Lightning split the afternoon sky as Oluwa traced letters in the dirt, his finger leaving grooves in the russet earth. The thunder that followed made several of his classmates jump, but Oluwa remained focused on his task. He'd seen twelve rainy seasons come and go, and the sky's anger no longer startled him.
"Oluwa, your lines are wandering," Madam Adebayo said, crouching beside him. Her wrapper brushed the ground as she demonstrated the proper shape again. "Like a stream flowing straight to the sea, not like a snake after a mouse."
"Yes, Madam." Oluwa smoothed the earth with his palm, leaving a fresh canvas of dirt. Around him, thirty children knelt in similar poses, the wooden schoolhouse alive with the soft scratching of their practice.
The distant growl of engines made Madam Adebayo straighten. Through gaps in the walls, Oluwa watched dust clouds bloom behind approaching vehicles. His younger sister Folami, who sat nearby, abandoned her letters entirely.
"Ehn? Who could that be?" she whispered.
"Eyes on your work," Madam Adebayo called, but curiosity had already infected the room like a fever. Even she kept glancing through the wall's gaps as two white SUVs pulled up, their sides marked with blue symbols.
When the visitors entered—three women and two men carrying boxes—Madam Adebayo stepped forward. One woman, whose dark skin marked her as Nigerian though her clothes were foreign, spoke rapid Yoruba with their teacher.
"Ekaro o," the woman then addressed the class. "I am Dr. Afolayan. We bring something special to your village today." She lifted what looked like a small black mirror from one of the boxes. "This is more than just a phone. This is a teacher that can fit in your pocket."
A boy near the back laughed. "How can a teacher fit in there?"
Dr. Afolayan smiled. "Ah, that's the magic of it. Here, let me show you." She woke the device, and it glowed like captured moonlight. "This teacher knows everything about the world, and it never sleeps. It can speak our language and answer any question you have."
As they distributed the phones, Oluwa heard his classmates' excited murmurs turn to gasps of wonder. Each device came with what Dr. Afolayan called a solar panel—"It drinks the sun's power like you drink water from the stream."
That evening, Oluwa sat in the doorway of his family's hut, the phone balanced on his knees. Inside, his mother stirred the evening's egusi soup, the rich smell mixing with woodsmoke from the cooking fire.
"Mama, look," he said, showing her how the device lit up at his touch. "It knows everything."
She wiped her hands on her wrapper and took the phone carefully, as if it might bite. "Everything? Ask it then—will it rain tomorrow?"
Oluwa laughed and took the phone back. "No, Mama, not like that. Watch—" He held it close and asked, "How does electricity work?"
The voice that answered spoke Yoruba as smoothly as Madam Adebayo, but it painted pictures with words Oluwa had never imagined. It spoke of tiny particles smaller than dust, moving like dancers at a festival. When it mentioned lightning, Oluwa's eyes darted to the sky where the afternoon's storm had passed.
"So that's what makes the thunder angry," he whispered.
"Not anger," the voice corrected gently. "Just energy finding its path to the ground, like water flowing downstream."
His mother had paused her cooking to listen. "Like Madam Adebayo said about your letters," she observed, and Oluwa's eyes widened at the connection.
As night fell, the village came alive with dozens of tiny lights. Through the open doorway, Oluwa could see his friends' faces illuminated in neighboring huts, each glow marking a point of discovery. Folami had borrowed their father's phone next door, and he could hear her asking about the stars.
The air hummed with questions and answers, a new kind of evening chorus joining the familiar sounds of crickets and distant generators. Oluwa's fingers traced the solar panel beside him, feeling the smooth surface that had drunk the day's sunlight. Tomorrow, he would ask it about that too.
His mother's voice interrupted his thoughts. "The soup is ready," she said, but she was smiling at the way he cradled the device. "Though I suppose you're already full of other things."
Oluwa stood, slipping the phone into his pocket where it rested, warm and full of promise, against his hip. In the distance, heat lightning flickered across the sky, and now he understood why it danced.