Nose Ring

I’m not sure if it was dealing with the knowledge that Bryan was sitting in our house in North Africa hearing our market being hit with heavy artillery from the army barracks down the road, or simply managing two toddlers for two weeks completely by myself that made my desire to do something “crazy” so uncontainable, but about this time last week I was weighing whether I should chop all my hair off, get a tattoo or pierce my nose. The itch for something new and different was eating me alive. After weighing my options I decided that, in light of how much my husband likes my long hair and how uncommitted I was to any particular symbol to permanently place on my body, I would go with the nose ring. 

So I did it. And I love it, (though for the record, for a woman who has had two babies without epidurals I was shockingly near fainting when the lady shoved the needle in my nostril). And best of all, unlike every other secret of my life, I was able to keep it hidden from Bryan for a full week of late night phone calls. I tell Bryan everything, whether I want to or not, whether he wants me to or not. I couldn’t wait to see his face when I got off the plane in North Africa (where incidentally, every third woman or so has her nose pierced too).

On Sunday night the girls and I took our regular evening walk around the neighborhood here in Nairobi. I was going through the list of things I needed to do before the girls and I flew out – packing and weighing cargo, dropping it by the hangar, buying a few more solar lights for friends, getting a yellow-fever shot for Mikat… As we walked I continued what has become a habit by now, looking up at the tall apartment complexes and cozy urban duplexes and wondering which ones were available to rent, what kind of plants I would put on the veranda if I lived there, whether or not I would hang a wind chime. I am so hungry for stability these days and a home we can actually live in, I have taken to internally rearranging people’s furniture in their houses, mentally scooting coffee tables and rehanging pictures to suit my own tastes while politely sipping tea and nodding at small talk. While we walked that afternoon, I prayed a prayer that went something like this: God, I am so homesick right now that my common sense may not be enough to keep me out of North Africa. Tomorrow I am emotionally all in as I start blasting away at the last few things I need to do to get there. If you don’t think that’s a good idea, and I don’t mean to be pushy about this, but I really need you to make that very, very clear. Like, before tomorrow morning.

Ten minutes later my phone rang and I got my answer. A merciful, heartbreaking answer. For the first time since this wretched war began, fighting was taking place in our own town. Bryan could hear the gunfire, see the women and children running to the bush, smell the chaos and fear in the air.

So on Thursday, instead of the girls and me tumbling off the little 206 onto our dirt airstrip and making our way down pock-marked dirt-roads to our cinder-block house where the girls have a bedroom freshly painted pink, my scruffy husband stepped out of a taxi idling in the paved driveway to the shrill delighted squeals of his daughters. He dropped his dusty pack, kissed me and then said the nose ring looked beautiful.

That night after the girls were in bed Bryan and I talked for a long time. He gave me updates on our friends in neighbors in North Africa – Mahmoun has a new baby girl, Jamal Musa married an Ethiopian; he filled me in on some new Arabic words he picked up while he was, you know, speaking almost exclusively Arabic for two weeks straight. My favorite was Gisma which means something like an unearned blessing, or good fortune. He brought me up to date on the current political landscape in our area. I in turn basically filled him in on what foods Annabelle has decided are no longer appropriate for human consumption, what parts of the floor MaryKat has had potty training mishaps in. 

We were still talking as I got out of the shower that night. At which point I absently-mindedly put the towel up to my face and yanked the nose-ring right out of my nostril. 

I promptly panicked. 

There were all the stories of peoples whose piercings healed over before they could get the stud back in, (“Baby, I really don’t think it healed over in 45 seconds…”), people left with grotesque scars or complicated infections. I sat in front of the mirror for 30 minutes digging at my nose as I tried to get the corkscrew stud back in while regaling the man who hadn’t enjoyed running water in two weeks with these horror stories and cursing my carelessness. I was so frustrated.  

Finally, completed defeated and with a tacky fake-gold mushroom earring of my grandmother’s keeping the hole open, I crawled in bed with my husband for the first time in two weeks and bawled my eyes out. I snotted up his chest crying harder than I had in a long time while he told me that everything really was going to be ok, that I hadn’t ruined our reunion, that I was his gisma. After ten minutes of red-eyed hiccupping I turned to him and said, “You know, this isn’t really all about my nose ring. I think I am crying about everything that isn’t going like it’s supposed to.”

He looked at me with an honest-to-goodness attempt at not smiling (I appreciated the effort) and said, “I kinda figured.” At which point I started crying again.

