Drums in the Distance

Dear Lydia,

It seems painfully cliché to start this with a reference to the weather, but I feel like you should know it is hot and muggy right now, a bit overcast outside where yesterday’s laundry is hanging limply on its second chance to dry. I scrambled to get it down yesterday when thunder started rumbling and the wind pushed in heavy black clouds over the rim of the horizon. But I should have known better because the storm rolled in from the South-West so ended up being all talk and nothing more. It’s the ones from the North-East that get me every time. No matter how mild-mannered they look and sound, they sometimes make me wonder if they are going to take the roof off when it’s all said and done.

We had one like that a few days ago. Bryan and the girls had taken Eli and his boys up on an invitation to walk down to the river in the afternoon while it was hot and bright outside (I was up to my elbows in flour). Ten minutes after they left I heard the first growl of thunder. Thirty minutes later the sky had split open and was pouring down so thick it was hard to see through. Bryan called in the midst of the deluge saying that it hasn’t quite let down on them by the river just yet but looked like it was about to and would I possibly be up for an adventure? I was, so I abandoned my baking project, threw on a raincoat and jumped in the ATV. At one point, when the grass was closing in over the top of the vehicle on the overgrown path and I was levelling small saplings as I crashed through the undergrowth, I seriously almost turned around and just let the guys carry my two whiney girls back home in the rain (I was pretty confident the two little ones and the adults who had to carry them were the only ones who were really at all interested in avoiding a long hike in the storm). But eventually the path opened up a bit and I found the soggy group surrounded by half a dozen local kids, all of whom piled in the back for the ride home. In the end, they all got home just as wet as they probably would have been otherwise in the bed if the ATV, but a little bit faster, and we did so with a fun story to boot.

Honestly, the thunder has been a welcome, even if sometimes unnerving sound these days. After bragging to my mom about how incredibly peaceful it has been here lately – no looming security rumours or urgent need to keep go bags ever ready – (and I wasn’t lying to her!), I’ve had to resort to being a bit more selective in what snippets of daily life I throw in a text message or email. You know how that goes, the necessary silence to avoid panicked rumors back home. That is one of the hardest things about life here to me, throwing up a Facebook post about bugs in my flour when really I want to say something more along the lines of “Oh my Gosh, you would never believe what we are hearing right now…!” But I understand the reasons why that’s important.

It was Friday evening and I was outside with Mikat wondering whether I should go look for Annabelle who had wandered off on an adventure with Josh when I heard it – that thrilling, terrible sound in the distance that could be a hallow jerry can being thumped from somewhere quite close, but just isn’t, or that might be thunder, but is just too even-toned and man-made. At that very moment Bryan walked in the gate from a UN security meeting that had gone unusually long and I was bummed to see from his face that the meeting wasn’t long just because some long-winded and overly sentimental expat was blabbing on melodramatically at the end of his six-month term. Thankfully, Annabelle and Josh wandered in just moments behind him, seemingly oblivious to the continued percussion the background as they showed us their skewers of captured grasshoppers.

We stayed close to the compound over the weekend, but other than that day, we’ve heard nothing more than the occasional round popped off by a drunk soldier or hunter and everyone is moving freely once again and without much fear. Those who came too close were apparently scattered and no longer much of a threat. Though, from what we hear, they were moving through with their women and kids and herds, apparently just trying to get further North without a fight. That means that after Friday night, many of the local hospital beds are full of women and kids, and I shudder to think of who all is still “scattered” in the bush.

Anyway, the incident, as far as it relates to most of us, is over. But it has meant that we are now all listening again. I forgot how exhausting it is to always be listening.

The days feel long but the weeks are flying by. We have started homeschooling the girls now, so most of my mornings are spent with them reading stories and praising pages printed with wobbly capital letters and paintings that draw much more on the use of colour than any discernible forms. But I love it. I really, really love it. And so do they. It has lent a stability and routine to our lives that we were all sorely needing.

A couple mornings a week Bryan will take over school and I will work on literacy stuff. I am so encouraged about how close we are to a big literacy push. In the next month or so I think we will have the primer, alphabet book and maybe even a song book and story book ready to print. I’m going to spend some time in the camp tomorrow testing the primer. On Saturday Bryan sat with a group and read Genesis Chapter one with them in their language for the first time ever. Moving doesn’t even begin to describe what that felt like.

I am feeling Baby Girl move more and more every day. I am a few weeks past the half-way point in this pregnancy now, right about the point where I transition from thinking, “Wow, this is going by so fast!” to the terrifying curiosity “How will this child possibly continue to fit inside my body for four more months...” I am ashamed to say I was a bit nervous about coming back pregnant after four months in America to a refugee camp. I mean, the typical African comment after you have been away of “Welcome back, you are so gorgeous and fat!” is one thing. But coming back after Mama’s cooking and pregnant to people whose UN food rations have been cut by several hundred calories a day is just cruel. I was smugly relieved the first time I was back around a bunch of women to hear one comment that my belly seemed small for this point in a pregnancy (A. Not true. B. Why do I still have to be so blasted American about this stuff?!). But good old Aisha, my oldest and dearest North African friend quickly stood up for me. “Well of course her belly looks small. Women with big butts always have small bellies.” Aaaand there it is. Welcome back.

The girls send Josh their love. They are learning more about interacting with boys than they ever have before in their lives now that there are three of them are living in your old house. This week alone I have heard Annabelle utter things I have never heard her say before, things like “We gave it a quick death,” or “It looked like thick green infected blood.” Though in all fairness, she answered the boys at the door the other day with a baby doll stuffed under her shirt, saying dramatically between pant breaths: “My tummy hurts. I think the baby is coming. You need to take me to the hospital!” So no telling what new things their parents are hearing from them around the dinner table at night.

In fact, as I write this I see the three little ones outside squatting in a circle around something on the ground and Annabelle is joyfully shrieking, “Step on it!” so I better close for now and go check on them. Give David and your babies our love. As always, you are greeted by many here.

Love,

Libby

Obligatory belly picture. (As we have determined, I am an American woman deep down after all.)

Art class in our little homeschool classroom...