The red dust of Zimbabwe

Born into a world of red dust and skies so vast they swallowed you whole.
Where the heat was both a blessing and a warning.
And the earth and sky felt like one place.

I remember the smell of the earth after rain.
The way the light turned everything golden in the late afternoon.

The African night lifts your soul out of your body.
I feel like a mystical creature held by eternity.
And carried by the moon and the infinite stars.
Night arrives suddenly!
So does the choir of creatures; bullfrogs, crickets, and in the distance, the wild ones.
I feel small and big all at the same time.
Like I am new and also very, very old.

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No place in the world has a heartbeat like my Africa.
Even as a tiny girl I could feel it.
Alive and ancient and real.
And I am grateful every single day that I grew up there.

I told my mum I was running away.
She said go.
I was four years old.
I climbed to the very top of a tree and it happened.
The sky. The sun. The earth.
Freedom. Connection.
Me and the Universe.
Pure Joy.
Zimbabwe gave me the beginning of this thread.

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I have carried that memory across decades and continents.
I have returned to it again and again.
It lives in me as a longing.

But that’s a story for another chapter.

Love always — Janie x