Page 77 of Sheltering Instinct

“Yes and no,” Tess muttered under her breath. “If it does precipitate, you’re looking at a virga—a dry storm.”

“Like Tess’s dry bite,” Gwen explained. “You think it’s going to be something, but it’s not. The precipitate evaporates before it reaches the ground. Namibia won’t get any relief from those clouds.”

Tess looked at Gwen, unblinking for a moment. Her brain was racing so fast that she didn’t even have a clue what she was processing.

“Right, Tess?”

A growing stormwere the words that filled Tess’s head. But nothing was there that looked concerning. It was all as expected in Namibia at the very end of the dry season.

Tess exhaled, pulling her lips into the figment of a smile.

She felt the crush of too many people and too much unwanted focus when all she wanted was to look at the sky and understand.

***

Levi’s instructions today were to hang out with Mojo and see how they got along when they weren’t mission-focused.

When Tess said she was interested in going to visit the Himba village, she’d invited him along.

And now that they were here, walking toward the chief sitting under a single tree, carving a giraffe for tourists to buy, she was glad she hadn’t come alone.

This experience was very awkward for her.

After receiving permission to be there and walk past theokuruwo—their sacred flame, Tess, Levi, and Mojo moved forward with their guide.

There were groupings of women in their traditional garb—belts and decorations but little else. The women glowed from rubbing a paste of crushed ochre and fat into their skin. And their hair was protected by encasing their braids in red clay.

Around them, their babies, naked except for cowrie shell belts around their waists, played peacefully outside the huts.

Tess and Levi had an English-speaking guide from the tribe who was there to educate and translate.

And it was all so very uncomfortable.Veryuncomfortable.

The best metaphor that Tess could land on was a day when she went to the amusement park with her aunt. There, they had a bird show. A handler would come out with a bird on his finger and start describing the bird, pointing to the body part being discussed.

In this case, a teenage boy from the Himba tribe had a stick in his hand. As he moved through his explanation, he would tap that area of the woman with the end of the stick.

For Tess, the point when she was so uncomfortable that she turned away happened when the teenager talked about how the tribe removed a bottom tooth. He tapped the woman’s mouth, and dutifully, she dropped her jaw to show her teeth.

The Himba people seemed fine. It was Tess who reacted.

Levi leaned in, “What are you thinking Tess?

Then she stopped to consider his question.

Yes, the situation felt wrong to Tess.

But was that the whole problem?

Or was there something more?

“Men and animals have use of the water,” the guide said, “women do not. Instead of bathing in water, they bathe in smoke. A woman will hold her armpit over the smoke of a small fire, trapping the smoke with her cape. She will sit there for some minutes. And then she will move on to a different body part.”

“Smoke bathing,” Tess said, her mind flooding with questions. No water to clean themselvesever? And what about the monthly cycle? Surely, the women would need water to washup from that. Those questions were on the tip of Tess’s tongue, but she was not sure she wanted to know.

On the way to the village, Levi shared what Enrico had said the other day, that the tribespeople lived in regular houses. This was their day job. It was like going to see a historical reenactment in the States; the people worked in the eighteenth century during the day with hoop skirts and powdered wigs, and at night, they were just like everyone else, pushing a cart down the grocery aisle and eating ice cream from the carton in front of the television.

Still, the guide was poking the woman with a stick again.

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