I think what I hate most about trying to make a difference in a freaking complicated part of the world is how it makes horrible things sometimes feel like a relief and turns good news into a disappointment, at least for those of us who have the freedom to come and go at will. When bullets are flying in your market, there is a certain clarity that you shouldn’t bring the kids up, no matter how badly you want to, and the ease of that decision is a relief. When you hear news that everything has calmed down and it is safe to go home, there is sometimes a belly-ache of anxiety under the joy. How long will we be able to stay this time. What might my kids witness when we go back? 

It’s also really complicated to articulate all of this clearly and honestly to friends and family back home. Sometimes I want to weep and wail on the phone to a dear friend about how messed up it all is and how bad things are in our area. But then I am in danger of creating panic when we announce that the coast is clear and we are so happy to be going back, which we really are. Similarly, I sometimes push back against the media narratives of a dark continent with imagery of a beautiful place and our own local security to the point that a Facebook status update saying we have been evacuated to safety doesn’t make sense. But you said everything was fine in your area...

Not to sound like a Chinese philosopher, but the truth is, all good news carries a whiff of danger and all bad news has a hint of promise. Hope and fear are always lurking on the horizon, gracefully taking each other’s place in line as the seasons change. And what is so hard about this season is that nothing is clear cut. This is not the end of our time in North Africa. But neither is it the beginning of years on end of being settled in our home there. This is a dip on a wide and choppy sea.

We are thinking through ways to introduce a little more stability into our lives. I know you are not supposed to be a very good judge of your own mental state but I think we have a good feel for our own pulse right now. And mine is saying I need something new, something that brings just a bit of fresh air as we keep sailing forward. I’m not sure exactly what that will be yet. I do know, however, that it will not be another piercing.

Okay, mine is not remotely as impressive as the my North African friend in the top picture (can you even see mine in this picture?!) but if you look close there is a little silver freckle on the right. 

The Last of the Letters

I suppose it is only fitting that I end these series of letters with one to you, my oldest of friends. I am writing to you now partly because you know me better than anyone else so I can share my heart freely, but also because writing to you seemed like the only way to get past the writer’s block that has been consuming me lately. I am not sure if it is numb apathy or the very opposite – a torrential flood simply held up at the bottleneck of my ability to form words. Either way, hello again. Sorry it has been a while.

The other day I was rummaging through a musty box, one of the many we have scattered in other people’s garages all over the world, and came across an old exercise book from bygone school days, the papery-soft margins of which were scrawled with notes to you. I was filled with nostalgia for those days of my innocence, though I confess I also felt a pang of something close to scorn for my younger self, at a lost naiveté. Now, with the exception of a few good afternoons in quiet places, it seems our conversations are limited to distracted talks over the small but loud children clamoring for my attention, or blurry moments late at night when I can hardly stay awake long enough to hold up my end of the conversation. I am grateful you know me so well, that you understand somehow, even if I suspect you are a bit disappointed.

I have been mulling over that word quite a bit lately, disappointment, rolling it over in the palm of my mind. Sitting here in Nairobi, in this house that hangs on to the cold like an old grudge, I have become better acquainted with its weight and contours.

I am disappointed to not be in North Africa right now and, even with the charter plane scheduled for two weeks from now, I am disappointed to not possess absolute confidence that I will be back next Thursday. I am so thankful that the cell network is still up so I can at least talk to Bryan. He says the rats in the house aren’t as bad as he thought but there are a handful of untrained soldiers stationed underneath the tree outside the front gate that weren’t there before we left. The market still buzzes on like normal but rumors churn in the periphery, always within reach. Everyone sends their greetings. Everyone asks when I will be back.

I am disappointed in David and Lydia’s recent grief. They sit a world away, loving on a beautiful baby girl who was minutes away from perfect. They kiss her sweet face while easing food in through the bag in her tiny belly, bypassing the little mouth and throat that don’t do what they are supposed to. They cherish the treasure they have been given with such faith – I am so amazed at their unswerving confidence in you - while I sit at this desk crying doubtful tears, trying to make sense of the eleven minutes that her heart did not beat. I feel guilty as I try to extract my own selfish fears from sadness for these dear friends.

Speaking of which, I am even a smidge disappointed in my inability to claim my hurts so boldly before you as I sit in the company of Musa and Aisha and Om-Iman and Michael and one billion other people who are talking to you too, all of whom who have disappointments that make mine shrivel to the ground and evaporate into meaningless ash. My hurts are nothing. Nothing. But at the same time they are something too, I think. Aren’t they…?

To be clear, it’s not that I didn’t expect this walk to be hard. I did. We’ve talked about that before. In fact, I expected things to be a little harder than they could otherwise have been. I never expected friendship with you to excuse me from hurt. But when I jumped in head-first it was my head I was shielding from some unknown impending violent blow; but as it turns out it is my arms and legs that are being sliced away, slowly and steadily, an inch at a time. I am finding disappointment in this life to be generally more drawn out than I was expecting. Not a decisive blow, but a vague relentless ache with undefined edges.

