Senior Class: Slidin’ Home with Deborah Perry

With baseball season coming to a close, I asked writers in the class I lead via Zoom to choose a baseball term to use as a title for (and the subject of) an essay. A retired school teacher who was active in her union chose “Strike,” a writer who shoplifted as a kid chose “Caught Stealing,” and many others chose “Safe at home.” Deborah Perry was the only one in class who opted for “Slide,” and I am pleased to introduce her as our Senior Class guest blogger today.

First, some background: Deborah, her two sisters and one brother were all born in America but raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when their parents became missionaries there. Living first at Chikore Mission Station, they later moved to Mt. Selinda Mission Station, a tiny village in the middle of Africa’s southernmost tropical rainforest.

Deborah and her siblings live in different parts of the United States now: Deborah is in Chicago and is a regular in the memoir class I lead here. When we switched to Zoom in 2020, she encouraged her two sisters (one in Maine, the other in Massachusetts) to enroll, too. Lucky for us, they said yes. Now our class gets to hear about life in Rhodesia from three different perspectives every week, and today you Safe & Sound blog readers get to enjoy Deborah’s playful “slide” essay, too.

by Deborah Perry

Laid out in a broad, gentle arc in front of the house, the dirt driveway glistened during a brief interlude from the early morning downpour. The rainy season had begun, and when the rain started up again, globs of deep red African mud erupted from the shimmering puddles like exclamation points.

We loved the rainy season.

Deborah, today’s guest blogger, is on the left.

Following every dry winter season we’d celebrate the forest’s hydration, the warm air washing over us. Soon the long grass at the edge of the driveway would turn bright green and the jacaranda tree in the side yard would burst forth in ridiculously intense purple waves.

But the color of this day was a deep brick red. The morning crept along, rain pummeled the road, mud splattered in all directions, and the four of us children cooped up inside grew weary of the days-long Monopoly game spread out on the dining room table.

Hitching up the hems of the skirts of our dresses and tucking them out of the way into our underpants, we burst out of the house and ran down the driveway. Our bare feet pounded the road until we came to the longest, deepest mud puddle of them all.

One at a time, we hit the edge and catapulted ourselves into a long skid. Over and over, each slide compacted the red clay mud into a firmer and faster surface. Finally, exhausted, we collapsed into a giggling mass, soaked in Africa’s rich, red, clay mud.

Dry winter season activities could be as much fun as the sloppy mud puddles. On some of those dry, cooler winter days we’d spread out face down along the edges of the road, the sun warming our backs as we stared, mesmerized, into the depths of tiny funnel-shaped indentations in the dirt. Hidden at the tip of each conical trap was a patient ant lion, a miniature compact but formidable pincered insect waiting for its next meal to tumble in.

Soon enough, an inattentive ant would lose its footing and begin a frantic scramble, trying to escape up the slippery-sided slope. Tiny grains of cascading sand would send a signal that lunch was on its way. The intrepid ant lion would start throwing bits of sand up the sides, exacerbating the sliding sand and ensuring the ant would lose its footing and slip down to the bottom, where it would unceremoniously become lunch.

On other sunny winter days, we’d grab a bucket of water and start digging in the dry, crumbly clay along the edge of the driveway to build curvy roads for our Dinky trucks and cars to travel along. The miniature mud and twig villages inhabited by imaginary families came next, complete with lawns made of soft green moss. Lorries and delivery trucks careened down tiny roads, around curves, screeching to a halt in front of ramshackle abodes. We’d sometimes carve a hole near a hovel so it would have its own swimming pool, slicking down the bottom until it was smooth enough to hold water.

That dirt road, our driveway, was our playground, and while I can not claim to be “mwana wevhu” – a child of the African soil — I do feel a deep connection to the African dirt.