Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
We delayed once more, Sally and Michael repeatedly working until after midnight. Then, a
week and a half after my arrival, we were ready. We loaded the bed of a white pickup with large
yellow duffel bags printed with the letters BCI and drove back toward the airport as I stared out
the truck window, taking in the city's turmoil. Women paused between four lanes of rushing traffic,
plastic tubs the size of laundry baskets on their heads. Shirtless men broke old concrete with
sledges, piling chunks on the median, each muscle in their torsos knife-thin and close to the skin.
Further on, boys played soccer in an empty lot among the scorched hulks of old trucks and heaps of
smoldering trash. There were merchants in sooty storefronts, peddlers by loaded handcarts, students
waiting for buses, office workers, men and women in pressed suits and skirts, climbing into taxis
with mismatched panels, holes drilled along their edges, wires knitting them together.
