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The drunken passerby who had hitched a ride with us sat in the backseat, wordless. From the passenger seat, I spotted Prisca and Kimwati first: two figures in patterned red cloth, approaching without urgency. A year of planning, a flight across the Atlantic, two hand-delivered letters, and there they were, waiting at an unremarkable spot on the road to Mundarara in the middle of July.

* * *

When Prisca's brother Kimwati asked me on my second morning in Mundarara, Umeamkaje?—"How have you woken up?"—I told him, Salama, "peacefully," instead of telling him the truth: Nimetapika—"I woke up vomiting." Kimwati nodded his head, accepting the answer, even though he had heard me heaving inside the walls of the mud hut.

* * *

On my second Monday in the village, Prisca and I traveled to Engarenaibo, an hour away on a flatbed truck, to go to the weekly market. The usual fare was on sale: patterned cloth, shoes made from old tire tread, mirrors and radios from China, chintzy orange dishware—anything that was cheap and plastic and colorful against the dusty brown backdrop. We sifted through the second-hand clothes from America, looking for the perfect outfit for Nosim, Prisca's one-year-old daughter. We discarded a one-piece Winnie the Pooh outfit, a set of brown corduroy overalls, and a "Future Pilot" baby blue t-shirt in favor of a striped yellow jumper. It would have to be scrubbed to get the stains out, but at 600 shillings total, about 50 cents, it would serve Nosim well.

* * *

The first Kimaasai words Kimwati taught me: Njake enkare naok. "Please give me water." The first English words that I taught Kimwati: My name is. Mimi ninaitwa.

* * *

One night, I watched the men come home from Orpul, the place in the forest where they gather for six weeks at a time, eating nothing but goat meat and quenching their thirst with the alcohol they brew. Then they return to their homes, passing through the valley singing and dancing and eating the food of gracious hosts along the way. They stopped at Prisca's compound, gathering to chant in low, gravelly voices. The young girls crowded around them, their wide, white-beaded necklaces glowing under a sky lit solely by stars. As the women moved in affirmation of the warrior song, the group merged—one large mass of undulating sound and movement that was cut by the sharp, celebratory shrieks of the young women. The men, too, broke the churning beat as they lunged into the cool night air, feet lifted off the ground and spears in hand. As I stared up at the Milky Way stretched above me, it wasn't hard to convince myself that the sky had been pierced, punctuated by a thousand jumping Maasai men.

* * *

Each night, when the brilliance of the pink and purple dusk reached its greatest height, a plane crossed the horizon, destined for the tarmac of the Nairobi airport just across the border. The contrails neatly divided the glowing sky in half. But the plane's exhaust would soon dissipate, and I would remember that the divisions were never as neat as I had imagined. Kimwati would arrive on his bike, his shortwave radio blaring the evening news: a conference in Arusha, the rising prices of oil, a car overturned on the highway ten miles away. Prisca told me that one day she would fly on an airplane.

* * *

Why won't you take more food? Because in America, the men like their women thin. Why won't you drink tea at dinner? Because I can't sleep if I drink tea past saa kumi—four o'clock. This mass of exaggerated half-truths allowed me to survive in a land of unfamiliar food and half-boiled water. If they were skeptical, Kimwati and Prisca didn't show it. No one wanted to hear the sounds of vomiting from inside the hut again, so they nodded their heads acceptingly.