Collage „carnet du voyage VIII“
„There was still a woman who refused to leave. Theirs was the last remaining family in our ancestral lands. The woman kept nurturing the hope of rain. The drought was so severe, though, that her hope evolved into faith, and eventually into madness. She would put her traditional skirt, a wax-printed long cloth showing a pattern of the big falls upstream, and would walk her dusty plot for hours. She would sing, or pray,
I walk the riverbed, I rain my walk, I sweat my land.
When the last grain and the last leaf and the last root were eaten, her husband gave up any hope, both on land and wife. He took her skirt, and left, singing, or praying, bearing a flag with the big falls upstream,
I walk the riverbed, I dry my cry, I sweat my fight.
No living soul was behind when the rain soaked the land.“
by Pedro Rosa Mendes
Collage „carnet du voyage VIII“
Kaliwa Lodge, Tanzania
12/2015
