Day the Earth Bloomed

We were getting ready to leave – we did not know if we would return. If the seaweed broods over its loosened roots, it can never glide on a current.

So begins the bittersweet account of Kolumban, the man of the family, the player of the lute in his community of itinerant bards. The paanar live near forests, but do not know how to hunt. There are fields of millet behind their huts but they are unus...