The Basin
1
For four springs in a row, the rains come as spit droplets on the tongue of a thirsty man— ounyanya, the OvaHerero call it. The water basin in the middle of the village is an abandoned graveyard. The white stones of the basin bed are severe in their whiteness, reflecting the white, tolling sun sucking the last wetness from the sparse grass. No movement in the basin can be heard but for the scurrying of a few agamas and stubborn gray-headed lapwings refusing to accept that life is not possible here.
When the rains finally pour, all the world about us is pregnant and purple with promise. The water in the basin comes to our hips. We can swim and wash ourselves in it. Green water bugs, the size of an adult’s thumbnail, suddenly appear in the water as if they had been here all along. There is something eternal in the way they move in the water. Their streamlined bodies move as if they had done this dance a thousand times before. They make me sad when they dart under the mud to hide from me. I want to hold them. I want to swim with them, to see how they see. I want to learn their way of putting trust in the earth completely. The fate of their future generations lies with this basin. This knowledge sweeps in a nervousness that runs through my body like an electric current ready to burst into flames. It comes from holding the present and the future in both hands. I wish the water bugs would last forever; I know they will not.
Alien-like tadpoles hatch from the earth. They are the ones that survived the beak of the lapwing and the tongue of the rainbow-throated agama. How fish-like and erratic they look in the Kalahari basin, so far from the ocean. Their resourcefulness for creatures in their infancy troubles me. They make me feel like there is so much I don’t know about the earth. To think this not-long-ago dry basin should flower something as whole as a frog. That this dead basin should speak the language of a thousand frogs, thick as a kettle of vultures on an elephant carcass.
The sun takes most of the share of the harvest. The abundance the water basin brings to the village lasts for two weeks, if we are lucky. Year after year, sometimes longer if the rains remain sparse from season to season, the water bug and the frog place their trust in this basin. I, who hold onto memories like a mother holds a newborn to her bosom, can’t understand the blind trust of the water bug and the frog. Once I die, I lose everything.
2
Now I can trace the origin of that eerie dread that accompanied my playtime in the water basin. An eerie dread—like a sharp shimmer that blinds the eye when cast at the right angle—rippled across the surface of the basin as we swam and chased each other. Joy was the theme. Our eyes could hardly bear the yellow wildflowers carpeting the sands—but we knew all this would disappear in the blink of an eye.
Such springs brought what one might call the rattling of the soul; I felt weak in the knees; I felt like I might puke from terror or excitement or both. I envied the ease with which the frog and the water bug faced the facts of the earth. How was I to enjoy my days in the sun with the knowledge of my imminent demise? On what precipice could I stand on to see human life for what it truly was and not what my heart wanted it to be?
I know the water bug desires to live more than anything; it will fight you for its life. Like me, the water bug desires to prolong its days in the sun. But the water bug does not resist the direction of the flow of life and time like I do. The dead live because I remember them, but they will disappear with my disappearance. I wish I could say I give myself to earth and to time completely, but it pains me that one day I will have to say goodbye to the water bug, to the frog, to the basin, and to what I have collected and made into some kind of living being.
Tjizembua Tjikuzu is an essayist and poet from Aminuis, Namibia. He graduated from the Rutgers-Camden MFA in Creative Writing program in 2021. He has poetry and essays published and forthcoming in ‘Doek! Literary Magazine,’ ‘Obsidian Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora,’ ‘Rigorous Magazine,’ ‘Empyrean Literary Magazine,’ ‘Columbia: Journal of Literature and Art,’ ‘Consequence Forum,’ ‘Tint Journal,’ and ‘The Elevation Review.’ He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA.