Unavailable

Last night I dreamed we were back home. We had just landed in a little plane, and like so many times in real life, we were trying to lug boxes of supplies from the airstrip to the house. It was night and I could barely make out the shadowy form of soldiers on the blurred peripheries of my dream. As we waded through piles of cargo and I struggled to figure out why we had so much stuff with us, someone called Bryan and asked, “Why are you back? It’s still not safe here. Bombs will be falling any second!” In my dream I had a sinking sense of fear and in slow-motion dread began looking around for a hole to hide in with Annabelle.

It was only a dream, not a nightmare. It didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat but instead the dream slowly oozed to the surface of my consciousness when I got up this morning, like water seeping up to a hole in a dry river bed. But the dream, one of several I have had lately, reminds me of how wrapped up my thoughts and emotions still are with the place we so recently left. Two weeks ago we were getting daily security updates by phone call or through conversation over a hot cup of sweet tea in a private corner of the market. Now all we know is what we read on news sources online or in an email with second or third-hand tidbits via the doctor still on the ground. Bombs have been dropped at least twice since the day we left. Most people have fled our town. All the phone lines have been cut off. This last bit we know from experience. When we try to call friends left behind to find out where they are and how they are, a canned woman’s voice sweetly tell us in Arabic that the person we are trying to reach is “unavailable”. And for the hundredth time we hang up and wonder what kind of unavailable they are. In a refugee camp across the border with thousands of other people who have run for their lives? Hiding in the bush, living off of what they can find, build and make? Injured in a hospital with no running water or electricity? Our minds rush to fill in the big empty blank they keep running into and our imagination leaves us feeling heartsick.   

    

Bryan, Annabelle and I have been at my parent’s house in Tanzania for almost a week now. When we walked in their front door I felt like someone tripped the cord of adrenaline that had kept me going for the past few weeks and I immediately deflated into a puddle of exhaustion. I felt like I could hardly move for those first few days. But we are recovering. We don’t pause what we are doing when an airplane flies overhead anymore (but I have jumped a little at the occasional gunshots of my parent’s neighbors hunting wild boar nearby). Annabelle, my poor baby who has hardly been in one place longer than four weeks in her five short months of life, has finally begun to relax and settle into the comfort of having her own room for the first time ever. I love picking her up and smelling a faint scent of Mary Kay sunscreen in the soft fuzz of her head, rubbed off from long moments in the rocking chair with her grandmother. Bryan has been productive, hardly missing a beat in responding to work emails and chipping away at a big survey report. I am still trying to figure out where I am exactly. I feel relaxed but unexpected splashes of emotion remind me I am still processing everything. At various times I feel relief and guilt, irritation and grief, peace and sadness. But overall it is good to be in a safe place where I can sort them all out through scribbles in journals, quiet prayers and long talks with Mama in the shade of the tamarind tree while the baby wiggles on a blue blanket in the grass.   

Last week I was thinking about a day I remembered from at least a year ago. Bryan and I were out in a remote village in North Africa and spent the afternoon with a family that surely must have been among the most poor I have ever been with. Four adults and more children than I could really tell slept in one rotting mud hut. The oldest member of the family was a woman that looked like she was near one hundred years old. Her flesh was droopy, like chewed gum hanging from tired bones and her hair was sparse and white. Her eyes though sunken were still bright and alert. Too old to gather firewood or water or even pound roasted coffee beans, her primary job seemed to be caring for the youngest member of the family, a baby only a few months old and malnourished beyond belief. Though tiny, the baby bore a shocking resemblance to his grandmother with sharp protruding bones, coarse hair and eyes that carried more awareness of pain than they should have. You would think such a frail whisper of life would have been treated with the upmost caution. We often tiptoe around death, giving him a wide berth. But this baby wasn’t coddled. He was gently jostled, teased and kissed on the cheeks just as any other baby would be even as he pitifully struggled to cry. I remember thinking that there is no way this baby could live much longer and I am sure there was no one more aware of that than his family. But even with this painful knowledge, that family loved that baby full-heartedly, even while they recognized it would likely hurt them more in the end than if they simply cared for him with guarded hearts.

