Good Things

Having some down time together in East Africa is always a welcome treat, and there are a handful of specific things I always look forward to when we are back here. Java House strawberry milkshakes just about tops the list for me I have to admit...

We also love going to see movies (this time out it's been Inception and the A-Team), hot showers, pedicures (those are my feet not Bryan's), wearing blue jeans, riding buses and matatus, eating sukuma wiki at sketchy restaurants in the middle of downtown, eating Italian at fancy restaurants outside of town, green apples, pears, cappacinos and...more milkshakes.

But there are a handful of things I am appreciating on this trip out that I never would have though twice about before. Things like ginger ale, plain toast, peppermint and crackers. Simple little things that have a knack for suppressing nausea. And that my friends is because I am oh so happy to tell you that we are pregnant! Most of you probably already know this from phone calls, e-mail or Facebook but I wanted to announce it here too. I will write more about it later. Right now we are still just enjoying time together and soaking in this big change. Just know that we are so happy and that we appreciate your prayers so much.

Cargo

One of the things we love about life here is that somewhat odd phrases like, "There's a cargo plane landing on the airstrip in two hours that has room on it if you want to go!" is cause for immediate action. Such was the case yesterday. Like other organizations working in this area, our policy is to spend ten to twelve weeks in country followed by two weeks out for R and R. However, unlike other organizations, we don't have our own planes flying in regularly so we rely heavily on the available space of other people's planes coming and going. The difficult part about this is that it requires a lot of flexibility and very loose travel itineraries. The fun part is that you never know quite what to expect.

So at about noon yesterday Bryan and I were plucking damp clothes off the line and stuffing them into our packs alongside travel documents and passports as we rushed to meet the plane that had decided to come in a day early. We managed to pack up in record time and jumped into the ATV with our coworkers Dan and Laura and started the fifteen minute trek out to the dirt airstrip. The UN has been pouring a staggering amount of money into repairing the road to the airstrip lately and despite dodging a few spastic bulldozers, we were making the best time we ever had on the freshly grated road. But as we eased around a bend in the road we saw something that made our stomachs turn.

The first thing that registered was two men sprinting down the road towards us, the second with a big stick in his hand. But our attention was quickly diverted from the men who sped past us to the Land Cruiser stopped at an odd angle on the road in front of us. Its bulbar was nosed up against a mound of dirt on the side of the road and all of its doors were flung open. A donkey lay sprawled in the middle of the road, its load of goods from the market scattered several feet in each direction. Three or four people were pacing awkwardly near the vehicle and one girl, an East African expatriate I recognized from one of the NGOs in town, was staggering towards us. As we pulled up and jumped out of our car she slumped to her knees. I could hear her hysterically crying, "Jesus, sweet Jesus!" over and over again. Following her tearful gaze we could see an awkward mound of fur under the front of the Land Cruiser. Next to it was a long blue form. "There's a man still there!" the girl screamed. "He's under the car." The next few moments were a blur of Arabic, Kiswahili, and English as people from three different countries tried to communicate through their anger and fear and confusion. We were already out of cell phone range so Bryan pulled out our satellite phone to try and reach the doctor in town while Dan went to the front of the car to try and get whoever and whatever was underneath out as safely as possible. In the midst of all this the man with the big stick returned and added his ire to the already volatile situation after unsuccessfully chasing down the driver of the vehicle who had fled seconds after the accident. Eventually someone else got in the driver's seat and began to carefully back the vehicle up. We all held our breath as the car rolled backwards crunching miserably over gravel and sacks of food. I was waiting for the screams of whoever was caught underneath the car and dreading what we were about to see. But instead of the mangled body of a person we all breathed a sigh of relief as we saw nothing other than a second donkey, bloody and obviously in shock, but unbelievably alive and thankfully, alone. Next to him was just a long blue plastic tarp rolled up with string. I never thought seeing such a badly hurt animal would make want to laugh with relief, but it did yesterday, though still through tears.

We eventually made it to the airstrip and climbed a ladder into the belly of the cargo plane. Webbing flapped behind our seats, holding back thirty-five feet of air in the now empty cargo bay as we lumbered down the dirt airstrip and up into the low lying clouds. The praying girl who had also been heading to catch the same plane put a scarf over her face and slept. And as I closed my eyes on tiny propeller-blurred trees and rivers outside my window and settled into the deafening roar around me, I found myself saying a quick prayer too. I really, really hope those donkeys survive and go on to live miraculously long lives and tell their donkey grandchildren about the day they took on a Land Cruiser. Because if they don't survive, I suspect there will be a family in a village far from town that will miss them very badly.

Good Run

I often kick around ideas for a blog when I run in the evenings. This week I had flirted with a few random ones: how extracting maggots from my cat’s leg (I won’t tell you how many) has given me great peace that I didn’t miss my calling to the medical profession after all; how much the faded photographs a soldier showed us of himself crouching in tall grass with an automatic weapon reminded me of sepia tinted images of my father-in-law in Vietnam; how sad I am that a good friend is getting ready to move away and excited I am that my baby sister is about to start college. But as I set out to run last night all these pieces of the week peeled off and fluttered to the ground behind me. And at the end of a long week, it’s the memory of my run itself that lingers most.

I set off around six. Dark clouds were building in the southeast, but rain has been illusive lately and I didn’t expect it to come through. But I hoped it would. Though I am running a lot these days, I’m still not one of those people who enjoys it much more than how I feel afterwards. Though my runs get longer every time I go out, not a single one begins without the fleeting thought of “Can I really do this today?” So I play mind games with myself to get through it. Don’t start running until the stream and don’t stop until you get back to it. Short run have four different sections, long runs have six. Run fast up hills, slow down them. If a path separates then joins itself again, take one branch out, the other branch on the way back in. And always sprint the last stretch home. These rules structure every run I take.