I had played through the scenario in my mind of huddling with my kids under a window-sill while bullets flew outside, but that’s not what happened (and I thank you for that by the way. I am not ungrateful.) What happened was not a tsunami but the nauseating swells of constant coming and going, goodbyes upon goodbyes, the heart-wrench of perpetual uncertainty from safe distances and the searing three year old question, “Mama, where is our home?”

Lydia and I had talked about the horror of losing a child to malaria, about what it would be like to give up a baby because we followed you to a place where mosquitoes can kill you. But she doesn’t have that story. Her baby was born in the cocoon of an American hospital near the town she grew up in, and yet may never walk or sing or tell her mama how much she loves her. Do you know how senseless that feels?

So yes, disappointment. Maybe if I were being honest I would realize that perhaps a part of me did expect friendship with you to mean a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card at the end of the day. Yeah, you will get sick, there will be occasional evacuations, the rats will make you feel insane sometime but at the end of the day, when it really comes down to it, everything will be ok. Your kids won’t die, you will have a place to call home, you will get to see meaningful change in the world. But my heart, much slower to catch on than my head, is beginning to understand that this is not always the case. I don't think I am angry about it. Just disappointed. And  maybe a little scared.

At church today the lay preacher spoke on the 23^rd Psalm and I was struck by a passing reference to the words, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” I hope you don’t mind me saying that I have often found that line a bit unsettling; it suggests pretension or violence directed at some unknown person or people. To me, it’s something a little uncomfortable tucked in between some of the most beautiful words you have written.

But today I saw it differently. I saw myself at my mother’s beat-up wooden dining-room table which was old and familiar and lit with candles and bowls of fruit and absolutely sagging under the weight of her Thai neow-pad-prik and chicken spaghetti, and mounds of kisra, for my North African neighbors who were sitting at the table too because you knew that would make me happy, and turnip greens and cornbread because you invited Bryan, and cheese-sticks and strawberry ice-cream for the two little girls eating with their fingers. The table was heavy with the sweetest gifts you have given me.

But just beyond the warmth of our circle, my enemies watched hungrily. Insecurity and pride bristled their fur. Apathy and anger and selfishness licked their jowls. And fear, nebulous and pervasive but always-present fear gathered its coils in tighter, preparing to spring. And not only them but ebola and cancer, rebel commanders and corrupt politicians, car wrecks, plane wrecks, motorcycle wrecks and all manner of violence and abuse hovered there too. We ate in their presence.

We always eat in their presence.

I am astonished sometimes that you didn’t just set the table somewhere else, somewhere more appetizing. Somewhere more peaceful. Somewhere more safe.

And I am astounded that you decide to spread such a lavish feast for us at all, especially in the midst of this ugliness. The gore and mess of it all doesn’t scare you away. You are drawn to it. To us.

On these days, when I am bold enough to confess my disappointment – in myself, in North Africa, in sickness and brokenness, in you even – for what you have chosen to do and to not do - in those moments I feel you gently closing your hands around mine as I cradle the sharp edges of hope and let this beautiful thing cut me to the bone.

I am clinging to the beautiful people living in a complete disaster of a country. David and Lydia are clinging to a perfect soul in a broken body. And you cling to us. To all of us. Together, in our disappointment and our hope we just hang on in the hurt.

Quite frankly, I don’t know what else to do.

It is late by now. Forgive my ramblings, among many other things. Thank you for listening. Thank you for always listening.

In hope and deep disappointment, I am yours always.

Elizabeth    

 

    

Dear Bryan

Dear sweet husband,

I miss you so much! I can’t believe it has only been three days since I last saw you. I am afraid the next week a half is going to be an eternity. It was so good to hear your voice tonight, even if only for a few minutes. I still can’t believe the cell networks have been down for so long. Thank goodness for the SAT phone. I only wish we could talk longer! Seven minutes a night makes me realize how much we usually yap during the day.

I am so glad you were able to go into the camp today and greet people. I am so relieved to hear that even with the fighting going on in other parts of the State the UN was able to get at least ten days of rations to people. Praise God! Have you seen Kaltoum yet? How are her kids? I know people must have been so happy to see you. I know you greeted everyone for us but I can’t not tell you to please, please greet everyone for us and send them our deepest love. Let them know that we never stop praying for them.

