Their new interstellar home was a lot like Earth in some ways and nothing like it in many other ways. It was in everything. The slight blue tinge to the grass and leaves, the slight green tinge to the sky, the two extra limbs of the animals. It was one of the few planets that Zambia had secured as a member of the New Federation and was the one closest in resemblance to the savannah that most were familiar with despite its oddities. So they called it Ongamika.
Twisted. Bent.
She had brought her family to Ongamika in the hope that they could outrun the disease that was tearing through their village. She had heard stories of the people that lived among the stars and thrived. Never going hungry and never sick but with technology you could never believe. So with her eyes fixed firmly upward, Mbao scraped enough cash from her hunts and pelt-making to bribe the ship steward of the next outward bound space ship. Even when the steward lasciviously told her that the price had gone up and that she would have to pay extra back in his quarters, she kept her eyes upward and thought of her family. She thought of her sisters and her frail mother. She thought of how they wouldn’t survive the disease that was blazing through their friends, their cousins and uncles. She thanked her ancestors that the steward had used protection.