Dear Lydia - Rest

Dear Lydia,

 The water is almost completely gone now. There are still a few places that the kids wade out with mosquito nets to try and catch the last of the mudfish but mostly now it is shallow enough that from the back porch I can see trails of kids dashing across the wet field at full speed. They look just like they are running stark naked on the surface of a lake instead of in ankle-deep muddy water. It seems that the deeper we get into dry season the more birds come out of hiding, perhaps drawn to the last remnants of water. And the more barren the landscape the more irreverently colorful they are – Red Bishops, Abyssinian Rollers, Bee-eaters, all looking like flecks of living paint splattered on the wrong canvas. They are so beautiful. Sometimes I sit on the back porch with my binoculars wishing my ornithologist father were sitting next to me with a cup of tea, while I simultaneously hope that the local ragtag militia camped on the other side of the ridge don’t think I am spying on them instead of birds. (But no worries. When I want to do that I sneak behind the latrine with the binoculars. I am happy to report they almost always look bored.)

I can’t believe we are leaving for our Christmas R and R tomorrow! These six weeks have gone so fast. In the first few days that we were back I was always running through lists in my mind – lists of what to take if we had to evacuate with only a small bag, how to entertain the girls if we were stuck on the UN compound for three days, what all needed rat-proofing before we left - but the past few weeks have been full of everything other than contingency worries and it has been wonderful. Security and stability may be a very delicate illusion, but it is one I am living with quite happily right now.

That being said, we are so ready for a couple weeks out as a family. We are pretty run down. We hit the ground running when we came back in and haven’t stopped since; and though all the projects and relationships and possibilities that are rolling because of that energy are exciting, we have all been sick for the past couple weeks and can’t seem to kick it either. Nothing serious, just upper respiratory junk, but it keeps hitting us over and over again. We’ve all been on antibiotics this month. Bryan sounds like he should be in a TB ward and I was in bed all day on Saturday. The girls are snotty messes but thankfully it hasn’t seemed to slow them down. They have recently added a young blind chicken to their menagerie of local animals and take turns carrying it around with them everywhere. I was worried they were hurrying it to its already rapidly approaching death, but it cheeps pitifully every time they put it down and falls asleep when they hold it, so I keep my mouth shut for now.

I have been meaning to tell you that Om-Iman had her baby! Do you remember her? She is Musa’s daughter-in-law, the one that had a string of miscarriages and still births. Her stillbirth was the story that I submitted to that book of short stories that was recently published. My copy of the book arrived with some cargo on a plane flown by Jim Streit the day before she delivered (he also smuggled us in some cheese. God bless bush pilots!). I was ridiculously excited to get the book and confess to a bit of an ameteur happy dance when I saw my words in print for the first time. Leila, who features largely in the story, asked me what in the world I was freaking out about and when I told her and showed her her name right there on page 89 she kinda shrugged and said what I am pretty sure is the Rotana equivalent of “Okay, whatever,” and went back to sweeping. That woman keeps me humble.

The next day though Musa came and told us Om-Iman had just delivered a baby at the MSF hospital. He hadn’t seen his newest grandchild yet and I was so eager to see the little one I have been praying for daily for months so we jumped in the ATV and went to visit her. She was one of five new mothers in a row of beds in a massive green tent kindly guarded by a handful of friendly midwives. If that fat pink baby boy in her arms didn’t look so much like his daddy and if she wasn’t still shaky from pushing him out I would think he must have been misplaced, he was so fair. But he looked healthy and strong, the answer to so many prayers with his balled up fists and scrunched face. The day before I had reread the words Om-Iman had spoken over a year earlier, God sees everything. He sees our sorrows as well as our joys and we must be patient through both. She said those words to me while milk from a lost baby slowly soaked through her shirt. But on this day, seeing her story brimming over beyond the few paragraphs I once cupped with my hands was a beautiful thing to me. Sitting at the end of her green plastic mattress while her tiny son squinted grumpily at the mild flash of my camera and Musa strutted proudly down the hall greeting and congratulating the other curious new mothers, I was a happy person in the company of happy people.

Those brief moments with Om-Iman encapsulated a tension I often experience here, one you may relate to. It is a tension I most often feel when I write, trying to describe this place to people who have never been here before. I fear I often romanticize the beautiful – (mint tea under a baobab! new babies! People writing down their language for the first time!) or dramatize the ugly (bombs! Malnourished babies! Rejected rape victims!). But the tension is real, and it comes from living neck-deep in both the most breath-taking and the most horrifying aspects of the human experience that this world has to offer. War, hunger, sorrow, loss and death rub at one shoulder while resilience, hospitality, laughter, music and family all crowd at my other shoulder. Each clamors for attention, constantly vying for precedence over my emotions. And while the experience of living in such vibrancy, in a place absolutely pulsing with dangerous energy can be draining, painful even, it also makes me feel more alive than anywhere else in the world. Life here, for all its complexities, stresses and fears feels somehow more real and more urgent in a way that leaves the convenience of other places feeling muted and bland.

I struggle to put words to this place, picking up tired metaphors and broken phrases and fitting them into a mosaic that is a crude imitation of the real thing. I do it because I feel like, well, someone has to! It is to incredible not to at least try and describe. So I romanticize, I dramatize, and yet somehow still the most romantic and the most dramatic fall vastly short of this living, breathing realness that I am walking through.

Then again, maybe I feel free to laud this “realness” the night before I leave for the “muted” world of hot showers and ice-cream for a couple weeks. Who knows. I am grateful you have known this place, even if only for a season, though I pray you will know it for many more. On the days you miss it like crazy, don’t forget that it can make you absolutely insane in a heartbeat too. Even so, it is a rare privilege to miss a part of the world like this too, one that I am glad I share with you.

As I cleaned up the house today in preparation of taking off tomorrow, I couldn’t help but think about how when we come back in January, it will be with David. We are so excited to see him! When I told the girls today they were disappointed that you and the kids wouldn’t be coming for a visit too. Annabelle thought about it for a minute and then said, “Well, Lydia can stay with Rebekah but David can bring Josh with him. Tell them to do that!” And while I would gladly keep up with one more monkey for a couple of weeks, I know that this isn’t really possible right now. But Annabelle didn’t really understand why not and was a bit sulky. Mikat even tried to convince me to get in on the deal by promising to be sweet. And as much as I love my youngest daughter, I would advise against stuffing Josh into a suitcase based on that promise.

I will write again from Uganda. The internet will be good enough that I will even get some pictures up, inshallah! Love to you all,

Libby