i hoped it would be easy to build

if you were the kind of person who wore a seat belt, you wouldn't be living in Africa in the first place.

deborah scroggins said that in her book 'emma's war.' when i first read it, i laughed. i laughed like a person who feels like they have a right to laugh at that. yeah, i know what you mean. and then i re-read the quote. i read how it began:

for whites, it's part of the mind-set: if you were the kind of person who wore a seat belt, you wouldn't be living in Africa in the first place.

for whites. which i am. and no, i don't wear my seat belt. but maybe i should. and tell me, what about Africa makes it more necessary to wear a seat belt than the next place? if a car crashes on a dirt road it would kill me just as surely as on a paved one. a gun would go off just as well in a banana field as it would in an unlit parking lot. and do just as much damage. the moon over me is the same moon over you. even though i could swear it's 10 times bigger here. but it's not. it's the same moon. in the same sky. over the same planet. all 6,602,224,175 of us are standing on the same round planet. it's not so big after all. we're not so different. people are people wherever you go. for better or worse, we all have failings. but bigger than all of it, we also all have feats.

the mountain we scaled in colorado. the piano we learned to master. the foreign language we fluently speak. the sport we dominate. the paintbrush between our fingers. our voice that gets a standing ovation. or maybe it's the courage to paint our toenails pink. the decision to shave our head. the joke that made our boss laugh. for some of us, it's feat enough that we got out of bed this morning.

today i wore navy pants with a black shirt. maybe that's the kind of person it takes to live in Africa. a person who puts on whatever's clean. or maybe that's just what it takes to make it through the day sometimes, wherever you are. mismatched clothes. spilled coffee. unexplainable headaches. the smell of honeysuckle outside your window. all those human things. all those people things. they happen to all people. in all places. which Africa is. just another place. where i live. where i work. and as it turns out, it's chock full of people i love.

i just realized i don't know where to go with this now. most of my entries these days have had a common thread. life. living it. this time i tried to think of something funny to write. like the dragon fly that floated into the office and spent all afternoon on the picture of my parents. or the day that i was greeted with, good morning, ann. you look exhausted. even wearing yellow. good times. but i think i'll just tell those stories later. today i'd rather tell this story:

little girl: the shop across the street is where my uncle sells. we sell from shops here.
marsha: i see! and what's that big pile?
little girl: that's where they make bricks. we make our own bricks here.
marsha: i know. i like that they're working by lamp light.
little girl: yes. we use paraffin here.
marsha: look! look at the stars. aren't they beautiful?!
little girl: yes. we have stars here. do they have stars in your world?

we have stars. we have stripes. we have banks and buses and brick layers. we have what they have. we even have seat belts. and some of us even wear them.