The wind blows, fingers tearing at her hair, half a caress have a desperate grab to catch her and hold her before she is gone. The stones beneath her feet shift uneasily, trying to wiggle free of the hold of the roots of the thick grass that swallows up the hillside. As she steps over them in sandaled feet her long skirt whispers as it slips between the blades of grass, her arms and fingers outstretched as she tries to catch her balance. From a distance, it appears as if she is trying to take flight and depart from the stony hillside.

Down at the bottom of the hill is a small fishing village, with boats made of rotting wood and shacks that are crumbling beneath the hot African sun. Children are playing on the shore, and a young man, obviously a stranger to the native people, stands a ways off skipping stones across the surface of the enormous lake. The stones send out ripples that appear to blink then disappear, swallowed up by the cool water.

The young woman halts, pausing to draw a breath of the air that smells of earth and water, and faintly of the fish the people bring home to feed their families, scrambling to survive on this rocky outcropping that is settled up against the water as if clinging to a mother’s breast. The children spot her, and one little boy raises his arm to wave to her while the others clamber up the slope shouting in a language that means nothing to her, but joy evident on their faces.

She bends down and scoops the smallest one up in her arms, swings her around, laughing, smiling. The children clutch at her skirt with grubby hands, tugging at it in an attempt to get her attention, pulling her down the slope to play along the shore.

***
Hours later the afternoon sunlight has faded and the sunset is almost gone, just a few streaks of pink and purple coloring the blue and gray sky as it deepens into twilight. The sounds of the waves can be heard lapping on the pebble beach, no longer drowned out by the sound of children’s voices. She is the only one there.

The silence is almost suffocating, and if it weren’t for the soft breeze fingering her loose hair, she would appear frozen. She stands motionless, looking out at the water, a small stone clutched in her hand.

This is Africa, she thinks. This is the place I always wanted to be. Rich earth, cool water, people speaking in different tongues. This place was my idea of heaven. But she finds a far different reality. The people are poor, living in the red dirt and scrounging for food, desperate to get by. The place reeks of human waste, and of the decay of garbage left wherever it falls. Here, it seems, the value of a human life is next to nothing.

A tear trickles down her cheek. She’s crying now, surrounded by such beauty and suffering that she’s not sure which is real anymore and which is just a figment of her imagination. Or maybe it’s all a dream—some nightmare from which she will eventually wake.

She lifts her hand and throws the stone. Instead of skipping—dancing across the surface of the lake—it sinks, swallowed up by the water into the darkness below.

***
The bed is hot and sticky, sweat plastering my hair to my head. The darkness is suffocating, pressing in on me like an enormous blanket, and all the oxygen is on the other side. I can’t scream for lack of air, and the salty tears taste bitter on my lips. I lie there, gasping for breath. My sisters are slumbering peacefully in their beds—I can see the small mounds their bodies make beneath the blankets rising and falling in a steady rhythm. It’s reassuring, in a way, but there’s still the pounding of my heart in my chest.

My fears are now making their way into my dreams, shaping them into nightmares. I’m afraid of what I will find—afraid that all the things I have dreamed of are merely the musings of a schoolgirl. I’m afraid that my heaven will turn out to be hell.

***
I wipe away my tears and steady myself, trying to slip back into what I hope will be a peaceful slumber surrounded by the cool and calming darkness. Then I remember how afraid I am of the dark.