The metaphor is imperfect, but I feel like the North Africans that I think about these days as I wonder where they are have taught me something about life in the time that I have known them. It is worth loving, fully, even if you know it is going to hurt deeply in the end. In the weeks, days, even hours before we left our home two weeks ago, friends and neighbors laughed about the future together. They planted their gardens, repaired their houses and chatted over hot drinks about whether or not war would come and they would have to run away. They weren’t in denial; their fear was palpable, especially in those last few days. But they weren’t resigned and morose either. There was still music to write and dominoes to play, regardless of what tomorrow might bring. I am so grateful for this wisdom I was allowed to witness. Perhaps initially with a little guarded resistance of my own, I fell in love with a place and a people two years ago, knowing that it might end with me saying a hurried goodbye even if only for a season. I believe in my heart of hearts that there will be happy reunions again someday too. But until then I am hurting for those who taught me something about love and pain and life and praying that they will be safe.

September 2nd

For all the times I’d imagined the phone call, for some reason I had never thought about it coming in the middle of the night. I’d thought about how I’d feel when we got it, what I’d say and rush to do first, but for some reason I never thought about it coming when I was sound asleep. But as it turned out, it did.

At one am on Thursday night I woke to Bryan saying softly, “I just got a text from Michael.” My brain was still foggy with sleep so for a moment I all I could think was , why would he be texting us in the middle of the night? But then my mind began to clear as I recalled all the messages this close friend and political informant had been sending us in the past couple days. The government has just moved 40 tanks to the state capital. This might trigger war in the near future. Call me please. And The rebels are sending additional forces to the front lines and they are on standby (maximum alert) for any eventualities. My mind cleared quickly as I sat up and Bryan read the latest from the screen of his phone: They have started in the stare capital just right now (fighting) security source said. Be vigilant. Bryan and I sat in the dark in our pajamas and I remember taking in a deep breath of the quiet night around us and thinking, this is it. After all this time this is really it.

Bryan got up, put his shoes and headlamp on and went next door to tell Dan and Laura the news. I laid there in the dark for a few moments, listening to Annabelle baby snore in her Pack N’ Play beside me and trying to collect my scattered thoughts. I flipped on a flashlight and started to journal, but Sept second’s entry in sloppy blue ink will forever read only, “Well, we just got the call…” because at that moment I heard something outside that made my skin prickle. I turned off my light, lifted the mosquito net and tiptoed to the back window where I pressed my face to the screen. Outside in the night lit only by the sliver of hungry moon, I could hear footsteps, hundreds of them moving quickly and quietly on the path just behind our bamboo fence. There wasn’t a single sound to mark their passing other than their steady footfalls – no throat cleared or knuckle popped – just the monotonous thud of boots on earth. Hundreds of soldiers were moving past in almost absolute silence. And within minutes, even their footfalls had been swallowed up in the night. If I had been asleep I would have never even known of their presence. I wasn’t scared of these men in that moment; I knew they were rebels interested in protecting the same people we are here to try and bless. But it was still eerie to think of the discipline it takes for so many to move so quietly and of the reasons why they would. I think it was this eeriness that snapped me out of my stunned inaction and got me moving. It wasn’t time to journal. It was time to pack.

The night felt too short to get everything done that we needed to in order to leave but far too long to shake a growing sense of unease. Annabelle slept on, oblivious in her mosquito net womb, while Bryan and I rushed to dismantle solar panels, clean out the refrigerator and prioritize the few things we could carry with us. We stopped every few moments, straining our ears for the sounds of planes overhead or ammunition fire, but never heard either. Even so, the night took on a cliché feel of ominous foreboding, as though scripted by a melodramatic writer. An owl cried hauntingly from the hill behind our house and lighting flashed beyond the horizon giving me the unnerving sensation of someone in my peripheral vision taking my picture. While we worked news and rumors continued to filter in. The rebels have been pushed out of the state capital but are advancing on other fronts all across the state. There was a firefight at the airstrip. Someone is trying to arm the police against the rebels in town. Planes could be overhead to drop bombs by early morning.   

We contacted an organization in Nairobi who said they could have a Cessna caravan to us a few hours after sunrise. The plane was set to leave Kenya at first light, but if there was increasing conflict in our town or if Antinovs began dropping bombs, we would have to try and find a way out over land. Although this sounded a little exciting to me in principle (“Just think about the blog I could write, Bryan!”), the fact of the matter is an over land evacuation in ATVs at the height of the rainy season could have been disastrous. There is at least one river crossing on the route we would take, and we weren’t confident that we could cross it, safely or otherwise. Not to mention the security on the roads. We were praying the plane option would work.

Dawn came, calmly and unhurried. Somehow being able to see made me feel better even though the sounds around us became more pronounced in the light too. On the road we could hear cheering and the high pitched squeal of whistles. Later came the coughing roar of tanks rolling down the road out of town belching acrid smoke that took its time dissipating over the mountain. By eight we were putting the last few padlocks on the doors and carrying our suitcases (and Annabelle’s Pack N’ Play) out to the front gate. Annabelle sat contently in her baby carrier snuggled up against my chest and inspected the flurry around her with minimal interest.  We said final goodbyes to our guards who were eating watermelon by the front gate and swapping the latest bit of news they’d heard with rough laughter and tired eyes. They chucked Annabelle’s cheeks and salaamed her again and again in a way they made my heart heavy. For the millionth time this week I found myself trying to cram a world of emotion and meaning into simple words. We will pray for peace. If God wills we will return. Goodbye.

 

The town doctor, a brilliant physician and local hero from his service here in wars gone by, roared into our compound in a land cruiser minutes before we were to meet the plane at the airstrip. We shoved bags into the back of the car where a soldier escort sat with two Kenyan medical staff also being evacuated and clamored in next to them. Annabelle and I were ushered to the front seat and we hoisted ourselves in, being careful not to brush the doctor’s wood-barreled AK-47 wedged next to his seat. When we were all in and before he reversed out of the gate, the doctor twisted around in his seat and in a voice more serious than I have ever heard him use before, said, “Okay now everyone listen. We are driving to the airstrip. Everyone keep your eyes on the sky. If you see a plane I will slam on the brakes and everyone jump out of the car and run. Do you understand?” We all nodded mutely. Apparently satisfied that we at least partially grasped the gravity of the situation, he slammed on the gas and we went careening down the road on our way. And as we jerked from side to side over potholes I thought of how grateful I was to have made the decision to wear pants. I don’t know how fast I could move with Annabelle in my arms anyway, but it would be a lot slower if I was in a skirt.  

Up to this point the emotion that I was most aware of in myself was one of excitement. I wasn’t scared for my life or that of my child. In fact, I couldn’t help but think that a childhood spent in the back yard running from “bad guys” from the tree house to the “flying machine” we built on the swing, with a baby doll tied to my back was probably the best training I could have possibly received for this moment. It felt surreal. Like pretend adventure. But on the drive to the airstrip, that excitement bowed and made a graceful exit so that sadness could make its grand entrance on the stage of my heart. We drove down roads we have spent two and half years on and yet overnight they had become unfamiliar. Soldiers in green uniforms with big guns were everywhere, not bored or intoxicated as I have seen them before, but alert and focused. They strode down the road purposefully or stood at corners and under trees watching us roll past. But more moving than the soldiers were the townspeople themselves. Like us, they were fleeing – women with beds on their heads, children with younger siblings in tow, men carrying heavy satchels. People were scared and running for their lives. But unlike us they weren’t heading to a plane that would carry them to another home in a safer place. They were heading to the bush, to the border, to refugee camps and homelessness. It was like driving through all the pictures I have ever seen on the news from a hundred other places in someone else’s home, someone else’s war, someone else’s pain. And for the first time that morning I felt the tears burn the back of my eyes. But I blinked them away. Not yet. There will be time for that, but not yet. 

When we reached the airstrip a military commander who didn’t know the doctor flagged us down and slowly circled the car, peering through the windows at us to make sure we weren’t smuggling out a spy or government soldier. I knew he meant us no harm, but his angry eyes and refusal to respond to greetings weighed heavily on me and again, I knew that this was not pretend. When he was satisfied that we were all who we claimed to be he gruffly waved us on and we drove on through and then all tumbled out on the dirt airstrip. Dan and the doctor drove to the end of the strip to lay out an old white bed sheet, a signal to the pilots that all was clear for them to land. While we waited for the plane, now only minutes away, we milled tensely and watched the soldiers clustered under a tree behind us. At one point we heard raised voices and watched as a young man in uniform sitting on the ground with his hands behind him was shuffled into the back of a truck which drove away quickly. “A prisoner of war,” someone explained. “He was injured and found hiding in the grass over there.” My stomach turned at the thought of what his day had already been like and how it would end.

