and pillows in plastic garbage bags, and a change of clothes.
Gray slowed to a stop. Outside the pickup’s windshield, the path forked into two different directions. Gray blew out of her bottom lip, ruffling the fringe of short brown hair that feathered across her forehead. “Uh-oh. Nobody said anything about a fork in the road.”
I got out and stretched. The air was warm with a sharp scent of iron. The sun was high but far enough south that the one-eyed king didn’t bake the brain into oblivion. The weather was actually pleasant, which did wonders for my sense of well-being. Here we were, two young women in a pickup truck with no map, following an ancient road on the edge of the Sahara desert. We looked at each other, and with smiles on our faces, screamed. I looked right, Gray looked left.
“Well,” I said, noting the western direction of the afternoon sun, “we’ve been driving north for the past thirty minutes. This one to the right looks to be going northeast, and that one,” I pointed to the road that forked left, “northwest.”
We looked at each other again, nodded, and got back in the truck. This time, I drove, taking the left fork heading west. “Onward!”
Adventure! It ran in my blood. Didn’t my own great-grandmother cross the American plains pushing a wooden handcart? If that’s not adventure, what is? She had sought freedom from persecution, to practice her religion by following Brigham Young. I was seeking freedom from just about everything by following my heart, and, on that particular day, by following my nose.
As we drove farther northwest, the land began to change. Intermittent rows of sand dunes crisscrossed the flat plain like windblown drifts of golden snow. A line of donkeys snaked around the base of a dune. Bella women dressed in bright blue robes straddled the donkeys, spurring the animals forward with short sticks. At the next turn, Gorom Gorom came into view along the horizon. Squat mud squares against a backdrop of hills conjured a biblical image of Bethlehem. A camel with a rider crested the dune. The rider was robed from head to foot in blue, his face swathed in a black turban but for his eyes. He was a Tuareg, a “Blue Man” of the desert.
“Think of it, Gray,” I said. “We’re closer to the birthplace of Christ than ever before, only a few thousand miles to the east.”
“We could be two of the three kings, bearing gifts in our trusty pickup.” Gray began to sing, “We two queens of Orient are…”
I skirted the southern end of Gorom Gorom, about four blocks long, and found the house and courtyard of the British Save the Children. Theirs was a medical project at Gorom Gorom’s regional hospital. Three women and two men came out the gate to greet us. One of the men was their director, Mr. Know-It-All himself, Philip. T other man, Jon, and three women, Sheila, Marilyn, and Wendy, all nurses, welcomed us, and in the best of British tradition, offered us tea. In the cool of late December, relieved not to be hopelessly lost and spending the night on a sand dune, we sipped the sweet, hot liquid. It washed the dust from our throats and tasted delicious.
Late afternoon, as Sheila and the rest did their rounds at the hospital, Gray and I browsed through the maze of people and stalls in the Gorom market, Gray humming, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
People filled the market square: Toubacous in slacks and T-shirts, Fulani men in loose boubous , women in batik skirts, tops, and head wraps, and a blue-robed Tuareg here and there, heads wrapped in black cloth.
Milling among the crowds, we passed silver colored steel pots stacked three and four high. On the opposite side of the narrow market alleyway, leather pillows and sandals with green, red, and black geometrical designs lined a wooden table, and small purses with neck cords and long tassels hung from a wooden beam; the famous leather goods of the Tuareg. Farther down, meter lengths of cotton cloth in batik
Gray slowed to a stop. Outside the pickup’s windshield, the path forked into two different directions. Gray blew out of her bottom lip, ruffling the fringe of short brown hair that feathered across her forehead. “Uh-oh. Nobody said anything about a fork in the road.”
I got out and stretched. The air was warm with a sharp scent of iron. The sun was high but far enough south that the one-eyed king didn’t bake the brain into oblivion. The weather was actually pleasant, which did wonders for my sense of well-being. Here we were, two young women in a pickup truck with no map, following an ancient road on the edge of the Sahara desert. We looked at each other, and with smiles on our faces, screamed. I looked right, Gray looked left.
“Well,” I said, noting the western direction of the afternoon sun, “we’ve been driving north for the past thirty minutes. This one to the right looks to be going northeast, and that one,” I pointed to the road that forked left, “northwest.”
We looked at each other again, nodded, and got back in the truck. This time, I drove, taking the left fork heading west. “Onward!”
Adventure! It ran in my blood. Didn’t my own great-grandmother cross the American plains pushing a wooden handcart? If that’s not adventure, what is? She had sought freedom from persecution, to practice her religion by following Brigham Young. I was seeking freedom from just about everything by following my heart, and, on that particular day, by following my nose.
As we drove farther northwest, the land began to change. Intermittent rows of sand dunes crisscrossed the flat plain like windblown drifts of golden snow. A line of donkeys snaked around the base of a dune. Bella women dressed in bright blue robes straddled the donkeys, spurring the animals forward with short sticks. At the next turn, Gorom Gorom came into view along the horizon. Squat mud squares against a backdrop of hills conjured a biblical image of Bethlehem. A camel with a rider crested the dune. The rider was robed from head to foot in blue, his face swathed in a black turban but for his eyes. He was a Tuareg, a “Blue Man” of the desert.
“Think of it, Gray,” I said. “We’re closer to the birthplace of Christ than ever before, only a few thousand miles to the east.”
“We could be two of the three kings, bearing gifts in our trusty pickup.” Gray began to sing, “We two queens of Orient are…”
I skirted the southern end of Gorom Gorom, about four blocks long, and found the house and courtyard of the British Save the Children. Theirs was a medical project at Gorom Gorom’s regional hospital. Three women and two men came out the gate to greet us. One of the men was their director, Mr. Know-It-All himself, Philip. T other man, Jon, and three women, Sheila, Marilyn, and Wendy, all nurses, welcomed us, and in the best of British tradition, offered us tea. In the cool of late December, relieved not to be hopelessly lost and spending the night on a sand dune, we sipped the sweet, hot liquid. It washed the dust from our throats and tasted delicious.
Late afternoon, as Sheila and the rest did their rounds at the hospital, Gray and I browsed through the maze of people and stalls in the Gorom market, Gray humming, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
People filled the market square: Toubacous in slacks and T-shirts, Fulani men in loose boubous , women in batik skirts, tops, and head wraps, and a blue-robed Tuareg here and there, heads wrapped in black cloth.
Milling among the crowds, we passed silver colored steel pots stacked three and four high. On the opposite side of the narrow market alleyway, leather pillows and sandals with green, red, and black geometrical designs lined a wooden table, and small purses with neck cords and long tassels hung from a wooden beam; the famous leather goods of the Tuareg. Farther down, meter lengths of cotton cloth in batik
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