Mena In Malagasy it means red, but for me, who was born and raised in Salento, it is the most used interlayer in my dialect: it is used to express amazement and disbelief, but also to convey impatience and suggest that someone do it faster.
Here, however, this word has taken on different facets. In this red earth, which I observed for the first time amazed through the window of an airplane, my steps crossed with those of special people. Slowly, as the earth gave way to the green of the rice fields and with the start of the rains, only shades remained of that red in the bricks of the houses and in the vertical plots on the hills; as I stopped seeing that red I began to feel the warmth.
I feel it every day in the affection and welcome of this people, in the gestures of care, in the smiles, in the spontaneous hugs, in the desire to know and to be known, in the simple sharing of small moments. There is a phrase that children in the villages always jokingly say to us volunteers: Vazaha Boramena (foreigners/whites turn red), ironically referring to our complexion after a couple of hours under the African sun.
Every time I hear it, a smile escapes me, because I like to think that a little bit of this red and warmth has remained on us. And so it will be forever.
