Sunrise with Seamonsters Read Free Page A

and begin padding down the dirt road.
    There is a hill near the school. The sun approaches it by sneaking behind the clouds until it emerges to crash into the hill and explode yellow and pink, to paint everything in its violent fire.
    At night, if there is a moon, the school, the Great Rift, become a seascape of luminescent trees and grass, whispering, silver. If there is no moon you walk from a lighted house to an infinity of space, packed with darkness.
    Yesterday I ducked out of a heavy downpour and waited in a small shed for the rain to let up. The rain was far too heavy for my spidery umbrella. I
waited in the shed; thunder and close bursts of lightning charged all around me; the rain spat through the palm-leaf walls of the shed.
    Down the road I spotted a small African child. I could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl, since it was wearing a long shirt, a yellow one, which drooped sodden to the ground. The child was carrying nothing, so I assumed it was a boy.
    He dashed in and out of the puddles, hopping from side to side of the forest path, his yellow shirt bulging as he twisted under it. When he came closer I could see the look of absolute fear on his face. His only defense against the thunder and the smacking of rain were his fingers stuck firmly into his ears. He held them there as he ran.
    He ran into my shed, but when he saw me he shivered into a corner where he stood shuddering under his soaked shirt. We eyed each other. There were raindrops beaded on his face. I leaned on my umbrella and fumbled a Bantu greeting. He moved against a palm leaf. After a few moments he reinserted a finger in each ear, carefully, one at a time. Then he darted out into the rain and thunder. And his dancing yellow shirt disappeared.
    I stand on the grassy edge of the Great Rift. I feel it under me and I expect soon a mighty heave to send us all sprawling. The Great Rift. And whom does this rift concern? Is it perhaps a rift with the stars? Is it between earth and man, or man and man? Is there something under this African ground seething still ?
    We like to believe that we are riding it and that it is nothing more than an imperfection in the crust of the earth. We do not want to be captive to this rift, as if we barely belong, as if we were scrawled on the landscape by a piece of chalk.

Burning Grass
[October 22, 1964]
    In July, it was very cold in Malawi. On the day that Malawi gained her independence the wind swept down from Soche Hill into the Central stadium bringing with it cold mists. The Africans call this wind
chiperoni
and dread it because they don't have enough clothes to withstand its penetration. They also know that it lasts only a few weeks and that once this difficult period is gotten through they can go out again into the fields and dig furrows for planting.
    Independence was very dark, yet despite the cold winds the people came to see their newly designed flag raised. The Prime Minister told everyone that Malawi is a black man's country. The cold seemed to turn everything, everyone, to wood; even the slogans were frozen, the gladness caged in trembling bodies.
    Through August it became warmer. The violet flames of the jacaranda, the deep red of the bougainvillaea, the hibiscus, each bloom a delicate shell—all suddenly appeared out of the cold of the African winter.
    In September, two months had passed since that winter, two months since that freezing Independence Day. And now, in this dry season, the people have begun to burn the grass.
    September 8 was the first day of school. On this same day three members of the cabinet were asked to resign. Shortly afterward all the ministers but two resigned in protest. The Prime Minister, "the Lion of Malawi," was left with only two of his former ministers. Two months after independence the government smoldered in the heat of argument.

    The custom of burning grass dates back to prehistoric times when there was a great deal of land and only few farmers; much of the land