My Life in National Geographic

Tonight as i pulled water from the well I was struck with a blow from pulchritude herself:
It was one of those moments of beauty that you hope can just last and last and so you stop moving except to widen your senses in the attempt to capture it all. When it passes you realize you'd stopped breathing so as not to disrupt the very air holding this beauty. But even if you could hold your breath forever, time keeps going, so it pushes you forward and out of the moment. Yet in that small eternity I will forever keep the Gambia.
I stand with the wet tattered rope in one hand and the empty bottom of the leaky bag in the other. My bucket and watering can are full, it's time to carry them inside, finish watering, and bathe. My gaze moves from the glistening water, across the sand of the compound, to the cement slab all the kids use to bathe, so their feet don't get dirty while they wash. Ousman is there, splashing water from the orange Africell bucket on his wiry 10 yrs old frame. At 10 he has enough energy to fill an elephant and make it gambol like a lamb. Energy reigned in to a scrawny yet fit kid.
The opposite edge of this scene: covered by the heavy drooping branches of a mango tree. Its progeny growing large and juicy and weighing on the limbs. Limbs that break under the pressure of a lavish bounty.
Bordering our compound is the stick fence draped with green, blue, purple, pink fabric. Bright clothes drying in the hot sun.
But the sun is setting now and the hot white of midday gradually gives way to a warm golden. Tonight a few hazy patches of cloud bounce color back on the sunset. A blissful pink. The color cotton candy strives for but only nature has mastered. This perfect pink layered over a early evening blue.
Just beyond our fence the golden pink catches on the thatch roof of the neighbors round mud-brick hut. Picture perfect lighting on a classic scene.
"Adama" time pushes me out. Breathe.
"Adama" Sama calls me again from my backyard.
"Nam" I bend, lift my buckets and the moment is gone. But not lost; remembered, noted, and not lost.