The Many Moods of Mazumbai

This was the week I needed, without knowing it was missing. We decamped to the mountains after a few days in hot, feeling-more-like-home-every-day Arusha, taking a long, winding drive east towards the coast, following the edge of the mountains to our left, the ones rising alongside the car like many-headed beasts. The mountains here aren’t like the small and friendly green hills of home. They’re jagged-edged and long, pointy stones melting into blurs of deep green, each peak bleeding into the next, giving the appearance of a single ridge separating this world from the next. Small houses sneak up their sides, nestled into lower-level green hideaways, smoke pouring from fires, small brown trails barely visible from the roadside. 

A sharp right, instantly up and into a mesmerizing valley, nothing like the Futa at all, but like a world made miniature, human life clinging to the sides of tree-speckled hillsides. Some water at the bottom but mostly green upon green, layers and levels of houses, crops, villages, roads, trails, life everywhere you look. The road precipitously close to the edge of it all, a long plummet down to the tiny water below us, barely big enough for our one safari car, let alone two, each car screeching to the edge to pass, rocks barrelling down from the edge of the road. I rocked along to the sharp turns in the backseat, watching a movie but mostly watching the scenery slide past, peaks somehow above and below us, the flat world cupped in a giant’s hand and shaken until it was all around us, habitation everywhere we looked. 

Onwards and upwards until it seemed we could go no further, clinging to the edge of these green beasts, until we arrived in grass, the first real grass I’ve seen since arriving here. We bumped up to the edge of a gate, winding down into a property more beautiful than I could have imagined.

Everywhere here there is water, or the suggestion of water’s eternal powers, cleansing and making new this landscape of immense erosion and constant growth. Water, like change, making the world what it is. The house, the centerpiece of this spectacular property, formerly a Swedish tea farmer’s abode, sits on one of the many hillsides gazing out and over another valley, at far peaks and growing fields of agriculture among the tropical trees. Stepped layers everywhere mimic the mountain passes, rock walls overgrown with moss and ivy, a strong stream of water falling down over the campus through a brick pathway, a never-ending burble of watery noises making a gentle backdrop to our every minute. 

Tents on the top layer, our multi-colored city with the best view of the whole ordeal. Below it, an even more spectacular multi-colored city, a carefully tended garden of flowers looking for all the world like bright, exotic birds, strokes of paint, miniature solar flares and perfect, classic petals. Below that, we play soccer in the evenings, dodging the steep drop offs, stairways, and parked safari jeeps. 

The house is cold and wooden, the nicest house we’ve been in since our arrival. A fireplace in one room is always seeping out heat, ringed by deep, lush red chairs. I fell asleep in one on our first night here, feeling at home. 

Outwards from camp, trails head up in both directions, first winding like the road, and then disappearing into the shush-ing, vibrant forest, like stepping into a fairytale. Our first day, we were cut loose, told to explore to our hearts’ content. Off we went, phone-less, untethered young adults in an unfamiliar world. We found a small waterfall after a while, stripping off sweaty layers and laying flat in small pools of crystal-clear, mountain-cold water. 

The waterfall itself is a slick rock face, water pouring over the edge and contorting rocks into unfamiliar shapes. One by one we descended, sliding into a tube of rock made by wet season exuberance, sliding out the bottom and to the lower level of water. All except for me, that is, as I instantly panicked upon my entrance into said tube. I’ve never done well with confined spaces, even ones I can see out of, and looking up at the worried faces and mossy, wet rocks above me, I had an experience I’ve only had once before in my life: my dad’s voice in my head, loud and clear, saying “the only way you’re getting out of this is by yourself”. 

The first time I heard it, a decade ago, wobbly-kneed on skis for the first time, it forced me down the mountain of my own accord, all shaky breaths and clenched fists. This time, it hit me with just as much force, making me close my eyes and steel myself for the sharp push upwards and the slick scramble back to the top. I said a silent thank you to that weird, disembodied voice saying something I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard my dad say, and prepared.