The Cessna caravan droned overhead moments later and came in for a quick landing. The small plane taxied in front of us and the back stairs were instantly lowered to the ground. One of the pilots jumped out and waved us to him and we all shuffled over through the hot blast of the plane’s engines as quickly and as orderly as we could. Bags were tossed in the back, seats were taken, seat belts were clicked into place and in mere minutes we were racing back down the runway. As we lifted off the ground I strained to see any evidence of the conflict that was forcing us from our homes below me but I couldn’t see anything from the air. No tanks, no running people, not even my white sheet on the ground. Everything was green and quiet and still. But even with the illusion of peace below us, it was a relief to be in the air, to be moving above and away. A heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, soul-aching relief. 

We landed in Y___ about twenty minutes later, a town in the far south of our state, to pick up a young man who was just needing a lift back to Kenya. He was on board quickly and again, we were back up in the air in minutes. I feel like we all started to relax into the flight at this point, laying our grief and worry aside for a moment and just letting the exhaustion take over as we sank into our seats and tried to find comfortable rests for our heavy heads. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet when I felt the plane bank sharply to the left. I opened my eyes and saw the pilot carefully maneuvering the plane in an arc, turning us back in the direction we had just come from. The co-pilot removed his headset and turned back to shout to us over the roar of the engines: “We just got a call that we need to go back to Y___ to pick up a couple more people. We are going to drop you guys off in a little town just across the southern border so we can refuel and better assess the situation before we go in and get them.” We all nodded, a little uncertain of the situation, but trusting of the pilots decisions. We landed fifteen minutes later on an airstrip much rougher and more overgrown than our own. We were met by a crowd of half-naked children and a few khawaja women who worked at a small clinic. As we climbed out, already weary though it was only mid-morning, we were greeted warmly by the crowd. You’ve come from K___? How was it? Are you okay? Were you there when the bombs were falling? We smiled reassuringly and said, “No, no we’re fine. We left because of trouble in other parts of the state. It might get bad soon but there were no bombs in our town.” I will never forget the way the smile froze on the face of the woman I was speaking to when I said those words. “But there were bombs,” she said slowly and looking almost apologetic. “We’ve been hearing the reports all morning. An Antanov flew over not an hour ago and dropped bombs on K___.” For the second time that day my stomach reeled and I felt tears pushing at the corners of my eyes. Annabelle suddenly felt heavy in my arms and I wanted to sit down somewhere but there was only gravel and grass. I felt stunned, weak with gratitude and the fear that had already missed the show but showed up late anyway. A few phone calls confirmed everything. Less than ten minutes after our plane had taken off, the Antanov flew over and started rolling bombs out of its belly. What’s more, it has been behind us in the air all the way to Y___ and less than two minutes after we picked up the one passenger there, it had bombed the airstrip. Bombs rolling out over the place where our plane had sat only 90 seconds earlier. And we had no idea. The phone calls to friends back home were painful. Michael said his wife and children were hiding in a dry river bed by the border which had been closed against the flood of people trying to cross it. Osman who had come to see us off at our home that very morning, said he had run to the bush and was hiding with his friends. The doctor said already the injured were being brought to the hospital – men, women and children. Ten minutes. Two minutes. My memories are of rushing and watching and flying away. Ten more minutes, two more minutes and those memories would be so different. Like the memories of so many we left behind.

I am writing these words from the upstairs room of a big house in Nairobi, listening to the rain falling softly outside. I tried to nap a little while Annabelle did but sleep won’t come easily until I get these words off of my heart. People keep asking how we’re doing and what we’re feeling and it’s hard to know what to say. I am not traumatized but neither am I unaffected. In the days ahead I will write more as emotions and thoughts settle. But I must close for now. Thank you for listening.      

            

Beads

Last night we were invited to an iftar, a Ramadan fast-breaking at sunset. Our hosts were a group of refugees from the mountains to the West of us who arrived in town soon after the bombs started falling in their home area. They fled a couple of months ago, leaving loved ones behind and dodging government checkpoints along the way, arriving in our little town with little more than the clothes on their backs. Over two hundred are here now, thirty or so of which are practically camping on an NGO compound at the base of the mountain. And these were the ones who invited us to share a meal with them. 

