Cairo's Sunflowers

We don't have wide open fields of grass. We don't have gardens filled with beautiful flowers. We don't have a lot of white clouds filling our skies.

But this is what we do have.

We have crumbling brick buildings. Windows that don't shut properly, not that you'd want to in this oppressive heat. We have dust, grime, feet that shuffle across hot asphalt, too tired and exhausted to lift off and away from the surface of an earth that gives very little, and gets more than it can take.

Our fields are little patches of grass, in the middle of highways, flanked by tall, grey buildings.

Our flowers are satellite dishes, all tilted upwards, facing the same direction.

Our white clouds are smog.

And while my heart aches for this, for home, sometimes to a point where it feels like a physical pain, I have learned to find the good in being here. In Cairo.

I have learned how to see sunflowers on the rooftops of this vast city.

Edit: If the link above doesn't work and you're curious - do a search on blipfoto for "Lesotho" and you will see what I meant...