Dear Bryan

Dear sweet husband,

I miss you so much! I can’t believe it has only been three days since I last saw you. I am afraid the next week a half is going to be an eternity. It was so good to hear your voice tonight, even if only for a few minutes. I still can’t believe the cell networks have been down for so long. Thank goodness for the SAT phone. I only wish we could talk longer! Seven minutes a night makes me realize how much we usually yap during the day.

I am so glad you were able to go into the camp today and greet people. I am so relieved to hear that even with the fighting going on in other parts of the State the UN was able to get at least ten days of rations to people. Praise God! Have you seen Kaltoum yet? How are her kids? I know people must have been so happy to see you. I know you greeted everyone for us but I can’t not tell you to please, please greet everyone for us and send them our deepest love. Let them know that we never stop praying for them.

As happy as I am to know you are there, I can’t help but feel such a wave of sadness to think of you sleeping in our new home all alone. It must be so filthy after being locked up for four months in the dry season. I imagine our new furniture, the girls’ books on that small shelf made from leftover construction timber, our sagging Christmas tree complete with tacky ornaments and a broom angel put up with such love and abandoned forty-eight hours before its big day, I think of all these things covered in dust and the invisible footprints of whatever creatures settled in our flustered wake, and it makes me so sad. We are supposed to be there! Is it lonely? I know you have a million people to talk to and meet with. Your days are probably full of long conversations over coffee. But the house, our house, I imagine that at night it is still a bit of a lonely place.

I am certainly lonely without you, but of course I have the girls and it’s honestly hard to imagine how anyone can be too lonely with them around. My days are filled with tea parties and drawing parties and reading parties and slow walks to the market for mango juice, stopping to inspect every bug and stick and rock and leaf on the way, followed by a mango juice tea party when we get back home. There is a certain freedom in just embracing motherhood while you are away and not feeling the burden of any responsibility other than their care. They are the most exhausting delight I can imagine. I think it is good we made the decision to stay here instead of traveling back to Nairobi to wait for you there. They are happy here with all the neighbors and mangoes and mud, and another transition in the midst of so many transitions would be hard. Annabelle feels your absence the most. She doesn’t comment on it much but she feels it.

I miss processing things with you. I have been staying up way to late reading the news, when the internet is good enough to bring it in, and I end up crawling in bed without you feeling sick and anxious about the world. I have to stop reading it all, especially at night, but I don’t. I try to keep everything from the girls, there is nothing in their world to alert them to any problems, but Annabelle hears my intakes of breath when I read about people being slaughtered in churches, mosques and hospitals in the latest massacres and she always asks, “What, Mama? What is it?” And she doesn’t easily take “Nothing, baby,” for an answer. And it really isn’t nothing, is it? She always prays that God will keep the soldiers away from where you are.

Marykat stayed with Jinti today while Annabelle and I went to the market. I bought the girls frilly Easter dresses in the market today and plan on wearing a loud head wrap on Sunday. When in Rome, right? Annabelle walked the whole way and nearly fell asleep on the boda on the way home. She was sitting between me and the driver while I sat sidesaddle in a tobe, clinging to my basket of fruit, my baby and the motorcycle seat for dear life as we careened up the gullied path to the house. Our mothers would have killed me to have seen us. But we made it home to a happy MaryKat alive and well. Tomorrow we are going to boil eggs and put stickers on them to hide after church. It was the best I could come up with on short notice. ( : Sorry we probably won't be having a bunny cake this year.

I should close for now. Our firstborn is snoring in our bed and waiting for me to join her. She has taken your place as family-snuggler, don’t worry. It’s like sleeping with a flailing octopus at times. But I honestly don’t mind the company.

I miss you so much but am already looking forward to seeing you in Nairobi in under two weeks now. Have peace in knowing that we are happy and healthy. We are drinking water, doctoring our cuts, charging our phones, all those things you normally help us with. Have peace also in knowing that I am not worried about you either. I trust you and our God to keep you safe. And I am mostly jealous that I am not there with you. 

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I love you so much, baby. Good night.