We’ve been home sweet home for more than a month now.
​
We’re back in our house in Ottawa, Canada and back to our pre-travel life.
​
Hints of fall and the end of our endless summer are everywhere. There are fresh apples at the market, a few leaves on our maple tree out front have lost their green, and school busses have joined the traffic. The mornings and evenings are getting cooler as summer winds down—our first tastes of frigid air in more than a year. Soon, our sun-kissed hair will darken, we’ll have to give up the comfort of flip flops, and L, who travelled the world for a year with a single pair of shorts, will have to put on pants.

​But the season isn't the only change...

She’s so hot and so dirty. So hot from the African sun that beats down on them. So dirty form the red dust that forms the field they’re playing on along the old train tracks.

There’s a bustling market across the street and many of them spend their days there, trying to earn a few Shillings. In the mornings, the lure of a football brings them to the field.
​
She hardly looks like herself anymore. I might not have recognized her if not for the big blue eyes and toothy grin peaking out of the flushed, sweaty and dusty face.

​She’s come to get water and cool down a bit. She only arrived yesterday and hasn’t yet adjusted to the heat. And these boys are much older and faster so she has to work harder.