As happy as I am to know you are there, I can’t help but feel such a wave of sadness to think of you sleeping in our new home all alone. It must be so filthy after being locked up for four months in the dry season. I imagine our new furniture, the girls’ books on that small shelf made from leftover construction timber, our sagging Christmas tree complete with tacky ornaments and a broom angel put up with such love and abandoned forty-eight hours before its big day, I think of all these things covered in dust and the invisible footprints of whatever creatures settled in our flustered wake, and it makes me so sad. We are supposed to be there! Is it lonely? I know you have a million people to talk to and meet with. Your days are probably full of long conversations over coffee. But the house, our house, I imagine that at night it is still a bit of a lonely place.

I am certainly lonely without you, but of course I have the girls and it’s honestly hard to imagine how anyone can be too lonely with them around. My days are filled with tea parties and drawing parties and reading parties and slow walks to the market for mango juice, stopping to inspect every bug and stick and rock and leaf on the way, followed by a mango juice tea party when we get back home. There is a certain freedom in just embracing motherhood while you are away and not feeling the burden of any responsibility other than their care. They are the most exhausting delight I can imagine. I think it is good we made the decision to stay here instead of traveling back to Nairobi to wait for you there. They are happy here with all the neighbors and mangoes and mud, and another transition in the midst of so many transitions would be hard. Annabelle feels your absence the most. She doesn’t comment on it much but she feels it.

I miss processing things with you. I have been staying up way to late reading the news, when the internet is good enough to bring it in, and I end up crawling in bed without you feeling sick and anxious about the world. I have to stop reading it all, especially at night, but I don’t. I try to keep everything from the girls, there is nothing in their world to alert them to any problems, but Annabelle hears my intakes of breath when I read about people being slaughtered in churches, mosques and hospitals in the latest massacres and she always asks, “What, Mama? What is it?” And she doesn’t easily take “Nothing, baby,” for an answer. And it really isn’t nothing, is it? She always prays that God will keep the soldiers away from where you are.

Marykat stayed with Jinti today while Annabelle and I went to the market. I bought the girls frilly Easter dresses in the market today and plan on wearing a loud head wrap on Sunday. When in Rome, right? Annabelle walked the whole way and nearly fell asleep on the boda on the way home. She was sitting between me and the driver while I sat sidesaddle in a tobe, clinging to my basket of fruit, my baby and the motorcycle seat for dear life as we careened up the gullied path to the house. Our mothers would have killed me to have seen us. But we made it home to a happy MaryKat alive and well. Tomorrow we are going to boil eggs and put stickers on them to hide after church. It was the best I could come up with on short notice. ( : Sorry we probably won't be having a bunny cake this year.

I should close for now. Our firstborn is snoring in our bed and waiting for me to join her. She has taken your place as family-snuggler, don’t worry. It’s like sleeping with a flailing octopus at times. But I honestly don’t mind the company.

I miss you so much but am already looking forward to seeing you in Nairobi in under two weeks now. Have peace in knowing that we are happy and healthy. We are drinking water, doctoring our cuts, charging our phones, all those things you normally help us with. Have peace also in knowing that I am not worried about you either. I trust you and our God to keep you safe. And I am mostly jealous that I am not there with you. 

( :

I love you so much, baby. Good night.

Letter to Kaltoum

Dear Kaltoum,

Greetings from the Deep South. It is raining here. Last night it poured down for hours and lightning struck somewhere close enough that it smelled like smoke in the midst of the storm. I wonder if it has rained yet where you are. Probably not. I wish there was some way you could tell me.

Bryan spoke to Musa for just a couple of minutes two nights ago and I hovered nearby snatching up scraps of information as I could. I told Bryan to tell Musa to greet you, as I am sure he has by now. Musa said you are taibaan shadiid, and I think my heart broke a little when I heard these words. I am so sorry you are suffering my friend. I wish you knew the crushing sense of helplessness I feel when I hear you and your children and the whole community are hungry, that you haven’t eaten for days. I think of the pasta and flour that is probably rotting behind the doors we left so tightly locked behind us and feel sick. Bryan told Nehemiah to give Musa some extra money with his salary this month. My deepest prayer is that some of that will reach you and Nariman, Samani and Kajija.

How are your children? I imagine Nariman still leading packs of children across the camp and getting into trouble. She is beautiful and strong, like you. Someday she will be a leader. Samani is probably still quiet, never wandering too far from your side. And Kajija? She is the one I worry about. After you carried her in your womb so many hungry miles when you ran, she has always been small and hungry. I remember you telling me how she cries like a cat whenever she smells meat. Has she been healthy? I pray for her often.

My girls are well and send their greetings. Mariam is walking, almost running, and tries her best to keep up with her sister, which is no small feat. Hana is more herself every day, unafraid, stubborn, clever. You would laugh to see her climbing the termite mound next door with a group of little boys.

