The last rays of the evening sun touched the western walls of the houses, casting just

a bit of fading light on their mud and straw walls.

Whisp's of smoke billowed out from their hearts through sunken doorways that led down

into the houses and terriers, where pots full of mashed millet grains slowly cooked

on tripod stands above the fires.

The houses were clustered together, small ones around a bigger structure several times

their size, separated from the neighboring cluster of houses by pig pens and storage pits

that held millet and nuts.

The clusters all sat in a rough circle, looking out at each other across a large open space

at the center of the village.

A low chant began in one of the bigger structures, dozens of voices rising and falling together.

A procession emerged from the entryway, a crowd of children, women and men.

Those in the front carried on their shoulders a stiff and motionless corpse, the body of

an elderly man, his long, wispy grey beard floating and swirling in the slight evening

breeze.

Those in the rear carried delicate ceramic jugs, small at the neck and ballooning outward

to a large base, decorated in swirling bands of alternating colors that wound their way

around the vessel.

Slowly and carefully, they bore the body and the pots away from the big house, through

the cluster, and toward the shallow ditch that separated their settlement from the outside

world.

A collection of wood and stone markers, perhaps a hundred of them, some weathered and

...