Just after this, one of my fellow students leaned down to help. As I asked if she was stable, she suddenly slipped, sliding nearly thirty feet down the rock face and eventually skidding to a stop at the bottom. “Yeah,” the voice said, “now”. I clambered back out, leaving the wilderness medicine to my similarly-credentialed peers far below, and resigned myself to the upper level, the cold clear water and a perfect sun patch for drying out.  

The next day I woke early and headed back in the same direction, this time at a slow, snotty jog, stopping to heave every few minutes–seven weeks with practically no movement, combined with the altitude, kicking my ass every second. Eventually I made it to a smaller waterfall I’d heard about, repeating my tactic from the day before: clothes off, lie quietly, ten deep breaths, then ten more. Feeling the cold seep in, one of those activities that feels remarkably the same no matter where I do it. A briefer, blessedly-downhill run back to camp before breakfast. To be repeated all week, each morning before the sun fully rises over distant hills.

The mountains are moody here, as mountains everywhere seem to be. In the mornings when I leave for my runs, the valley is still waking up, low clouds obscuring the far peaks and a chilly wind in the air, but by the time I return the sun is beaming, the tents are dry, the greens all lit up with golden and thin blue air, and everyone awake and moving, birds trilling. Each time I look up from my computer, where I spent an unfortunate percentage of the week toiling over my independent study project, something had shifted, the clouds making new textures in the low-lying sky, the sky blue ever-so-subtly different, the trees practically a different color in the thin light.

One morning I woke to clouds so low they obscured the opposing valley, so that we appeared to be stuck within them, breathing water-y air and swatting away water vapor to walk across the lawn, tents stuck to tent flies, mesh floors pooled with humidity soaking upwards. One afternoon, the sun was so straight on and bright that we lounged in the shadows of the hedges, watching tall eucalyptus branches wave in the breeze far above us as the distant hills sizzled.

Our last full day, we hiked straight up the hill behind our little tent world, this being a country that does not believe in switchbacks. At the top, fog creeped up around us until we could hardly see the person in front of us. I’ve seen fog descend, swallowing islands whole. I’ve seen fog crawl across water, tangling into trees and rocks. But I’ve never seen fog creep upwards quite like this, wrapping tendrils of mist around hundred-year-old trees like the strangle fig that threatens to kill them. 

One night, we had real rain, our first since arriving in the country. That achingly-familiar sound of raindrops on tents, pooling in grass and dripping off of rooftops. I sat outside on the phone, barley under an eave, watching sheets of water run downhill, feeling soaked to the bone. 

Another night, the full moon was brighter than I’d ever seen, without a cloud in the sky. We sat by the old coffee mill, trading stories and sipping beer, as my friend Ryan told us about the man in the moon. We squinted and turned our heads until gasps escaped right down the line like bottles hissing open. That moody, melancholy man a new friend in the bunch.

All of these things are things I needed so deeply; these changing skies, these chances to be still by myself. A sense of routine, a sense of agency. To move my body early in the morning. To walk in the woods, end up in cold water. To feel clean and free of dust. To lie on my back in itchy grass, to get up with red splotches between my shoulder blades and identical ones on my friends’. To stare up into a blue sky ringed by tall trees and laugh. To see familiar birds circle at dusk, swallows zipping and sighing above me. To sit by a roaring fire and drink tea, curl up into a familiar sweatshirt and read a good book. To fall asleep in my tent in temperatures wildly reminiscent of the best nights of August, when the days reach their humid peak and recline into evenings that let you know they won’t last long. 

Being here feels like October, like change is coming. It feels like somewhere I could spend forever exploring, looking ahead to the next corner of the trail, seeking the next waterfall, seeing how the sky changes each morning. It’s how I feel about the island, and home. It will be hard to leave this thing I needed so desperately. And even as I soak it in, love each moment more than the last, I feel the pull of having to leave, and feel the sad tinge this lends to each of these unrepeatable moments. Who knows when, or if I’ll ever get rid of this feeling, this ability to just slightly marr a moment I love by knowing it can’t be repeated, but for now I’m grateful to have added another place to the list of places I’ll always be, sitting in an achingly cold waterfall, listening to birdsong in the jungle, waiting for the sun to rise and to run back to my friends, back to a new day, to a new series of irreplaceable moments to unfold.