Do you often wear the tobe I left you? I am sorry it was not something more practical but I hope it makes you think of me sometimes and know I am thinking of you. It was the first one I ever bought all those years ago in K. Do you remember those days? Days when we would sit on the back porch and talk while you washed my dishes and I sat with a notebook and pen and fumbled through my crippled Arabic. And then later days when my Arabic was a bit more comprehensible and we talked about deeper things like marriage, circumcision and childbirth. When I think of you and that back porch I often think of me leaning over the edge and retching while you laughed and said I was carrying a girl. And you were right, weren’t you?

Sometimes I wish life would have played out like we all hoped it would back then. Maybe then we would still be there in K, before you ran to D and then I ran here. Maybe then we would have sat on that back porch and you could have taught me your language and I could have taught you to read, and then letters like this could actually be possible between us. But then again, if we were in the same place we wouldn’t need letters to talk would we?

Please greet the others – Limon, Omsalama, Senowia, Rella, Sunday, and so on – tell them I pray for their children too. Prayers seem like such a small thing to offer. Sometime I confess I doubt how the silent words I murmur in the dark under my mosquito net could ever turn into sorghum in your daughter’s belly. But my faith is perhaps not as strong as yours, at least not as tested. Maybe my prayers just turn to courage in your bones or peace in your heart or the simple knowledge that someday everything will be different. Things will be different someday. That much I do believe. But, if prayers give you comfort, know they are yours in abundance. If prayers are of value to you, you are rich beyond measure.

Finally, do you remember the story you told me about the boy whose mother turned into a bird? I can only remember the first two lines to the song she sang him. When I see you again you must remind me of the rest because I keep singing those two lines over and over. It is such a pretty song.

Love and blessings on you, my friend. You who bear childhood scars of shrapnel, you who birthed one baby outside your house alone and another on the side of the road, you who lost your firstborn to sickness and your husband to neglect, you who are beautiful and proud and unafraid to laugh and unafraid to cry, you are my friend and my inspiration and one of the strongest women I know. May that strength sustain you. 

May God be with you always,

Libby

     

Letter to Mama

Dear Mama,

It was so good to hear your voice last night! I am so sorry I still can’t get your texts, even with my new SIM card. Bummer. I am glad you can still get mine though. While we were talking I was sitting in a camping hammock that Bryan strung up under a huge mango tree near the house. It was pitch black outside but the mosquitoes are yet to be back in full force since the rains have started so I just swayed in the dark and listened to the fruitbats chirp and whirl over your voice in my ear. If you hadn’t been paying a fortune to call me I would have told you all about where I was in that moment and how much it reminded me of sitting in the mango tree in the back yard at night growing up and waiting for Papa to scare the bats back over from the guava tree to where we perched waiting for them. Sometimes I still can’t believe you let us do that! But then I overhear other mothers whisper to their children, “Just because Annabelle does it doesn’t mean you can!” and I laugh inside I feel like I understand you better every day. Thanks for letting us sit in the mango tree at night.

Things are going well here. It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind actually. Bryan and I finally sat down and had the “What if…” conversation last week and are facing the fact that we won’t be back in D in the next few months. There continues to be a steady decline in security that is quite concerning. I almost obsessively scour the news and twitter feeds searching for any scraps of information available from anyone anywhere (the phone network has been down for well over a week; we can’t get a hold of anyone) and every little thing I read just feels like a new stone in my stomach. We are past the point of hoping this will be over quickly and are just left now praying that it will in fact be over.

That being said we confronted the question of what to do in the meantime. It’s far too soon to jump ship to something new. A year, even two in the big scheme of things could be manageable I think (though we are still hoping it won’t be that long) if we could still pick up the pieces on the other side of all this. But the truth is sitting and waiting all this out in Nairobi or Kampala sounds truly awful to me. Running water and frozen yoghurt can just go only so far in filling the deeper needs of the soul. And there is a certain kind of emptiness that makes ever the most luxurious limbo unbearable.

And then we looked around here in M and thought, “We could stay here for a while.” It was as simple as that. Melinda had already suggested it, only-half in jest, and we have been so encouraged by how easy it is to communicate and slip into simple life routines without too many ripples. We could keep working towards our goals for the J people from a distance, unideal yes, but possible. And to be honest I am thrilled at the thought of helping out with the literacy programs here. I need some experience so badly and Melinda is even holding a Writers Workshop next month with a focus on helping women who have been affected by the war write their stories. Isn’t that amazing? I feel like it will finally give me the chance to try my hand at my own dream job!

Anyway, if the approval of our colleagues here and regional leadership wasn’t enough, on a cursory walk through the neighborhood we found a simple cement and zinc roofed house just behind Melinda and Leah’s place that is available to rent. I prayed so hard that if this wasn’t the right move that the rent would be outrageous. But it wasn’t. So….

