Picture https://pixabay.com/es/photos/globo-aerostático-globo-cielo-5528622/
https://pixabay.com/es/photos/desierto-arena-estéril-seco-árido-790640/
This is a 
initiative
African Magic
Sifiso loved the hills around his village more than anything he could describe with his tongue. Lush and dark green, they rolled heavenward under the starlit sky at night. But during the day they caught the yellow sun and glittered deep emerald; it was a wonder to behold.
During the summer, lightning and hail were always a serious problem for the villagers, but they had survived countless storms in the past, even though here and there, they had lost members to the elements.
Every year the elders initiated sky gods to keep the villagers safe and Sifiso had been named among the privileged. He did what was required of him with diligence, but his mind was uneasy. The elders recommended a concoction of various plants, herbs and animal fats to conjure a potion to deflect the gods of the sky; to prevent the lightning and other storm-malevolence from striking his people.
In his bones;in his dreams, Sifiso, felt a terrible destruction was afoot. He dreamt that a massive wave from the nearby river would engulf his village. He dreamt that thunder would rumble as a forewarning of the event. He dreamt that the valley his people lived in was empty; uninhabited, bare.
Nevertheless, Sifiso, was a man of the present as well as a man of the past. He respected his elders but knew he needed a plan suffused with modern magic if his people were to outlive the ravages he’d seen in his dreams.
He set about his purpose with determination and vigor. The people of his village did not have cars or trucks or cell phones (with an internet connection to call Uber. Haha). So he worked, and he pondered and he conscripted the villagers to heed his warnings. Every able bodied man, woman and child went out of their homes, to the rubbish dumps and side roads to collect as many plastic bags as they could. Sifiso’s dreams led them on…
Boys, girls, old women and lazy men came together as a force. The omen hung in the air like gunpowder. They worked by candle light, they glued and hewed and structured their saving grace with absolute attention to detail.
They would be saved…
When the thunder blasted its intention, from the distant horizon, to release the storm of the decade on the village, Sifiso and his army were ready. His dreams had foretold a massive flooding of the valley floor, a flooding like no other ever seen.
But when the rain, hail and pelting precipitation opened its deluge on Sifiso’s land, his people alighted. Each family had their own recycled plastic hot air balloon to escape in; each had made their own way to float above the destructive water until it was over.
Each had been instructed in salvaging and DIY, it was totally amazing modern magic.
PS: it’s totally possible to build a hot air ballon out of waste plastic bags. Ho, ho for the environment. Haha
https://boingboing.net/2015/07/10/hot-air-balloon-made-from-recy.html
