Across the road and down the hill from where we live is a comunidade or favela. On weekends the sounds can be heard thumping and echoing throughout the night. For me it’s like the Pied Piper is calling. I often feel a pull inside me to go, to just start walking down the hill, out the gate following my ears, my heart, following that sound, that siren song emerging from below, that wonderful vibrant sound that beckons, come, come home. It’s hard to explain but it feels familiar, very familiar, like this is a rhythm that part of my DNA knows and so baldy wants to dance to, to rejoin.

Tied tightly to my mast, so far, I’ve stayed put. MGFI watches, covering her ears. She shakes her head, immune to the call. Interestingly, she had loved to play cultural anthropologist in America. Driving through devastated post-strip-mined West Virginia coal…