Bryan and I arrived a little later than we had planned and food was served only minutes after we got there. Dan and Bryan were ushered to a courtyard with the other men where there were mats laid out for praying and eating. Laura and I stayed behind a woven grass wall in front of a mud hut with several other women where food was brought to us on a round metal tray. While we started into a dish of dates I joined in the conversation but watched out of the corner of my eye as Annabelle (“Hanna”) was bounced from one pair of arms to the next. She was long overdue for a nap and as I monitored her sleep-heavy eyes taking in her new surroundings, I prayed she would be gracious to these kind people. And whether by God’s miraculous grace or her infantile self-absorption, she drank up the attention, flashing a few groggy smiles between kisses and cheek pinches. At one point a stately woman began walking down the path away from us with my baby still in her arms. Dusk was already gently draping itself over us and I could just make out Annabelle’s white head bobbing contently against a black shoulder, moving slowly away from me before disappearing into the dark mouth of a small house. I returned to my food but kept glancing down the path, wondering if I was supposed to follow my child or stay where I was. I knew she was still within ear shot, and though the thought of watching a stranger in America walk away with my daughter into an unfamiliar house makes my stomach churn, it seems somehow perfectly natural in this setting. Minutes passed and then the woman carrying Annabelle reemerged and brought her all the way back to my arms. Annabelle sank into my lap and looked up as me as chuffed as a four month old can be because around her neck was tied a strand of black and white striped beads. “She’s a baby from our mountains now!” the woman declared and everyone laughed in approval. Annabelle was even rechristened “Kaka” for the evening, the name given to firstborn daughters in the Central Mountains. 

We ate together as the world sank into darkness, Khawaja and North African, Muslim and Christian, friends and strangers. And when the table was cleared we sat and talked. These women came from a place where the Arabic is much better than what is spoken here and I struggled to understand everything they said, especially when they were speaking to each other. But they were unbelievably gracious with my fumbling, letting misconjugated verbs and ill-prounounced vocabulary lay where they fell as the conversation moved on. After Laura and I exhausted our small talk about family and food and babies, the women began speaking amongst themselves about their home area. I had heard earlier that the government has started using chemical weapons against the inhabitants of the mountains and had read only that morning that 200,000 people have now been displaced, injured or killed in the conflict. As the women softly talked to and over each other my ears ached with the strain of trying to understand. But it was like someone had held a match to a story in front of me, and I was left snatching singed fragments out of the breeze and trying to piece them together myself. I heard words like, hiding in the mountains, on the radio, antanovs dropping bombs, my people, your people, airplanes…

I was grateful for the dark at this point, as though hiding my face also hid my emptiness of words. Words in any language. All I could find was, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Malesh. Because really what do you say? And if you do say something, what would it mean to those who heard it? What do you say to the fasting refugees who lay their food in front of you and give gifts to your baby even as their homes are being destroyed and their loved ones killed? Do those words even exist? All I could find was thank you and I’m sorry. But I pray they could hear more than that.

Some time later when I rose with my sleeping baby to go, I glanced over the grass fence and saw Bryan huddled around a small computer screen with the other men, their faces lit blue by the screen. On the drive home he told me they were looking at photographs and video footage of the conflict in the Central Mountains. Someone had collected the images and smuggled them out. And amazingly, Bryan had come with a flash drive in his pocket and now, these images were with us too. After we put Annabelle to bed we sat around our own computer screen in the dark of our home and looked through them. I didn’t want to. To be honest I was terrified of what I was going to see. But I felt like it was all I could offer. I can’t protect these people from bombs. I can’t stop planes from flying overhead. I can’t even talk to them deeply in their own language about how they feel or what they think. But I can look at the pictures and see that their pain is real. I can take the singed pieces of story that I have found and show them to others, like you. 

I was right to be scared of the pictures. They were some of the most awful things I have ever seen. They were of women and children huddled in caves, hiding. They were of men on rope beds with holes torn through their bodies. They were of women lying twisted in the grass, their bloody tobes covering their faces. And there was a picture of children I cannot even bring myself to describe. Small children. With black and white beads around their necks. 

You know that feeling you get when you stub your toe really hard? There is an instant before the pain rushes up your foot that everything tingles and you feel the dread of the pain that is coming. That is how I felt, and still feel. Numb. And waiting for the pain to hit. And in this numbness I find myself wondering when it feels real. It didn’t feel real reading the news in America two years ago. It didn’t feel real hearing stories of what was happening a few hundred miles away from me now every day this week. And it didn’t feel real seeing the pictures of dead neighbors of my dinner hosts last night. When does it feel real? Would it feel real if bombs started falling here and I was running with my baby? Does it feel real for them? Or are they still waiting for the pain to hit too...?