It looks like I will be living in a little pastel house (currently full of bats) on the side of a little rocky hill in M for the next few months! This realization brought with it a tidal wave of emotions for me. The excitement of setting up our own place (and by setting up I mean buying a few jicky bowls and chairs from the market) and resting into just being for a little while. The heartbreak of fully embracing not being where I most want to be and the fear of putting in even the most shallow of roots again.

There are passing moments where I am washed over with a wave of deep contentment and sheer happiness. I feel this way walking around the market picking out fabric to make dresses for the girls, or walking with Melinda and my family to church, or sitting outside in the evening and drinking a cup of tea while the girls play in the dirt. But these moment catch my off guard and take my breath away in a way that makes me wonder if they are unexpected, and if so why. Are they the exception?

Some of my happiest moments, and I’m almost embarrassed to concede this, are not moments of particularly articulate Arabic usage or preparing for a Writers Workshop. They are standing over a cantankerous burner, stir-frying a wilted cabbage I was thrilled to find on a mat on the ground in the market and seasoning in with nam-pla to make Thai food for my hungry daughters. Who would have thought that the potent smells of Thailand would have travelled with you from Asia to East Africa and on North with me. I wonder where they will follow your grand-daughters some day. But anyway, I am never happier than when I am feeding someone or cleaning up behind someone. Not very romantic I’m afraid, but thankfully not very hard to come by either. I guess my chances are quite good of being pretty happy for the foreseeable future.

I should close. You should be working on one of your grad school papers instead of reading this novel and I need to go to bed. Bryan is slumped over on the table next to me and the bugs are getting bold.

I love you more than I can say. Kiss Papa for me.

Love,

Elizabeth 

Letter Home

Dear Family,

 I sat down to blog but have been staring at the blinking stationary curser for so long I decided to write you instead. Somehow imagining you on the other side of the screen, reading my words on your phones in your classroom or on your laptops in the living room after a long day of work makes me happy. It seems like I always have words when I am talking to you!

We arrived safely in M yesterday. The day started early, the taxi came to the house in Nairobi at five (!) but we just bundled the still sleeping babies into the car and headed to the airport in the chilly dark. It is amazing to see Nairobi without traffic. We were travelling heavier than I would have liked, but I am coming to terms with the fact that our days of the big travel packs only are long gone and to just gracefully receive the flurry of proferred help from “porters” at the airport who grapple with our trunks, pack n’ play (“What is this again?”) and diaper bag.

Mkat slept most of the way to J which was nice for me. We had a pretty tight connection to the MAF shuttle so I was braced for chaos when we all shuffled off the plane, trading out light sweaters for sunglasses and hats, while digging for passports and pens to fill out immigration cards in the sheer pandemonium that is the J International Airport (One of our favorite games to play at the J airport is the “Imagine-what-so-and-so-would-be-like-here.” Perhaps not the most gracious game in the world but good for a laugh when the kids are about to melt and the immigration officer is just about to hassle you for some stamp you didn’t know you needed). Good gosh I hope they get the new airport built soon. Even with the crowd-thinning conflict of late that has driven a number of NGOs away (and not only NGOs. You should have seen how many people were packing out the plane (after plane after plane) that were heading back North to K. The good ol’ “We were better off back in Egypt!” effect.) that place is crazy. Anyway, never underestimate the charm of two little Khawaja girls in SS, melting or not. They charmed the pants off of just about every 8 foot weapon-wielding military police officer in the joint as we sashayed through security, immigration and security again without so much as a raised eyebrow (other than the ones directed at our children running between peoples legs and shaking strangers hands).

Anyway, we weren’t in J more than an hour or two so and never left the airport so we never saw any signs of the recent fighting. (There were even some skirmishes as recently as last week.) Everyone was friendly and crazy and happy, just like usual. And even a part of me shudders with relief every time I leave that city, a part of me was experiencing a great surge of happiness to be back.

We have been so warmly received by our teammates in M; they have made us feel right at home. We are staying in a dense village on the edge of town on Leah and Melinda’s compound. Leah is travelling out of country so we are staying in her tukul. Melinda has her own tukul with an attached kitchen that she is graciously sharing. But when you hear tukul please don’t imagine the mud-walled rat-infested monstrosity of days gone by (you were there Abigail, you know what I speak of!). These have brick walls with painted ceiling and indoor shower areas (bucket baths but inside). They have city power until 11 at night and there is plenty of space for beds for the girls. And no rats! It just feels so homey. Dave and Bre even brought by a basket of groceries for us to use too (you can get BlueBand here, and you should see the fruit!!!!).

