Rwanda Memories

Close your eyes. Can you see it? The luscious green hills, long vivid patterned dresses, brilliant baskets balanced methodically atop heads, babies slung across backs. Squeeze them harder. Can you hear it? The children singing under a gazebo, voices lifted high, birds chirping in the tall trees, foreign tongues laughing to one another. Forget where you are. Can you feel it? The tiny hands grasping yours, holding securely so no one else can take it, a thin film of soft dirt over everything you touch, the worn, tough hands that clasp yours gratefully. Open your eyes. Your reality is gone. Your body is here-but your mind is far away, in the land of a thousand hills.