Lokichoggio (again)

We woke up at 5:15 this morning to catch our flight out of Wilson Airport, the launching pad out of urban East Africa to half-a-dozen of the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster areas and most exotic game reserves. I felt a twinge of self-consciousness as I squeezed my Motherhood Maternity clad belly and squirmy eighteen-month-old obtrusively between UNHRC representatives in linen business suits reading glossy dossiers, and tourists in North Face gear toting professional grade cameras around their sunburned necks in the small crowded airport terminal. But that’s who we are I suppose, our own complex category of crazy heading into the beautiful mess that this part of Africa can sometimes be.

We are here in the outpost town of Lokichoggio until Wednesday when a bush pilot friend will fly our chartered Cessna up North and drop us off. Right now Bryan is out of cell range somewhere near the border trying to get our passports stamped in at the hut they call immigration. Annabelle is sprinkling sand on a bored looking tomcat sitting in a green canvas chair nearby. She’s collected a handful or bottle caps and pebbles in a plastic container at her feet and periodically looks up to exclaim something unintelligible about the noisy guineas in the bushes. We are only one foot out of civilization and already she is happier than I have seen her in weeks.

I am too, I think.

Sweat is wearing a path down the back of my calves though Loki’s dramatic skyline is heavy with rain clouds. Mary Katherine is tossing and turning inside of me as though she can sense the change in the world outside too. But it feels good to be on the move again. It turns out the thing I grieve the most about our lifestyle lately, our ever-packed bags and changing view from the bedroom window, is also the thing that makes me feel invigorated today. Or maybe it’s just because in this case the move is taking us one step closer to putting away the suitcases for good for a while. I’m not sure. But even with the sweat and the promise of far more to come, I’m really excited.

We will be in North Africa for about five weeks before we come back out to wait for Mary Katherine to be born in Nairobi. We will stay in the simple house of some friends working with another organization (they are in Nairobi to have their baby right now) while we try to get our feet under us. Bryan will be working to get a fence up around the plot that will become home and a couple of cement slabs laid for what will eventually be our floors. Annabelle and I will be doing a lot of adjusting back to the life we have been away from for a year – bucket baths, creative cooking with eggplant, making the secret nutella stash last, learning language, making new friends and catching up with old ones, trying to nap in the heat.

Choosing to deal with Braxton Hicks and potty training a strong-willed toddler in a part of the world that doesn’t have running water, electricity or any fruit in the market beyond the occasional tomato might seem a little crazy. Or a lot crazy. (It alternates between the two for me depending on the day of the week and how much sleep I’ve had the night before.) But in some bizarre way, it sounds like everything in the world that I want to do. I’m going with the two people I love most back to a life that I have missed. Genuinely and deeply missed. It’s not going to be fun every day. But something tells me it’s going to be really good on at least most of them.

Sometimes I wonder if I am being overly-glib. In the next few weeks we will see if eventually that one-too-many ants in the sugar bowl, that one-too-many mosquito bites on my baby, that one-too-many degrees on the thermometer after sunset will send me over the edge. Maybe it will, who knows. But right now whether out of an intrepid spirit or profound naiveté, I am really looking forward to the next season of life.