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.