M is a fascinating mix of all the Africas I have ever known, or at least my experience of it is. Mama and Papa, the area we are staying in reminds me quite a bit of Mutangani in the old days. It is a closely clustered village, mostly mud and thatch but a cement house here and there, some with tin roofs. The mango trees are thick and huge and heavy with mangoes not quite ripe enough to be pelting the village but soon we will be inundated from above. People are friendly but familiar enough with our teammates that we feel welcomed but not besieged with Khawaja curiosity. Annabelle has been thrilled at her renewed barefoot freedom and spent the morning next door with a cluster of kids playing kick-the-mango and eating fried sweet potato. Clothing (I feel so naked without my head covered), stuff in the shops and even the terrain are so reminiscent of East Africa to me. Even so, communication has been a lot easier than I feared it would be (people say we have the “hard” Arabic but seem to understand us) and everything from food and tea shops feel very familiar. Bryan pointed out last night that we have lived in two places in S that were at war until 2003 at least (current conflict notwithstanding of course) while M hasn’t seen war since the 80s. You can tell the difference.

We are not yet sure how long we will be here. Maybe a couple of weeks, maybe longer. Probably longer actually. If a miracle happens we will go home to D at the end of the month. But Bryan talked to Musa the other day and it seems very unlikely that it will be safe enough to go back yet. The UN just did another food distribution that was close to half of what the refugees normally get, just lentils and oil. The conflict at large has completely disrupted supply lines and now there is no more food to give and people are hungry. Last week fighting between refugees (the J were not involved) and the host community left over 120 houses and tents burned to the ground and several people dead. So now there are displaced people within displaced people camps. And anti-government forces continue to build near the border of our county (one of three left in the state still held by the government). So none of it sounds good.

But then again, if I talk about all the things that “don’t sound good” and they sign a peace agreement tomorrow and we are on the first plane home people will panic because of all the things I have told them before. It is just so hard to know what to say. Because on the other hand, D is one of the places that has still had no outright fighting at all yet. And that is certainly a good thing. So be careful what you tell people when they ask about us. We just don’t know what the future holds and don’t want to unfairly spin it in one way or the other. This could be a long difficult road for a lot of people, ourselves included, or this could just be a blip on the historical radar. As they say here, “Mafi zol barif ila Allah.” No one knows but God.

I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel like my arm is being shaved off slowly slowly, a bit with every news report or phone call. And I keep putting Neosporin and Mickey Mouse bandaids on the wound and it scabs over just in time for the next slice. Sometimes I worry that this shaving is all leading to my arm just getting shaved off completely. And if that is the case I would like to know that right now so I could get started with the business of learning to live without my arm instead of spending so much time healing something that is really just going to be a comparatively minor problem in the long run. But of course, none of us know what is going to get chopped off when do we? (Line of the day, you can quote me.) So I stick with my Neosporin and bandaids and keep about the business of healing. Maybe in the end it will just be a scar with a good story after all.

I love you guys so much. It’s fun to be emailing again, just like we did in the old days (though Mama, I will try to call you this evening, probably before you get this email actually. Our little internet modem hasn’t been able to connect yet so who knows when you will read this.) I feel like miss you all more and more the older I get, the more the girls grow, the more life gets muddled and in the process, illuminates those things that really matter. Anyway, we are counting the days until we see you.

Hugs and kisses all around,

Elizabeth

P.S. – Mama, do you have a good recipe for mango chutney? I left my cookbooks in D. and if we end up being here for a couple of months I may need one. ( : 

The Patient Ones

About a week before we evacuated North Africa last month I went to visit a woman named Om Iman in the camp. Her name had confused me for the longest time; it literally means “Mother of Iman (Faith) and I had assumed she had a daughter named Iman and like every other woman I know, was referred to by the name of her firstborn. So I called her “Iman” for the longest time before eventually discovering that when she was born she was named after a woman with a daughter named Iman and was ever-after called “Imam’s mother”.

Om Iman is one of those women who is staggeringly beautiful, at least I think so. I feel like you could plop her down in a mall in suburban America complete with bare feet, traditional facial scars and her fuchsia tobe draped gracefully over her thick braids and she would turn heads admiringly. Her jet black skin is as flawless as obsidian. She is tall and willowy and smiles easily. She is pretty in her home culture – she is tall and strong and has high cheekbones, but I feel like there is something timeless and borderless about her beauty too. At any time or place in the world, in rags or silk, she would be lovely.

This loveliness had also led me to be confused when I heard that she was the first of her husband’s two wives. She seemed so young and pretty, why in the world would her husband have taken a second wife? But I have had to conced that in a world not always as defined by sex and beauty as the one I come from, especially in a time of war, perhaps there are things I just don’t know or understand. Undoubtedly there are.

