Today there is thunder, which means there will be rain. The clouds are heavy and an ashy gray, but I'm staring at a thick white one backlit by sunlight through the office door now. All of the doors and windows here are barred, but I watched a yellow gecko crawl across the outside overhang yesterday nonetheless.
 
I have started walking home every day, which takes an hour and is a slow, meandering climb from the shores of Lake Victoria, where people grow corn and millet and cassava in the marsh, through the street markets of women selling bananas on their heads and rice muffins over small fires on the ground. Past town, where I turn right onto the road leading to home, is a police station where dogs cool off by curling up in the yellow-orange dust that matches the shade of their fur.

When all of the stares and the talking at me becomes too much, I find solace in nature - in purple flowers and bird nests shaped like teardrops, in black kites - a kind of golden eagle I have never seen before - that circle slowly above me. Sometimes I whistle softly as I walk, because it keeps me in my head and feeling centered. I use the Swahili I have learned on the children and women I pass, making sure to smile and look them in the eye. "Habari," I tell the women. "Jambo!" I say to the kids. I have learned that when people say, "Habari," back I answer with, "Nzuri," and when they say, "Salama," the proper response is a slow, "Boa." I pass men on bicycles with square kofias atop their heads, and women in colourful cloth with babies tied to their backs. Children in uniforms pass me by, and the big buses used as taxis that honk loudly every few feet. They are called "dala-dalas" here.
 
Once I leave town, I pass the church, where everyday I hear beautiful singing in Swahili, and the cliff, where people climb up to the sky through red dirt and green shrubs. Once I turn right again I reach the quiet tarmac road hooded by trees that remind me of the Northwest and signal 15 minutes of peace, where I breathe in fresh air and breathe out smiles to the children playing soccer who scream and shout, "Mzungu! Mzungu!" (white person! white person!) every time I pass. Goats pick through garbage on the grass beside the road, and yesterday I saw a baby one jump over a gutter.
 
Down the tarmac road are winding, bumpy dirt ones, which I follow like a river until I reach the Massai guards of the house next door, who have long earlobes with big holes and wrap themselves in bright red checkered cloth. They don't smile but I know they are kind. Then I open the big gate that opens to the house and inside are my boss' two beautiful kids, who have started stretching with me after dinner and already tell me they don't want me to leave.
 
It becomes dark here every night at 7.30, and the sky puts on an art show above the corn stalks and coconut trees growing beside the house. Soon after it does, I wrap my bed in a mosquito net and slide inside. Slowly, I feel myself becoming part of this landscape, too.