riverdiamonds

It smells like gasoline, sweat, exhaust, and ginger. “Unaenda wapi? Unaenda wapi? Wapi? Wapi?” Where are you going? Where? Where? Twenty-some touts and street vendors flock around me, spitting solicitations in my direction, competing for my attention, for my mzungu (white foreigner) business. Their words circumnavigate the bulging crop sack under which my head is hiding. I hear them in echo.

I’m standing in the middle of the Korogwe bus station with 13 watermelons on my head.

And I think, “Well… Never saw this one coming.”

The crop sack – poorly situated, loosely tied with strips of dried banana leaf, held steady by my amateur hand– sags over my forehead, the fruits starting to droop down over my ears like juicy, gigantic earrings. I venture a few steps and, readjusting a rogue melon with my spare hand, realize my kanga – the patterned, brightly-colored traditional fabric I’m wearing as a skirt – is no longer hugging my hips as snugly as it should.

I heave the load – not without vocalized difficulty – off of my head and lower it to the ground. I pull the kanga taut around my love handles, securely tucking in the swathe’s corner in the groove of my waist. I observe Korogwe’s hubbub, absently stirring circles in the dust with my big toe. I listen. Anarchic shouts and bickering of bus passengers, conductors, and peddlers exchanging money, discounts, rip-offs… The tenacious swish of a falling blade – a spirited and jittery butcher cuts a red, raw slab of beef and chops it into veiny, little squares. A teenage peddler loads a cardboard box with Pepsis and water, the perspiration on his brow matching the condensation on the bottle. A gruff, oil-stained man stoops to check the tires of his daladala, delivering a frustrated rap on the siding. The background serenade: a duet of Lil’ Wayne and unhappy goats.

I am delivering watermelons on behalf of Sabiana, a subsistence farmer with whom I work in a rural village. Warily eyeing my load, I contemplate a lift-strategy. I make a grumbly, unsuccessful first attempt. I straighten and try to hide my gasps of air from amused passer-bys. In this pause, I recall that supermarket off M Street, the melon bin overflowing and inviting at the entrance, sticky kids filling up on the free samples, dribble on their chins. For the first time, I consider the liters of water, the joules of energy, the huffing and puffing behind such abundance. In a gust of resolve, I squat, put my knees into it, beg for balance, and lift.