I remember as if it were yesterday, how the wanderlust gripped me when I heard him speaking of a foreign land where a purple field grew. He described it as the most peaceful place to ever exist on earth. Where purple lavender flowers, as tall as the fence surrounding our fowl run, freely blossomed. A place where the sun shone in all its glory and the bees hummed as they sucked the sweet nectar from the flowers. To him, it was a field suffused with the sweet scent of opportunity. That just being in the middle of that purple field was like being in the centre of Eden before the fall of man.

Honestly, there was nothing else I could think of the rest of my day. My grandmother had watched and listened from the kraal shed as I conversed with him. She warned me of entertaining such thoughts but it fell on deaf ears. I longed for a field apart from the brown and scorch-parched land that surrounded my homestead. If I were lucky, I could spot a bit of greenery here and there, but that was not enough to appease my spirit. I longed for the type of peace and rest the purple field promised.

The thought of escaping my prison without walls grew so strong that I could hear the lavender in the breeze, whispering to me. But how could I, when I had never seen nor smelt anything like it before? Slowly, it sank in when I realized that I had been sold a dream which I could never fulfill. All I could do was wonder and tame my wanderlust, for though seemingly without walls, this prison is inescapable. My grandmother was right after all. Nowadays, I just dream of the healing I know I can find from a field full of purple flowers.