Liminality

I thought Annabelle would be napping as I write this. She usually is at this time of the morning.  Her bed is in the tent where she is safe from the flies and the cool breeze blows through open mesh windows on three sides. But she is feeling social (read “stubborn”), preferring to lay on my lap and talk to me about the lizard she sees on the wall behind me or the boys on the hill outside she can hear calling to each other.

It is so good to be home. I’ve probably said this before but coming back here from Kenya always feels like waking up from a long dream about another world. It feels like stepping back into real life while the details of the dream world grow hazier with each passing moment of wakefulness. Of course, that’s what it feels like when I leave this place too. I am always passing from one world to the next. Both real and both dreams.

Things have felt incredibly normal since we have been back - just as they have always been in the past two years. The market still has the same vegetables in the same stalls run by the same people. There are still more goats and pigs on the road than cars. Water is still a huge problem for everyone. In fact one of the only things that seems to have changed a whole lot as far as our daily lives are concerned is Annabelle. People have been so excited to meet her. In five days close to a dozen people have stopped by to greet and bless her, pulling her out of my arms eagerly to bounce and pet while she just stares back with her baby owl eyes. She is quite the novelty, the only khawaja baby most people have ever seen. They laugh at how white her skin is against theirs and most seem to think she looks just like Bryan. When we took her to town a few days ago we were scolded for bringing her out in the heat and one lady sternly instructed me on how to properly hold a baby (“Don’t you know how to hold her correctly?”). But the cook at our favorite restaurant left for a neighboring shop in the middle of our meal and returned with a soft yellow blanket and two cotton bibs, his gift for the “new person”. And at our favorite tea shop a man nearby bought our drinks and the tea lady herself rocked Annabelle and said, “This is our baby. All of ours.” I have a blessed child.

But the liminality of my life, the inbetweeness and not-yet-but-maybeness, lingers on. Our next door neighbors informed us last night that all the personnel in their organization are “temporarily relocating” (“evacuation” is a four letter word around here) for an unknown period of time. With them goes some good friends, a source of political info and rumors, a connection with kindred spirits and, quite possibly, our internet connection. It’s a bit early yet to know what this means for us. We are talking, listening, praying and preparing. Life couldn’t seem more normal and yet all that could change in a heartbeat. It’s weird to think of how different my life could look in the course of just a week. When we crawled in bed last night Bryan asked me how I was feeling and I found it hard to separate one emotion from another. There were spatterings of fear and hope, excitement and uncertainty. But maybe the biggest one was disappointment. Or the fear of disappointment rather. I don’t want to be foolish and I don’t want to be in danger or put those I love in danger. But I really, really don’t want to leave either.

I got up early and went for a run this morning. I am not a morning runner. I never have been. We’ll see whether or not I turn out to be one. It usually makes me puke up my empty early-morning stomach. But an early-morning baby and the gift she has left around my mid-section has inspired me to a change of nature, so I left her cooing in bed with her Papa this morning and set off on the trail that runs along the base of the mountain. It was so cool, almost chilly. Wet clouds stuck to the tops of the hills like damp cotton, torturously close to the parched earth but like every other morning this week, offering nothing more than a cruel sprinkle. I only passed a few huts on the trail and saw very few people. A little boy with sleepy eyes waved as I passed his house and a woman in the distance carried buckets to someplace that still has water. I heard someone in the distance chopping firewood for a breakfast fire but could never see them. While I ran I thought about how much I would miss this running trail. How much I would miss my house and my tent, my neighbors and my hill. It would be so unbelievably disappointing. But I realized as I ran, that I don’t really have a right to that word. But I was running past the houses of people who probably do. Disappointing is not having a satellite phone to call in a plane to get you out of trouble. Disappointing is not having a vehicle (of sorts) to drive out of town in if trouble comes to you. Disappointing is not having another home somewhere safer than this that you can always return to and a dark blue passport to get you there. Disappointing is not being safe because of either the color of your skin or the language you speak or the political party you belong to. That’s disappointing.  

I didn’t lose my cookies on the trail this morning so maybe I’ll keep up the new habit. It still hasn’t rained though. The world is still cold and dry and expectant, waiting for something to change.