I didn’t realize until a week ago that folks living in the house do not have electricity. What about tap water? I didn’t think they do.
One Sunday morning, I was up at the crack of dawn. Zipping coffee at a back porch, I smelled that morning in a different way. At the dim corner of the house, I saw an old woman smoking a palm leave cigarette, leaning to her radio, gazing stars in the haze of cloud.
Then from that morning on, I was used to that same picture with the same smell. Sometimes I saw the woman light up a lamp, talking with a young man who might be her son inside the house. Some day I heard a country song from her radio.
This house belongs to a resident who is one of many supposed to move out of this village to a new land supported by the school 16 years ago.
The decision for these folks not to move out of their ancestor’s land might show a sign of resistance to the academic community. However, I don’t think it’s their fault to hang in there—where they call it home.
Like its owner, the house, a part of my new life here, is aging while the school is growing.
The school of life is rough. The fight of those in that house is on going…and seems never end.