In the first village I passed through I greeted a man digging around his sorghum and an old woman sitting on a stool with several babies at her feet. But after that point I saw no one else on the trail. The sandy path was full of prints under my tennis shoes – cows, goats, a bicycle track and little bare footprints. A lone black donkey trotted down the trail, easing me over into the grass as he made his way resolutely somewhere and I wondered if anyone was looking for him or expecting him. I heard lizards scuffle in the brush as I went by and birds cry from small trees but saw none of them. At one point a torn black plastic sack made me wince as it slithered near my foot. I was jumpy after my friend who often runs the same trail killed a puff adder sunning itself on the path last week. This made me start thinking about how I would say “I’ve been bitten by a snake!” in Arabic but all I could come up with was “I’ve been eaten by a snake!” which I fear would provoke more laughter than assistance getting to the hospital. I decided right then that I should look that one up, just in case.

The rain hit at almost the furthest point out on my run. It started as a light drizzle but steadily gained momentum until it sounded like the footsteps of thousands of little feet running in the grass beside me. It hit my forehead in cold drops and rolled down my nose into my open mouth. It soaked through my nylon pants which began sticking to my knees. I expected laughter as I ran through a second village, a crazy white woman running in the rain, but all I saw were sheep huddled under a baobab tree and smoke misting out of small huts. There are so many baobab trees in the village that I was almost untouched by raindrops through its entire length. At the edge of this village there is an old hand-dug well that they say was built as many as ninety years ago by British soldiers. I have always wondered why British soldiers would dig a well this far out of town and am curious if they thought the baobab grove was as beautiful as I do. There are usually a handful of women there pulling jerry cans on long ropes up out of the ground who offer me a drink as I go by, but yesterday the place was abandoned. And yet yesterday, I suddenly would have liked nothing more than a drink from that well.

At the rock where I turn around for long runs I almost broke a rule and actually stopped. The rocky green mountain rose wet and magnificent on my right. The heavy black clouds were rumbling menacingly behind me, still dropping cold clean rain. And the most unnaturally pink sunset was flaming directly in front of me, hurting my eyes with its brilliance and throwing my exhausted shadow back towards the storm. It was breathtaking. It seemed like I was the only person in the world, which felt beautiful and frightening.

But I didn’t stop. I slowed long enough to take try to soak it all in for one long moment, breathed a deep “thank you,” and turned back into the storm and ran home.

Libyan

The last coincidence in a long line of coincidences that finally makes you realize that the coincidences weren’t actually coincidences at all but rather your failure to understand something very clear to everyone else around you is usually the one that sticks in your mind. At least it’s been that way for me lately.

A few days ago I was buying some black and white beads at my favorite bead shop in the market when a man in the stall next door said hello. I had never met the man before and we quickly went through the usual greetings and a name exchange. This only happens about fifteen times per trip to town so I didn’t think anything of it until Bryan walked up and the man said something a wee bit odd to my husband. “Hello! I just met your wife. It’s nice to meet you as well.” He then asked the question that gave it all away. “So, are you from Libya too?” While Bryan looked at me for clarification I had one of those moments where dozens of other vaguely confusing occasions suddenly fall into place in a flash of blinding clarity (“Libya, how are you today?”; “Wait, where are you from?” or “You’re already half African”). We later explained the situation to a friend who laughed out loud at our story. “Libby” he said, “Your name means Libyan in Arabic.” Libyan. I am the Libyan. You may be wondering how in the world I couldn’t have known this before now. I’m wondering that a little myself. But there you go.

A second “coincidence” that I have noticed lately is what language educated men choose to speak to me. I have had a chance to explore this theory on several occasions too. Most recently it happened when we were introduced to a teacher at a local school. He was well dressed and carried himself with the kind of confidence I sometimes see in people who are well travelled. And despite the fact that Bryan initiated the greetings in Arabic, he replied in excellent English. Language is political, social and religious, and just like us, people here are often eager to practice languages they weren’t born into, so when the man shook my hand I complied with a general “Hello. How are you?” But to my surprise he overlapped me with a “Salaam Alekum. Inti kwaisa?” I quickly changed gears and answered him in Arabic before he turned back to Bryan and started into a conversation in English. This always surprises me but it has happened enough that I think it can’t be random. All I can come up with is that because women are typically far less educated than men in this country, if they are lucky enough to speak a major language at all, it will probably be Arabic and not English. I think that by default, educated men will speak to me in Arabic and my husband in English because he is a man. And I am a woman.

You might think that this subtle sexism would bother me (if that is in fact what it is). But on the contrary it delights me. For someone to first see my gender and not the color of my skin is so refreshing, even if it comes with a suitcase full of assumptions. When I run or go to the market or drive down the road, I hear “Khawaja, khawaja!” over and over and over again. And though it doesn’t always bother me, being constantly reminded of how starkly I stand out is not always comfortable. Which is why I am trying out something new. Lately I have been taking the time to stop on my runs to tell every mob of waving six year olds on the edge of the path that my name is Libby. I have told the fresh teenager at the butcher trying to sell me suspicious looking meat that my name is Libby. I have told the group of women balancing impossibly large containers of water on their heads as they walk past my house that my name is Libby. And little by little I think it may be paying off. There will probably never come a time when I won’t be called khawaja. But it’s the important things that I want people to know. That I am a woman. And that I am Libyan.