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She came to know a place, a very cheap hotel, where she had no past but was only the present. Sitting on the verandah at night watching mosquitoes immolate themselves in the kerosene lamps.

It all started when Jamie dusted off her Encyclopedias.

She was in the attic with her seven year old son, John. She stared at the heavy texts and shook her head. Now you could read about Giraffes or Atlas Moths on Wikipedia.

We lived in an apartment a quarter of a mile from the heart of the city. Our room was nestled into the back with a decent walk in closet and bathroom.

The camper ambles its way through the Tete Province, Mozambique on a sweltering, humid late afternoon in 1975. Our 13 months? old son is dozing off in his seat ? I sit next to him and hold the bottle he has just finished drinking.

The lone car sits in the deep of the morning, waiting for its owner to return. The car had been parked in this same spot the day before, glistening with the moistness of the morning dew. At 4:00 a.m. the sky still shadows the darkness all around the town, hiding the sins of its citizens.

Carol got on the bus, sat down, and quietly wept.

The front left wheel of Jack’s shopping cart spun in circles, making it hard to push up the incline and over the rough asphalt. He leaned his hip into the left side of the handle, and it went more or less straight. It was time to find a new cart.

We eat scrambled eggs around the scratched wood kitchen table, wiping the sleep from our eyes and kneading it from our necks. We slather sunscreen on the babies’ puckered faces, we haul the pink-and-

Herman by Marijke Hillmann is part of our series Africa in Short. Each month we have a new story from Hillmann about the time she spent in Africa.

He knew before he entered that the sound was leaking. Fork clanging plate, glass clinking glass, laughter. It travelled under and through the door, into the hallway. It seeped

We burn the elephant and cow and lion every year, then we build them again the following dry season, after all the dances. We perform the Big Dance to remember the way humans

Log onto www.mapquest.com or fire up your GPS:

Start in Michigan.

Rush through route Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona to avoid possible Rocky Mountain winter storms while parents follow in moving van.

End in California

That was the best I?d felt since we?d been together, waiting for the crash. Snow whipped past us as we started to reach 50 mph. I turned on a song I knew he hated. I took my hand out from under his and opened my window to feel the flurries slap my face. He asked me what the hell I was doing, and that?s when we heard it.

Sandra walked along the deserted paths of the beach front in the late afternoon of early autumn. In the car park there was one