I didn’t even know Om Iman was pregnant when our mutual friend Laila told me she had miscarried. Laila comes to my house several mornings a week to sweep and help contain my dirty dishes, and this particular morning, as she scrubbed oatmeal off of a white plastic bowl, she told me that Om Iman was very unwell. She said that she had gotten up early in the morning to sweep the blood out of Om Iman’s floor, using gestures that suggested a miscarriage far more serious than I would have imagined from the slight frame of the woman I had seen only two days earlier. I asked Laila if it would be appropriate to visit Om Iman. Our cultures are different, I told her, Does she want to receive visitors right now or should I wait a few days? Laila snorted at my question as though I was being intentionally funny and said, Tomorrow, we will go see her tomorrow.      

Laila, who had come in for half a morning’s work, and Aisha, who is my language tutor, and I started off the next morning in the ATV Bryan only had up and running again for a matter of weeks. It was my first time driving again since the rebels had quasi-graciously returned the vehicle (thank you Division 10), and I was praying it wouldn’t die on me in the middle of the road three miles from home. We careened over potholes and through herds or sheep with our tobes flying out the sides of the vehicle like colorful wings until the red murram road became a dirt track which became a grassy trail which became a clearing under a tree beside a tukul where we parked and got out and walked.  

Om Iman’s friendly husband greeted me warmly and escorted us to the UNHRC tent with pinned open flaps where Om Iman lives. She was sitting on a rope bed in a sleeveless cotton nightgown and she struggled to rise and greet us when we stepped in. We sat down across from her in the hot close air of the tent; Om Iman’s co-wife, a short girl with thick arms and a shy smile brought us a pitcher of water.  

It is in times like these that I feel the limitations of my Arabic. I can talk about sickness and pregnancy and babies and hospital visits quite comfortably, but wading through matters of the heart – grief, anger, disappointment – these things are still difficult. But Om Iman talked more freely than I expected her too. She sat on the rope bed and described the pains that gripped her stomach a few nights earlier and the dead baby she had birthed on the dirt floor, encircling her fingers around the skin just above her wrist with her palm outstretched to show me how big the baby had been. She told me this was her third stillbirth. Dark stains slowly blossomed on her nightgown as she talked, the slow leak of milk for another lost child.

What do you say in those moments? Even in English, to someone I grew up with, my own sister, what would I say? And then how do I say that to a new friend from a world so far from my own, in a language we are both borrowing? I am so sorry. I don’t know why this happened. God loves you and your dead baby. I am so sorry. So, so sorry.

But I tried, somewhat fearfully but immensely grateful for these people that have the uncanny ability to see through words and actions and stuff, straight to the heart. Sometimes this gift makes me nervous, but on this day I was so thankful. We prayed and Om Iman said thank you many times for our visit. Before we rose to go she said, You know, sometimes I just lie in my bed at night and think. I can’t sleep because my head is so full of thoughts. Sometimes I cry as I think about life. But God has another life for us. So we are patient. We must just be patient.

I saw Om Iman once more before we left North Africa, the day before in fact, and she was smiling and seemed happy. Not superficially so, but a genuine happiness, perhaps more noticeably for its contrasting rim of deep sadness.

Patient, was the word she used. We must be patient. This is not a word I know. I am patient in long lines full of crabby people with carts full of soda and tangerines at a supermarket on a Sunday evening. I am patient in the maddening snarls of orderless traffic here in Nairobi, at least most of the time. I am patient when my baby throws her banana on the floor over and over and over again.

But patient when your third baby dies? Patient when you live in a tent because your government is bombing the mud huts in your home village? Patient when you watch fear and instability stalk closer and closer to the life you were rebuilding, threatening the peace you were just beginning to rest into?

I am having to be patient right now too. This isn’t what I wanted either. But my patience involves long runs in quiet neighborhoods with paved roads. It involves a little preschool for my firstborn three days a week. It involves a nice restaurant at least once a week and a church that worships in my heart language. Yes, I have had my fair share of sleepless nights and unexpected floods of tears. But I have not yet learned patience like Om Iman.

If it is true that God draws near to the broken-hearted, if he loves the poor and the abandoned of this world as much as he says he does, than I was in the presence of holiness that day on a rope bed under a hot UNHCR tarp, my feet tipped on a stained dirt floor. I was given the honor of sitting with the treasure of his heart, a favorite of the God of all creation.

If given the opportunity to sit in her presence again I will not take it for granted. She has so much to teach me.  

This is the best picture I could find of Om Iman. She is in the orange and yellow floral tobe towards the left looking off camera. Laila is on the mat in the foreground reaching towards her foot. I will take a better picture of them both when I see them again.