A Night Walk

The moon full through inky palm leaves and its halo washing half the sky in soapy wash. The dirt streets were empty but shadows were everywhere. Only a few electric light burns, and the town shuffles quietly in total, faceless darkness. Along the roadside, candles burn in rows illuminating ghostly midnight wares for sale--coconut moonshine,  piles of yellow mangoes, tall dark wood carvings-- like small, smoking shrines to the dead carrying Kiswahili prayers in silence to a white-haired moon or burying them in the ash of the burning garbage beside their hut houses. An all hallows eve glow flickers from gas lamps  in dark windows. Shadowy figures move behind dark storefronts, peering out or walking into the street behind us as we move along. The air was stale with smoke from extinguished cooking fires and pyres of burning plastic. All the sunny childrens’ voices and faces are gone from the dirt paths between the houses and without them, swathed in darkness, the colorful town has turned pale on its side in surrender to a very black, uncertain African night.