The Village Under the Storm

Polly had one place written down and no idea where it was. "Can you tell me how to get there?" she asked the ewe over breakfast. Follow the coast road west, the ewe said, until the land stops pretending to have hills. The Bay of Skaill is a long curve of pale sand with a green shelf behind it, and the shelf is where the village sits, half sunk into the ground with its roofs open to the sky.

Polly alikuwa ameandika jina la mahali pamoja tu, wala hakujua palipo. "Waweza kuniambia jinsi ya kufika huko?" akamuuliza yule kondoo wakati wa kifungua kinywa. Fuata barabara ya pwani kuelekea magharibi, kondoo akasema, mpaka ardhi itakapoacha kujifanya ina vilima. Ghuba ya Skaill ni mpindo mrefu wa mchanga mweupe wenye tuta la kijani nyuma yake, na juu ya tuta hilo ndipo kijiji kilipo, nusu yake ikiwa imezama ardhini na paa zake wazi mbele ya anga.

An oystercatcher was working the site that morning, and oystercatchers can be heard in weather. Polly asked, "I would like to know the history of this particular monument." People lived here about five thousand years ago, he told her. They were farming this coast before Stonehenge and before the Great Pyramid. Then the sand came over the top of them and stayed for roughly four thousand years, until a storm in the winter of eighteen fifty stripped the dune away.

Ndege aina ya oystercatcher alikuwa akifanya kazi eneo hilo asubuhi ile, na oystercatcher husikika hata katika hali mbaya ya hewa. Polly akauliza, "Ningependa kujua historia ya ukumbusho huu maalum." Watu waliishi hapa karibu miaka elfu tano iliyopita, akamweleza. Walikuwa wakilima pwani hii kabla ya Stonehenge na kabla ya Piramidi Kubwa. Kisha mchanga ukawafunika na kubaki hapo kwa takribani miaka elfu nne, hadi dhoruba ya majira ya baridi ya mwaka elfu moja mia nane na hamsini ilipoliondoa tuta la mchanga.

The wind took half of that, so Polly asked for it again. "Could you please repeat that for me?" The second telling had the detail that matters. Every house holds the same furniture in the same arrangement: a hearth in the middle, box beds at either side, and against the far wall a stone dresser facing the door. It is stone because there was no wood.

Upepo ulichukua nusu ya maneno hayo, hivyo Polly akaomba aelezwe tena. "Tafadhali, waweza kunirudia hayo?" Maelezo ya pili yalikuwa na kile kinachomaanisha zaidi. Kila nyumba ina samani zilezile zilizopangwa vilevile: jiko katikati, vitanda vya sanduku pande zote mbili, na kwenye ukuta wa mbali kabati la mawe likielekea mlango. Ni la mawe kwa sababu hapakuwa na mbao.

"Could you tell me if the museum is open tomorrow?" Polly asked, already knowing she would come back. She stood a while at the edge of one open house, looking in at a room laid out the way anyone lays out a room, the good things where a visitor would see them first.

"Waweza kuniambia kama jumba la makumbusho litafunguliwa kesho?" Polly akauliza, akijua tayari kwamba atarudi. Alisimama kwa muda kwenye ukingo wa nyumba moja iliyo wazi, akichungulia chumba kilichopangwa jinsi mtu yeyote apangavyo chumba chake, vitu vizuri vikiwekwa mahali ambapo mgeni ataviona kwanza.