On Study Abroad, Conscripted Dances, and Mysterious Natives

By Oronte. Three-thirty pm in Limpopo province in northern South Africa, just a few miles south of the Zimbabwean border. It’s early winter here, the middle of May, but like García Marquez’s mythical Macondo, these scorched mopani-and-baobab lowlands—and the people who live in them—know nothing of natural ice. Outside, the red dust of Matiyani village scalds human feet; makes children run, laughing, for the shade of thatch overhangs. On the granite hillocks, goats and cattle pant for water. Read more...