Thursday, 25 April 2013

Sleepless Nights

Sometimes I yearn for the oddly comforting disturbances of a night at home.  In the dead silence of a Kibungo night I wish to hear those sounds that remind me there are others out there, not too far away.  Here, if I strain, I might hear the low hum of the outside light, or the buzz of the refrigerator.  Sometimes I hear the distant, low sound of a radio and, as the wind direction swings around in the rainy season, I can hear the chorus of frogs in the swamp down the road.  After about 10:30 there are scarcely any bikes, cars or other traffic going along the main road.  I find myself nostalgic for the distant squeal of the tram, the rumble of a train, the reassuring nearness of someone opening a car door, closing it and starting up the ignition.  I am clearly a bit of a town mouse.

I hope to hear the conversation of people passing by along the street and I hear the occasional whoosh of a car going by.  I lie awake waiting for the reassuring sounds of other humans.  I’ve come to be grateful for the occasional all night sessions at the local church and the belching of compression brakes on buses and trucks on the road.  I dislike the ping of the latest plague (this time grasshoppers) hitting the corrugated roof and the banging of the roof contracting and expanding.  I don’t mind the high pitched squeals of the bats, but I do mind the thud as they fly into the beams in the roof.  I hear the scurry of things in the roof space and the buzz of hundreds of insects outside.
I lie awake and listen to these sounds in the silence and I am relieved when daylight arrives and once again I can hear singing and shouts and radios and bikes and taps running and pots clanging and mortars pounding.  And then I know I am never really alone.

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