At 6:00pm a girl is lying unconscious not far from the road. Her head faces away, left arm bent awkwardly and pressed under her limp body. Twisted from the trip, her ankle swells blue, which she’ll feel when she wakes up. She walks this road every day, through rain and sun, skin browned and aged by weather. On either side of the road it’s green all over, and the girl, dressed in worn school clothes, doesn’t blend in by any means. Still the trisikads rush past, teetering and squeaking with the weight of a malnourished driver and a whole family squeezed in on the side. Over greying concrete, the cramped contraption pushes forward, towards the main streets where it’ll be lost in the greater body of sputtering vehicles, motorcyclists weaving in and out of the mass, the occasional tourist taxi. Each and every pair of beady eyes straight ahead. Never entirely relaxed. Detached from the sound. The air smells like dead dogs and barbecue pork, smoke cut through by unsteady wheels treading the holes in the ground where the rain wore it down.
At 6:00pm the sky is steadily darkening, sun well-hidden and colouring the clouds red over a shadowy landscape. Large, black figures move about in the field, and when they trudge close to the housing, shallow lights reveal a set of curved horns and bulb-like eyes. The carabao look on, lose interest, and go back to grazing. Occasionally, they wander too far from their post, loitering on the skirt of the community strip until they’re shooed off. The children seem to like them, though: unsure of how to play with such large creatures, they watch with curious eyes, copy their bellows, follow them to the rice paddy. Later, when they get older, they’ll grow bored, the carabao merging with the landscape. For now, they continue grazing. They grunt and snort and fend off the wild dogs who’ve wandered off the main streets, sensing something unmoving and warm in the grass off the side of the road. In the morning their masters will fit them with a plow and life will go on as usual.
At 6:00pm a woman in the housing is wondering where her daughter is. The kitchen is hardly quiet as children gather impatiently, a restlessness fed by the smell of sizzling ginger, garlic and onions. Voices buzz from the unattended television in the next room. A cheap karaoke set’s similar busy music blares from somewhere down the street. School has been over for a long time now, and the woman glances at the pairs of shoes by the door, one set missing. The sky continues darkening. From outside, the house looks full and no one notices a thing.