Scorpions

You know those people who are so stinking nice, who are always incredibly cheerful and eternally optimistic that you just feel perpetually guilty around them because they kinda just make you want to slap them in the face just to see how they would react (except you know they would just respond with more unnecessary kindness so you stick to your simmering irritated guilt)? Or is that just me who occasionally feels this way…? Sometimes I wonder if the things that I write here might nudge me a little closer to coming across as that kind of person than I want to be (though I know that those of you who know me best are laughing hysterically). But when I write about the incredible life I have been given in an amazing place and how much fun I am having living it, bugs and all, I never want that to overwhelm the voice of the bad days. The voice of the days that you just want to scream and throw the mildewed towel in. The voice of the days that make you think you really are out of your mind for trying to pull this thing off after all. The voice of the days that make you say, I don’t think I can do this.

I do have an incredible life in an amazing place and I am having so much fun living it. But oh my friends, the bad days are real. 

The weird thing is, I am not sure what made this particular day so bad. We are all still healthy. The rain has cooled everything off. Language lessons are going great. It was the day before Bryan’s birthday and I was trying to pull off our customary cinnamon rolls in a charcoal oven which, in retrospect, was probably a little bit selfish as I am pretty sure he would have preferred birthday oatmeal and a happy wife to the dubious delicacies I grumpily served up with flour in my hair over the din of screaming babies. But that is neither here nor there.

There were more bugs that usual that night. Scorpions were evacuating our grass roof en masse and I had echoes of a story I recently heard about a baby in the camp who died of a scorpion sting as I stepped on and barely bruised the forth one of the night. The girls were in atypical cohesion as they both resisted sleep with every fiber of their being, one flopping and singing rebelliously under her mosquito net while the other kicked and squirmed in my arms under our net. The night just felt like a weight that kept getting heavier and heavier until finally, before I knew what was happening I was throwing a pillow across the room and screaming a word I would have been soundly spanked for saying growing up. A startled Bryan took my even more startled baby outside to swing in the hammock in the dark while I laid in bed and bawled for the child that was surely now going to die of cerebral malaria because her mother was having a fit inside.

It wasn’t pretty.

It was close to midnight before everyone was finally asleep and calmed down. Bryan and I sat on our plastic chairs in the dark. He asked if I was ok. I said I wasn’t sure. I think he was probably looking for the thing that had upset me, the emotion I was feeling, the reason for my outburst. And a significant part of my frustration is that I didn’t really have one answer. It was everything. It was nothing. It was things too small to mention. It was things too big to talk about.

The scorpions in my house drive me crazy. The utter lack of space for a family of four in a mud hut drives me crazy. Spending all evening rushing babies from supper to baths to mosquito nets before the mosquitoes come out and obsessively checking my daughters’ temperatures drives me crazy. Eating lentils four times a week drives me crazy.

But that is nothing compared to the give in my heart when my dear friend, a mother of three (it used to be four) whose UNHCR-issued tent fell down in the first rainstorm, tells me with genuine kindness how big and nice my house is. It is nothing compared to the way I feel when I hear that the young man making blocks for our (even-bigger) house couldn’t make it to work on Monday because his ten-month old baby boy died of diarrhea over the weekend. It’s nothing compared to looking over the pile of wrinkly mangoes I am buying at the market and seeing thousands and thousands of people lined up in the blazing heat to receive their sacks of grain to last them to the end of the month.  

I feel like I am having to tough it out to survive in a house that every single one of my neighbors would kill to live in. I stress over the health of my vaccinated children when I have every precaution and safety measure available at the tip of my fingers. I get bored with foods that people around me savor once in a blue moon, if ever.

The scorpions are a nuisance, but it is these opposing truths that split my mind wide open sometimes. They sit heavily on my heart, scrabbling for dominance over each other and kicking the wind out of my chest. It’s a claustrophobic feeling, like there is no way to escape the crush of reality.