          

stress

It’s funny. So many times I sit down at the computer ready to write about some idea or thought that has been churning in my head for a few days – the experience of motherhood so far, meeting up with a dear friend in Nairobi, the current political situation in our home area now that the South is independent, yada, yada, yada – and yet it takes about two seconds for me to realize that what I thought I was thinking about is not what I was really thinking about at all and what I thought I was going to write about is not what I am going to end up writing about in the end afterall. Motherhood has made time for self-indulgent reflection on a computer screen harder to come by so my blogs may get a little less refined and a little more stream-of-consciousness as I rush to type and hit “publish” before someone wakes up from her increasingly short naps. So my apologies.  

I am stressed. There is no need to go into the details. It’s a lot of things, any one of which I feel like I could handle quite well on its own, maybe even if they showed up in pairs, but the flash mob of political insecurity, new baby, language learning (and re-learning), ever-changing travel-back-to-the-States-for-a-visit plans, temporarily difficult housing situation and the three million bug bites on my torso all together feel like a lot (okay, the last one isn’t really that big a deal but in context it feels far worse). And on top of the frustration of each of these things is the guilt that comes with knowing I chose them, and would choose them all over again in a heartbeat (with the exception of the bug bites). I want to live here in this house with no running water. I want to be in the middle of rebel-held territory in a political tenuous time. I want to learn (and re-learn) Arabic even if my brain occasionally explodes. And God help me, I want this precious baby that seems to be allergic to sleep as long as the sun is out because I love her so much my heart occasionally explodes right along with my brain. I want all these things so badly. So what right do I have to let them all make me want to scream bloody murder some days?

At least that is how I feel. In the rubble of my exploded brain I can still sift out enough logic to question how much sense that really makes. But I have inherited my mother’s superwoman demons and their own twisted logic still works astoundingly well on me. How can you be so weak? How can you be so (heaven forbid!) normal? I thought you were tough. Suck it up. Jog it off. Stuff in down and keep on trucking until things clear up. 

I suppose I should be grateful for opportunities like this where I am gracefully reminded that “superwoman” status for me is about as attainable as ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. I cannot do this on my own, nor should I want to. So really, maybe this season of stress is a blessing.  For one, I know it will soon pass, just like every other stress in life eventually does. But also, it makes me slow down and just concentrate on what is most important. Like being a good mama. And a good wife. Like taking a deep breath and admitting to a friend who has been there once or twice too, that yes, this is freaking hard. Like partly dreading going to visit a neighbor because I know my conversation skills are at the level of a four-year old, but going anyway. Like taking the time to frame a few family pictures and put much-loved books back on the shelf, even if they do get tossed right back in an evacuation bag here in a few weeks. The important stuff. Thank goodness for the stress that makes me see it. 

Happy birthday Bu!

My little sister Abigail turned nineteen yesterday. Nineteen. I can hardly believe it. I was almost ten years old when she was born so she has always been my baby sister. But a few months ago she finished up her first year in college as a pre-med student. And we were honored that she spent her first summer break with us in North Africa. Honestly, I don’t think there is a single other person in the world that could have lived with us for two months without either driving us crazy in the end, or, as is far more likely, gone stark raving mad themselves. As it turns out, Abigail did neither. She was an enormous help to me as a new mother, arriving at about the height or my new parent psychosis, and yet never once mocking my bipolar tendency to bemoan my daughter’s stubborn refusal to sleep followed immediately by my supreme gloating over her absolute perfection in every way, repeated three or four times in the course of an hour. She was the perfect nanny-aunt spending hours bouncing Annabelle while I cooked, or feeding her while I studied language. She was a fabulous sister, listening to me pour out the two years of backlogged thoughts and emotions that come with sisterlessness. She slept in a leaking mud hut with a hedgehog for a roommate and listened patiently while we negotiated her bride price with our good friend Ahmed. She ate sorghum and okra, covered her head and learned to ride a motorcycle. She gracefully received advice about where to hide if planes started dropping bombs and didn’t panic when she learned that the hospital where she was working would be a likely target. She took in everything with delight, curiosity, amusement and amazement and made me see my world through her eyes all over again too.

