(Context: Crossing Southern Africa from South Africa up to Tanzania, in that truck, amidst borders, dust, and exhaustion, the only constant was Alois, the Masai driver who became my guardian.)

Alois was 15 when his parents sent him into the bush. He was dressed in red sheets tied at the neck and waist, carrying an enormous knife, a hand-carved wooden club, a slender stick he uses as a cane, and two wide, white beaded bracelets on his ankles. It was a journey from which he had to return a man.

To kill a lion with his bare hands—he and 24 other boys—is the proof they are ready for their own lives.

To smell it. To touch the fresh earth moved by its paws. To find it lying on its belly. All those long, skinny boys standing around. A Masai warrior had told me about his own night, having no idea who Alois is, but I imagined them—separated by almost two generations—standing together 40 years ago.

All forming a circle, ignorant of fear, starting to dance and sing when the lion hadn’t even seen them yet. Beating shoulders inward, outward, once, again, in, out, singing Jih Joh- Jih Joh, confusing the animal, stalking it, closing the circle, dancing until they were too close and one of them broke the dance with a leap and drove the knife into the animal’s skin. Starting the fight from which two of Alois’s companions never returned, and which left my friend’s side streaked with scars.

The day Alois was born, everyone close to his parents must have gifted him a cow—which, according to Masai culture, is the animal sent by God for wealth, the unit of exchange for everything. Whatever it is, the question is: “How many cows is it worth?” A good wife is about 25. Alois’s was free because he got her pregnant with their eldest daughter behind a tree when he was 16.

Traveling in a mokoro to an island in the Delta, in Botswana, that smells of water, of fresh earth.

I met him there, at a camp in Kasane where Seyoung and I waited for my Zimbabwe visa—me still unknowing that I would also go to Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania, and that I would have to travel in the truck he drives.

The day I got lost in the Kasane camp, walking in circles in the rain and through the night, he barely cared that security had to rescue me or that I arrived wrapped in a sheet distilling water. I remember him that day wearing an enormous blue checkered skirt that reached his ankles. It amused me greatly because Alois measures like two meters. He is solid. Dark, shining skin. Enormous cheekbones. Pop-eyes.

Now that he is a truck driver, he has a round belly that he hugs, or traps from the sides with his palms when something makes him lazy, saying he can’t do it because he’s expecting a baby.

Zambia smells of burning firewood and sweet vegetables boiling for dinner. It smells of work, of charcoal makers and mud blocks.

He tested that we would be good friends the day I (also) got lost there. As soon as I told him, relieved to have found the way myself, he just lifted his giant, thick hand and released a single slap that hit me on the nape of the neck and, simultaneously, was a slap in the face.

Don’t be silly, he said. For some reason, I just had enormous possibilities of laughter.

He said he always worried that my brain was too small. Too silly. That I forgot everything and anyone could trick me.

He would sit with me on little white stools so I could drink the courtesy beers passengers brought him at the end of the daily route—which he threw away because he has never drunk—dropping Swahili words bit by bit so I would learn.

In Livingstone, he introduced me to his coworkers who stopped at the same camp so I could say a few words.

Then came so much Malawi. We went to school. We played football. We went to the hospital to accompany a labor—where I was more scared than the mom. We walked the cornfield. We fished.

But in Malawi, he also threatened to kick me if I smoked Malawi Gold with the locals at the beach drum party; he reminded Seyoung Kim that I had to be watched because nothing fit in my head anymore.

In Chipata, he took me by the arm to the villa door so two artisans could tell him the name of the one who had overstepped with me. Like my father, he sent word that the man could only speak to me again if they delivered him a cow.

He stopped on the road to buy charcoal-roasted corn, stashing them in the glove compartment so we’d eat something other than just instant noodles for dinner. We’d sit back down to talk about Masai stories I never got bored of hearing.

Zanzibar stole my heart in a minute. The sound of the beach. The chickens clucking on the paths leading to the mosque. The Masai men dressed in red walking the streets. The women on the beach who only let their feet be seen. And a tiny little restaurant floating on the sea.

When I returned from Zanzibar, I threw the words I learned on my own at him to tell him we had missed him. That I had adopted a Masai name. That I had danced with the warriors. That I was no longer a muzungu (white person). Not only that I wanted to be—I even told him I was also Masai.

I don’t know how he didn’t die laughing, nor how many times he called me silly.

This morning I got up early to go to the stop where the truck loads passengers to say goodbye. There he was. He was not wearing his driver’s uniform. He had dressed as a Masai warrior just for me to find him like that. Maybe a little jealous that I had seen so many others in Zanzibar while he stayed on the mainland waiting. He wanted to show me. Here is the warrior. Waiting with his knife and his wooden club.

I was almost leaving, but I remembered. The French press. The one I carried all this way so we wouldn’t have to drink instant coffee. I pulled it out of my bag—finally, I was going home—and gave it to him.

He nodded. He placed his heavy hand on his chest. Then he just made a sign. Go. He didn’t speak. He was about to cry.

For the first time, I saw him dance and sing Jih-Joh Jih-Joh as he surely did over 30 years ago with the lion.

“How proud I am of you,” I told him, almost crying.

I gave him a huge hug, and my eyes burned with the urge to weep. Alois gave me another great slap on the face and said:

“Stop. Masai don’t cry.”

Asante sana Alois, nitakukosa. Good journey home!