Everything about the setting that day was like a quintessential scene from a movie set in Africa. We sat underneath a large tree for the bits of shade it provided. Just beyond the tree was the tall, dry brush of the African landscape, while behind us was a small mud hut. We (the white travelers) listened to Hector (the local with decades of contextual experience) tell us about the history of why there were so many troubles in that particular region of South Sudan. We had only been listening to his stories for a few minutes when things changed.

Hector abruptly stopped mid-sentence. “Do I hear fire?” he asked, although he was asking himself more than asking us. We all paused, our conversation, movement, and even breath suspended with anticipation for the answer. I looked around for flames, moving only my eyes, as though any head movement could awaken this predator called fire and it would lurch at us. The whole earth was quiet other than the rustling of leaves from our overhead tree. Without the machinery that comes with modern life—vehicles, loudspeakers, freeways, leaf blowers—all that’s left for the sense of sound is those quiet clues from nature. And right now, they were gone.

It’s not until you are surrounded only with natural knowledge, rather than technological knowledge, that you realize what people mean when they say you can learn from those unspoken cues from the natural world. As a standard modern American, I can find out anything I want about the world around me—or a world thousands of miles away if I choose—in an instant, through the help of the internet. But what about when the internet doesn’t reach where I am? Or if it did, if the internet didn’t care what was happening in a small village outside of a small town in a small part of the world’s newest country?

If I had the years of experience of relying on the non-verbal language of the animals around me, I would have noticed that bugs weren’t whistling, the birds weren’t crooning, not even the chickens were clucking.  I was, instead, still focused on what little I knew about fire, which was: where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Trying hard to see smoke in the bright African sun, I was a useless informant to Hector, who could hear the crackling fire through the silence of the animals. I sure couldn’t.

He began to get uneasy. Distracted by trying to confirm what his senses told him, the conversation became disjointed until he finally said what was really on his mind: “I’m afraid the roof of that hut will catch on fire.”

The fire was still imperceptible to me, but I wasn’t in a position to doubt him. Hector moved quickly. Somehow, he rapidly requested boda-bodas—the name for motorcycles because of the sound they may—to pick us up and flee. It was a go-bag kind of time.

Humanitarians, diplomats, missionaries, and others who spend enough time overseas know that one of the essential items to pack is a go-bag. This bag has all of your immediate essentials, and nothing more: your passport, some cash, essential medications, a power bank and cord, and anything else you might need in the next 24-48 hours or your life will be extremely difficult. I had my go-bag ready and waiting by the door of our mud hut. My biggest decision was my shoes: do I keep my sandals on and try to flip-flop my way out of a pending bushfire, or do I take the time to change my shoes into something more conducive to running? Would I burn alive in the time I’m putting on socks and tying my shoes, or would the fire tackle me because I’m too slow in my flip flops? And why hadn’t I heard any of this kind of advice in all my training?

Truthfully, I can’t remember what I ended up wearing on my feet. All I knew was that the boda-bodas rapidly appeared and were waiting for us, and we had to leave. Douglas and I hopped on one, and Hector on the other.

What would happen to the children? I thought, while not really wanting to think about it. How do you move dozens out children out of a rapidly escalating bushfire? Where would they go? As we drove past the soccer field, we noticed there were already few children there, and those who were left were quickly mobilizing—to somewhere, for some reason, which I didn’t know quite yet. I just knew that the word had spread and that everyone knew about the bushfire.

Careening out of the school property and veering sharply to the right, it suddenly became apparent what Hector had heard all along: there was the fire, just across the little dirt path from us. How I never saw or heard anything still frightens me about my vulnerability. As we zipped by burnt bushes and trees, part of me wondered what—if anything—we’d return to, or when we’d return.

We also saw what had happened to several of the children—they had now been recruited as local firefighters. In water-scarce Africa, though, firefighters don’t fight fire with water. They fight fires with machetes and sickles. The best way to stop a fire is to starve it of its food, the dry and brittle brush and tree leaves that it enjoys eating as rapidly as a child with a candy bowl. The children, along with neighbors, had mobilized to cut down anything in the fire’s path. Like a levee that holds back water from turning into floods, these torn down pieces of brush hold back the fire from becoming flaming homes and blazing crops.

Facing the road ahead of us, I had no idea where we were going. I’m not sure if the driver did either, other than “not the path that is currently on fire.” Having a better vantage point from my spot on the motorcycle, I could see the driver was taking a right at a fork in the road. The lefthand side was like a ring of fire, the fire arching and reaching across the little dirt road, consuming brush and trees on both sides.

Douglas, however, did not see the fork in the road, and thought our driver perhaps suddenly had an Evel Knievel streak in him. “Tell him to STOP!” he shouted to me. I did not tell him to stop. I didn’t know why Douglas would want to stop right at a fork in the road, when clearly, we had an escape out of there. Not knowing why I was complacent to sit back and watch the show firsthand through the ring of fire, he shouted again, “Tell him to stop, NOW!” I started to get the feeling Douglas was planning to bail off the boda-boda if we didn’t turn around, but I didn’t understand why. This man was leading us to safety, so why would we stop him? Just before Douglas reached his last-ditch moment, our turn to the right became apparent and he calmed down.

As we drove past the flames, we felt the heat as a glancing blow on our cheeks. I shut off any thoughts about what it would feel like had I not been on a boda-boda. I realized that, flip flops or shoes, it didn’t matter—I wasn’t going to outrun it anyway.

Just over my head I saw thousands upon thousands of leaping bugs—grasshoppers for sure, as well as many others I would never know—also fleeing from the fire. I remembered reading a book once about how smart birds are, and that there are birds that start fires in Australia. The “firehawk” raptor takes little sticks that are on fire and drops them on the brush below. Then, they snatch up the bugs that are fleeing for their lives. A fire like this would surely be a feast from the heavens for the firehawk raptor. I wondered if any birds in Africa would learn to be fire starters, too, but just like the thought about running away in my own shoes, I dared not think too much on a could-be-worse scenario.

We rode off until we reached the town, a 20-minute ride away. We were far removed from the fire now. We found some Wi-Fi and charged our phones, a luxury unavailable to us where we stay in the village, while we waited for Hector to confirm when we could come back to the village. 

Eventually the call came, and we returned home. Retracing our escape path, we saw burned out roads that we had traveled on, and were thankful we had missed the multiple places that we could have crossed paths with the fire. As we neared the school, we saw children still working on clearing out the brush to prevent the fires from reaching us again.

In the following days, I had a hard time coming to terms with what we had experienced. How close were we, really, to being engulfed by flames? Did it just feel like a close call, or were our lives at risk? Was I just seeing this through the eyes of adventure, an “only in Africa!” type of story to tell? Or was this one of those moments that could have been a haunting story rather than one of daring risk and intrigue?

I’ll never really know. But what I do now know is to never trust the silence of nature.