I asked Abigail to make a guest appearance on my blog and write about her experience shadowing the one doctor at the local hospital, but, sadly, she declined. I wish she would have though because I think her firsthand account of the things she saw at that hospital needs to be told to as wide an audience as possible. She would come home every day from her time there with the most outrageous stories (and pictures!) of the surgeries she had watched, the pregnant tummies she had palpated and the diseases she had seen firsthand. She saw a woman whose foot had been blown off when she dropped a heavy load of firewood on a landmine. She watched an abdominal surgery on a conscious two-week old baby. She scrubbed up and stood inches away from dozens of hemorrhoid, goiter and hydrocele surgeries (if you don’t know what that last one is, look it up. I promise it’s worth your time) and every day she came home more and more interested in what she was seeing and hearing and learning.

The most touching story Abigail told me was of the day she spent in the maternity ward. Two women were in labor simultaneously and the room was crowded with family members, traditional midwives and hospital staff. Abigail was asked to take her shoes off before she entered the dim room and place them next to the pile of muddy sandals. She hedged around the splatters of blood on the floor but stepped in something she said looked like porridge; she prayed it was. One woman was having a difficult breech delivery and the doctor had been called in to help. He was sitting on a stool, straining to twist and pull the two tiny limp legs that hung outside her body. Despite the midwives scolding her to be quiet, the woman writhed in pain and at one point, reached out and clung to Abigail’s hand while she stood by and watched helplessly. Abigail said the breech delivery was so horrifically fascinating that she hardly noticed the woman behind her, silently laboring to deliver her own child. Both babies were eventually pulled and pushed into the world and both were immediately rushed to a table for intensive care.  With some oxygen and stimulation the breech baby survived and was returned to his mother to nurse. The second baby however, died shortly his birth, despite everything that could be done under the circumstances. Abigail said the young mother received the news without response. Neither bereaved nor stoic, she accepted the news with an air of nonchalance. “I seemed more upset than she did,” Abigail said. And we wondered how many times a day that story is repeated in that little hospital.

I was amazed by Abigail this summer. After sitting through my first hydrocele surgery I would have been sending in my applications for law school as fast I could. And watching a mother receive news that her baby has just died while she sits in her bodily fluids next to a woman cradling her squalling new child…well, I’m not sure how I would have handled that. But Abigail handled it all, with strength and empathy. And after this summer, she’s no longer just interested in becoming a doctor, but now, maybe a surgeon. In a place where there are landmines. In a hospital with no running water or electricity. And I can’t help but think, Great. What have we done? The thought of my baby sister working in a hospital in some war-torn country makes my stomach turn, but honestly, it’s with both fear and pride. I am so grateful for the time we got to spend with Abigail this summer. I could write fourteen posts about the things we did together and remembered together and what they made me think about. But on her birthday I just wanted to say how thankful I am for Abigail, how proud I am to be her big sister and how much we miss you already. Thank goodness you have three more summers before med school. (: Happy birthday, Bu.     

Showing Bryan photos from a hydrocele surgery (you know you're curious...)

The Jessop's House

Sometimes when you have been looking forward to something for a long time, you build it up in your mind so much that it has no chance of ever being anything other than a disappointment. This past week my family got together on the coast of Kenya for the first time in over two years. We hadn’t seen each other since my sister Deborah’s wedding which, as anyone who has ever planned or been in a wedding knows, is hardly quality time. I had never been around Josh as a brother-in-law. Deborah had never been around Annabelle as an Aunt. We three girls hadn’t been together as sisters in way too long and my parents were way overdue for time with all of their overgrown chicks under their wings at once. We had been looking forward to those few days altogether through years of years of emails, texts, facebook messages and pixilated skype calls. The thought of being within hugging distance of every member of my immediate family for a few days was almost too good to be true. And I think we were all braced for the possibility that it just might be.

But it wasn’t. Last week was every bit as sweet as I could have hoped. The hours spent talking, eating, playing cards, playing with the baby, swimming and sticking our heads together for just one more picture were like a flavor you just want to keep savoring a little bit longer. What a joy it was to reminisce about old times and get to know each other all over again as adults, grandparents, fathers, mothers, husbands and wives. And though we would have been happy spending time together just about anywhere, it certainly didn’t hurt to be basking in each others company at the Jessop’s house. These family friends had been kind enough to invite us to stay with them when they heard we were passing through. Their home is forever etched in my mind, a haven on the beach, detached from reality and the normal passage of time.