(And then, to be honest, some days I really am just crying over the stupid bugs, not all the dead babies I should be weeping for, and that makes me feel crazy too.)

Earlier in the week I was telling Aisha, my closest friend from our years across the Northern border, about the scorpion I found in our bed, a few inches from Mary Katherine’s head. I don’t know what I expected her response to be. Horror, perhaps. Or empathy. Goodness knows she has probably had scorpions near her baby’s head in the camp. Maybe I was even looking for outright disinterest, as though I needed the assurance that it really wasn’t a big deal. Aisha’s life has bigger problems than stinging insects. But I didn’t get any of those things. She listened to my story and shuddered in distaste. But then she shrugged and said, “But God sees.” And that was it.

My horrible night is over and the claustrophobia has passed. Like it always does, a good cry and a few hours of deep sleep soothes the heart. But I know it will be back again at some point. And when it does, I will remember my friend’s words. Whether with comfort or trepidation, I’m not sure, but I will remember what she said. He does see.

First Rain

We finally had our first rain today.

The day was hot, suffocatingly hot, and sagged over us like a drunk friend. Around four Bryan left with the computer to go and try to send some emails from a neighboring compound. I piddled around the house with the girls who both seemed too hot to either sleep or play. I ignored the first few rumbles in the distance, we’ve been hearing thunder from afar for days, but as it grew louder we went outside to investigate. As I pushed Annabelle in her swing and listened to MKat suck her fingers snuggled up against my chest I scanned the sky, trying to figure out which way the storm was coming from. Storms in this place never fail to confuse me. They roll in from unexpected places and swirl in different directions all at once; the darkest clouds evaporate with hardly a sprinkle and unassuming white clouds let loose a fury of rain.

Today the sky in the Northwest was the color of a violent bruise and was skirted with gauzy white clouds that looked like they were in a hurry to get out of the way. A hawk fought for control as he circled in the wind, repeatedly skimming over the fleshy white blossoms at the top of our huge baobab that stood out sharply against the black sky. The whole image looked like one of the cliché paintings by amateur artists that I have seen in so many overpriced bookstores in Nairobi – melodramatic, unrealistic, beautiful. As the wind picked up and the thunder started breaking like the surf on distant rocks I could hear the voices of so many refugee children screaming happily from the direction of the camp, and I wondered how many people like us were standing outside waiting for the sky to break open.

I asked Annabelle several times if she was ready to go inside, and each time I was relieved when she resolutely said, “No!” Whether by biology or influence, she is my daughter. Eventually though the wind kicked up enough sand around us that it was hard to see, so we ushered ourselves back inside. By now the thunder sounded like an avalanche of rocks overhead and the first few fat drops were beginning to fall. The earth heaved a huge sigh of relief and closed it’s eyes in pleasure.

The mud hut that at times has seemed so uncomfortable was immediately more homey than it has ever been before. The girls lay on our big bed, reading books and kicking in the air respectively, in the warm light of recycled sunshine. I put a kettle on our gas range just as Bryan stumbled in the door, soaked to the bone but laughing because he was as excited as we were. As he dried off, I fixed us all mugs of hot red karakade which we drank to the roar of the storm outside.

After supper it was still raining so we bathed the girls in basins full of hot water on a table in the kitchen. We dressed them both in footie pajamas for the first time in weeks and tucked them in under the nets. Bryan lay with Annabelle in her bed and I snuggled with MaryKat in ours. The thunder was now far away, but the rain still tapped resolutely at the grass overhead. Happy frogs and bugs and bats all croaked and whirled and chirped up a raucous symphony in the sea beyond our little island. The girls fell asleep quickly. Bryan is snoring quietly as I type this in the dark.

There is a long list somewhere of all the things one should do in the fullness of this life, many of which I will never get to. But I am nearly positive that one of them is weathering a storm in a mud-hut with your family.         

I am glad to have done it tonight.

