SABIS the SURVIVOR

Chapter 6: Tribal Dance

Chapter 6: Tribal Dance

It had been approximately one year since Marie and the kids had disappeared. In his faded memories of them, especially when he put his head down to sleep, Gadi often witnessed a young Marie dancing the Blixky twirl since she enjoyed Hip Hop music. She used to tell him, "You are my pole that I love to twirl around." Unfortunately, his electronic devices had lost their power. So there was no way on Mother Earth for him to view any electronically-stored images.

Even those Survivor tribe members with solar-powered devices could not rely on the sun's rays for recharging since the omnipresent but pale yellow sun remained low on the horizon and did not offer sufficient light.

Time passed slowly in this new Ice Age. It was a challenge to find food, tough to make fire, and even harder to feel happy. Gadi was not immune to these new life challenges.

After draining his meager clay soup bowl of its contents, he felt like moving around. So he descended the narrow path to the common area where music was playing. Once a week, two musicians would play duets. On this occasion, they were harmonizing a wind instrument called the bullroarer and a hand-held percussion instrument called the tambori.

Standing around the fire, listening to the beat of the drum and the sweet tone of the reeded tambori relaxed Gadi's cheek and facial muscles. His body and brain began to disconnect such that his hips were swiveling while his throat opened wide. He groaned like a woman in the throes of childbirth. Then his own personal tribal healing song submitted to the continuous drum beats that pounded out its own insistent and dynamic rhythm.

Other tribe members then pitched in with their own voicing. Soon their lips and tongues were ululating and articulating their own particular stories of their journey through life─before the time that Mother Earth moved and since that fateful day, up until this very moment. One woman grabbed Gadi's attention, not because of her natural female curves that she gyrated in sync with the beat of the music. It was something much simpler.

He had seen this young woman before at tribal music recitals. She was in her mid-twenties, named Janet, and had a flare for drawing attention to herself. She punctuated her dance twirls and hypnotic pelvic rotations with the waving of her hands in a circular motion as if she was gathering some energy from the environment. She continued by lightly clasping her hands together. Finally, she ended this energy gathering by pointing her 'hand teepee' at different people either seated or dancing around the fire. She gave every tribe member a moment of her attention, apparently sharing the collected energy that she had gathered; then she moved on to the next person.

As she continued to collect and share, Gadi slowly approached her from behind. He wanted to see if he could feel the energy being dispersed or distributed from her 'dancing hands.' He tiptoed now, moving even slower than before. Then he kneeled behind her and placed his hands on his lap. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply her earthy and female scent, and waited for the energy to flow to him.

Then the music stopped.

Gadi opened his eyes and she was no longer there. He spun around like a Ninja to look behind him but she was nowhere in sight. When he asked the musicians the direction that this young woman had taken, they shrugged their shoulders with an unknowing look.

So Gadi placed his hands on the ground and felt for a heat signature with the back of his hands─something his father had learned from the Inuit and then had shared with him. He followed a path of residual heat away from the music gathering, down a cool and dark path. Crouched low and letting his nose guide him, he navigated the shadowed path around the creeping jenny and foxglove flowers.

Away from the pale light of the sun and into the shadows, Gadi felt more at ease. It reminded him of the forests and mountain passages that he used to hike in his youth. He smiled with the recollection and skipped his way closer to what he hoped would be a stimulating experience with an apparently secretive and reclusive tribe member.