Lushoto

I am in Lushoto. And I gotta say, in a lot of ways I'm really enjoying being a travelver rather than an academic tourist (whatever that terminology means). It's too beautiful here. Really. Too beautiful. Can I even describe it? It's in the mountains. The colors are very saturated, literally: every afternoon we experience a downpour that lasts only about fifeteen minutes. The roads are are deep red-brown. The foliage is deep green, filling and texturing the undulating hills. The sky is big, blue, with clouds. Houses and farms are tucked into the rich soils of the hillsides.

We live an hour walk up the the wide red road from town - at this ridiculously luxurious little farm cabin (in the footsteps of colonialism, as always). One the walk, the views are literally breaktaking, so beatiful I want to cry at each new vista. But K pointed out the most incredible thing. About fifteen minutes up above town, we could hear the sounds of town perfectly - children playing, men and women talking, the light music, bicycles whirring, noises too subtle to identify. It's what living sounds like when cars are nowhere to be found. I've always envisioned the beauty of San Francisco without cars and their noises, and the way they take up space. Perhaps I agree with B, that the automobile has been the most destructive human invention.