The yellow stone house sits drunkenly on a coral cliff overlooking the ocean, clashing beautifully with the sprays of fuchsia bougainvillea that cascade madly down the rock face. If you stand on the back veranda and look through the jungly mango trees to your left, you can just make out the crumbling remains of minarets and well rims, the only fingerprints of a 14^th century village abandoned mysteriously hundreds of years ago, like an East African Roanoke. The rooms of the house are deep and cool and strung together as beads on a dropped string. And like the mesmerizing pages of a children’s “I Spy” book, they are full of everything a house by the sea should have: baskets of seashells, blue glass bottles full of sand, ceramic fish, spotted mirrors in driftwood frames, sea turtle bones, paintings of Dhows of the coast of Zanzibar and shelves overflowing with paperback novels with curling yellow pages. Salt breeze moves constantly through the open windows brushing against unseen windchimes as it slinks by.

We spent three nights at this house together. And on the third day, the afternoon before Bryan, Annabelle and I were to fly back to Nairobi while the rest of the family traveled on to Tanzania, I realized I miss my family most in the hours before we actually say goodbye. The franticness of loading up the car and the anxiety of a last quick huddled prayer at the airport mask the heartache of separation in a weird way. But in those final sweet moments of togetherness, when the chai is still hot in the cup, the cards are still dealt for seven, and the conversation is quiet because all the new stories have been told and there is time leftover to just be, sadness scoots in too close, like an uninvited guests and watches over my shoulder. It takes in the scene, one detail at a time, and presses it against my heart. Tomorrow there will be tears and kisses and a bittersweet cacophony of goodbyes. But today, listening to laughter and the nonsense that comes with absolute peace, I feel my heart give just a little as it breaks under the weight of such joy.

Scratch

Last night in the shower I was hit with an unexpected bout of cultural vertigo. I had bent over under the shower head pounding out almost-too-hot water to scrub the city off of my feet when I noticed a thin scratch on the inside of my ankle. Nearly healed but still raised and pink, it was half-hidden under a swath of raspberry lather. I had forgotten all about the scratch but seeing it again caused a flurry of ripples on the still surface of my heart. I remembered exactly when I got it. About two weeks ago three women carrying heavy loads of firewood home had stopped to rest under a tree outside our fence. Our guard had taken a pitcher of water out to them and had come back with word that they wanted to see the khawaja baby. I had time to kill so I went outside with Annabelle and sat down on the long rough tree roots and watched them pass my daughter between them. We had the most normal conversation. How's your family? How are your kids? How many do you have? How far away is your house? Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the pleasant kind of talk that you can sometimes have with strangers. While we chatted goats grazed on the hill behind us and our guard plucked out wiry tunes on his robaba that hovered hesitantly in the still air. Five or six boys loped by like a pack of hunting dogs, shiny and clean from a bath in the gulley full of brown rain water. I rummaged around in my brain for misplaced Arabic words and they chatted to each other every once in a while in their shared mother tongue. When we ran out of things to say we just sat under the tree and looked at the baby. Eventually the sun was low enough on the horizon that the hungriest mosquitoes were braving their way out, so we rose to go our separate ways. But when I stood up I stepped back into one of the loads of firewood and gashed my ankle on a rough splinter. It didn't hurt that badly and I had forgotten all about it until last night. But standing on a tile floor in a bathroom cloudy with steam, it was weird to see that mark on my ankle and remember the day I got it. I was reminded of a day and a place that felt so very far away and yet amazingly, were as close as unhealed skin. There is a line in a Maya Angelou poem about someone waking from a dream of a walk by the sea and reaching down to find sand in their pockets. I felt like that last night. Like I had dreamed of another home and woken up with it's scars on my skin.

We're in Nairobi. Again. We were supposed to be here at this point anyway. We have a conference to attend in a few days. But we left North Africa a week early after news (rumors? stories? reports?) of more soldiers, more airplanes, more artillery, more threats reached a point that we felt like it was time to go, for now anyway. Our prayer is that things will be fine for us to go back in a week or so. After all, nothing has happened in our state as of yet. Of the three "contested areas" one has been razed to the ground and the other is being inundated with bombs. But our state hasn't been touched. Does this mean nothing will ever happen? Does this mean it's only a matter of time? Who knows. My biggest fear is that this wretched anticipation of nothingness will linger on for weeks and months leaving us in perpetual uncertainty.

I hate how far away that place feels when I am here. Missing there terribly and enjoying here thoroughly rub against each other like bare feet in too-small shoes leaving me feeling chaffed.