Hyena Eyes

On Facebook I have seen lots of people refer to “#firstworld problems”; these issues usually are about various technological devices or modern conveniences. I also have some friends who have made jokes of “#thirdworld problems” which usually involve latrines or various animals in unexpected places. But this week I have decided we need a third category, something along the lines of “First-world-people-in-the-third-world problems.” Those problems that only those few first-world people have, but we only have them when we are in the third-world. I have had several lately. They include:

When you read at night, big moths keep turning the pages of your kindle touch.

Or, you can’t fit all the stuff you brought on the chartered airplane in your mud hut.

Or, you don’t have any clean clothes because the ladies who hand wash your clothes all ran off on “Tribal Warfare Day.” (A long story for another time…)

Or, you can only send emails on your laptop because the internet access in the aforementioned mud hut is really crappy.

Because of that last particular problem I have been blogging by sending my mom emails (when we can get them to go out) that she then posts on blogger for me. So if you have sent me a Facebook message or had some dramatic happening in your life that I haven’t acknowledged, it’s just because I haven’t been online in a while.

It’s been a good week! It still isn’t raining yet but several blustery storms have rumbled through bringing with them the sweet tang of rain that smells dark and leafy green, like the salad I have been craving. Whether our bodies are just adjusting to the heat or it has actually cooled off some, I’m not sure but I have been enjoying those moments that I am not sweating profusely.

With the hovering imminence of moisture though, all the critters in the vicinity seem to quivering with excitement too. We’ve had a couple scorpions inside and a rat in the kitchen (all of which Bryan heroically disposed of). One night we also had a hunting spider in our room, an eight-legged horror the size of a lobster with the speed of Usain Bolt. I think they are completely harmless (though I’m not really sure why) but this particular one ran over my foot three separate times as I got ready to crawl in bed, vulnerably undressed and with only a headlamp for protection, all of which made me act like the room was full of cobras. Bryan kept telling me to step on it, which to my credit I did, but it just feels weird stepping on a bug that is going to squish like a mouse, which it also did. Anyway, as welcome as the cooler weather is, I think our near future holds many more late-night escapades with vermin.      

A guy came by a couple days ago to change money with Bryan and lingered around afterwards to chat. He is both a butcher and a local pastor and as he prepared to go he asked Bryan, almost as an afterthought, “Oh by the way, do you want some hyena eyes?” Bryan though he had either misunderstood or was hearing an unfamiliar euphemism, but upon clarification he realized that the man was in fact asking if he wanted to buy the eyeballs of a hyena. When Bryan asked what in the world he would use it for the guy said they are great for being able to see better or for coming up with great ideas. He denied that it was any kind of witchcraft, apparently just that odd thing between science and luck and common knowledge (I mean everyone knows hyena eyeballs are good for your eyesight, right?). Bryan said we would pass this time but the guy said he would at least bring a pair by sometime to show us. Oh my. Just when this place starts feeling normal something like that happens and I realize just how far from Kansas we really are.

We went to visit our friends in the camp on Friday. We sat in a grass house and drank strong sweet coffee out of little porcelain cups while we talked. Annabelle drank about three cups herself and yet miraculously slept the whole walk home Every time I walk into that place something catches in my throat. Wind was kicking up phantoms of dust all around us as throngs of children trotted around us singing and laughing (not many white babies come by their houses). The kids, despite being snot-nosed and fairly naked, seemed healthy and incredibly happy. Older kids were walking to school or hauling clean water. Younger ones were playing or toting around siblings. And yet I was so aware of the weighty presence of a thousand stories – how those kids got here, what they saw along the way, who they lost, what they remember -  hovering all around us. Every time I go to the camp I feel like I’m walking through an unexpectedly pleasing room that is haunted. There is nothing overtly unpleasant in sight but you can sense a presence in the room that only occasionally slips by in your peripheral vision. Maybe I do need a pair of Hyena eyes after all.