Hengua hobbled after the sweat-thirsty sun had burned the pus-squirting blisters on his heels.  Thereafter, yellow-headed flies dipped their mouths into his rotting cracks. 

In response, he tore branches from a black acacia and limped on crutches. Soon, he spotted Ngore squatting and pecking the sand like a rooster.

  “The sun had melted my cow fat,” whined Ngore, scooping the fat-draining sand and sniffing it. “Let’s catch the sun and throw it into the fire,” cried Hengua, clenching his fists. Hengua’s pranking words popped a snaky vein on Ngore’s forehead. Soon, he picked ticks from his friend’s salt-and-peppery hair. 

“Why did you leave the fat in the sun?” asked Hengua, dipping his finger in the fatty sand and licking it. “I knotted the hut’s shade with a rope to this tree,” said Ngore, loosening the cow-halting rope. The two pulled rolls of tree bark and stitched large sacks, which they glued together with sticky gum.  “We’ll catch the sun and squeeze it into these bags,” said Hengua, with a smile that revealed a gap in his lower teeth. 

“If we catch the sun, we’ll oversleep forever,” said Ngore, with a smile that pictured the gap on his upper teeth. Ngore walked towards the sunrise, blocking the dazzling sunrays, while sticking his tongue at the bag-bound sun. 

“It’s you who paints the sand red,” quarrelled Ngore. “My wife would no longer collect firewood, for she’ll have the sun inside our hut,” he sang. Minutes later, he dizzily walked into the whirl of dust shaped by two fighting elephants. The elephants made peace by flapping their ears, after crushing him into pieces small enough to be chewed by ants. Luckily, Hengua followed the dipping sun up to the wall of blue water. He dropped to his knees, sang praises to the Omaruru River for guiding his footpath up to where the sun sleeps.  

“There’ll be no sunrise in Omusarakuumba,’ it will be hooked to my back,” said Hengua, giggling at the sun. He hunched over and lapped the salty water. Then, as the red sun nose-dived into the wavy water, he smiled. “So, this is where you sleep?” he quizzed the sinking sun, while his feet touched the icy water.  Then he knotted the bag to his hips with leaf-like blades. “The children will kick you like a red ball,” he mocked.  

“The villagers will overcook you in a three-legged pot,” he teased, crisscrossing a finger over his forehead.  In a blink, he jumped headfirst into the blue water and hit his head on a slippery rock.