawling in the sand and up our ankles and legs. So it is just one more strange, but wonderful detail adding up to our somewhat extraordinary situation, and now we are hitchhikers relaxing in straw chairs each of us covered in teensy silver insects.
So while idling in the shade I had plenty of time to contemplate something that had intrigued me about the way people here carry themselves. Something about their steady, upright pace which in my eyes instils them with a certain intrinsic dignified grace that I have encountered only here -something about their movements has been intriguing me.
Observing the school kids I wondered how these childish kids with their fluffy, scuffling, wonky and wobbly step can grow up to become such graceful women in so few years. Then, my eye caught sight of a little boy carrying the ubiquitous "I love Africa" plastic pot (content unknown) on his head and it dawned on me, that the answer to the enigma was one different from what I had imagined. It was one that is in fact, oh so simple!
It is the mundane fact of walking with something on your head that creates this slow, stern beauty of movement that had been an enigma to me.
It is the necessity of decisiveness in each of their steps which translates into this mysterious heavy fluidity. Indeed it is not only their step, but each swing of their arms, every single measured movement which composes this singular grace. The way these women balance not only each one of their steps, no each swing of their arm, each single one of their gestures careful not to disequilibrate, seems infused with it.
There is something almost ethereal about the way their heads are held up, statically, as if there is a ghost floating above their heads lifting up their chins with a string, a straight-line prolongation of the spine -so every movement forward has to be upright. And also resulting from this is that penetrating look in their eye, sincere, or seemingly so, because it is always straight ahead, impossible to be embarrassedly, evasively, carelessly turned down.
I had actually at first been fascinated solely by that look in people's eyes. I had even long been fantasising about making a video, just of the eyes of people who carry things on their heads. Eyes rolling horizontally to scan the environment when the head can't be turned. And especially that moment of insecurity, that moment when the eyelash bats, when the eye turns, pupil pointing upwards to check the dangerously careening load, that tower of merchandise threatening to crumble. Just before one quick hand propels upwards cutting through the air to prevent the great tumble. Or, to capture on film the head that turns so slowly, cautiously, solemnly -with the grace of gravity, quite literally.
The grace of weight and equilibrium -every step placed with caution and firmness lest you stumble under your load - a kind of equilibristic reversal, the reverse grace of a rope-dancer. The grace of the equilibrist, who carries but her own weight, but does so with the utmost exactitude and attentiveness in the top of that circus tent. Her eyes fixing the steel line she tiptoes the shiny surface which reflects the stroboscope's flashing lights -that straight precarious line, her path, her direction simply, her lifeline at the same time. And engulfed in darkness the spectators' breath is held, invisibly, but their tension is comprised in each and every one of her calculated, measured movements -the one like a thousand others-practised to the point they've become automatic, ingrained, balance becoming second nature, each gesture speaking of the thousand times the same movements have been described, each gestures speaking of its importance in not breaking the balance. Exactitude. Precision.
This grace transposed to the average African woman.
Although her act is on the surface less spectacular and intimidating than the tight-rope walker's, there is an analogy to make between their hesitations, hardships and routines. The emptiness that drops off from the equilibrist's feet, the abyss of her elevation, can be reversed into more than the Africa woman's load on her head. As these women are carrying their buckets of water or tied-up bags of textiles, they are metaphorically also carrying much more than that, that is, all the figurative loads they are subjected to, the discrimination, the exploitation.
In the end, they might simply be carrying the sky. The wide open sky and all that inhabits it -the wind, the heat, the spaces between the trees. And so, she paces her way across the savannah coming from the waterhole, or the Tuesday market, or the relatives in the neighbouring village, approaching us as we are coolly parked under our shady tree on the outskirts of town.
She carefully poses her load, one large painted metal bowl covered with plastic, on the uneven ground, and after she has lifted her torso back up, one hand wipes her forehead, the other one puts her head dress in order. I ask what she is selling and she shows me that it is some sort of milk (goat's, cow's, camel's?) in a cooling bag sown out of goat's skin- I'd welcome the refresher, but since I don't have any coins I can only watch her slop the liquid into her small plastic cup which she uses to fill up a little girl's calabasse who has run up. All the time the woman's friend is waiting for her in the background, her hand in her hip, flexed, not lifted once to support the tall basket of merchandise she is balancing over her forehead.
"How old do you think she is?" asks Kati, meaning the woman who is selling the milk to the girl. Kinga and I respond at the same time. "30" Kinga replies. "20" reply I.
"Exactly" comments Kati "Amazing how difficult it is to tell people's age here, right?"
Teenage women often seem amazingly mature, whereas teenage boys or young men in their twenties can seem many years younger than by our standards. And all older people, men and women alike, often seem astonishingly well-preserved, their skin so much more resistant, not being as prone to wrinkles as our white skin, but lithe even in old age.
In fact, we didn't make it anywhere that day under the tree. It was only the next day that we found occasion to travel on in the afternoon time...