Lucky Day

A couple weeks ago my new neighbor offered to take me downtown to buy some fabric for curtains in our new home. I wanted a local design at a local price, but not yet knowing the local language, markets or public transportation systems, my new friend Martha, who was born and raised in the city, kindly offered to run around with me on a Tuesday morning. We walked down the dirt alley in front of our adjoined houses, past a nursery school and all the ramshackle stalls overflowing with papaya and avocado to the nearest matatu stage. We ducked into the 14 passenger van revving its engine along the side of the narrow road and waited for it to fill up. Once all seventeen of us had squeezed in we pushed off and headed into town.

We were only a couple of minutes down the road when the engine started sounded funny. The van lurched a few times and we began losing speed. The thick traffic behind us honked and jerked past on the busy road. The van sounded like it was drowning, coughing and staggering up a long hill while the driver fiddled with pedals and gears out of my sight. It quickly became evident that we were almost completely out of gas. We inched our way miserably up the hill, all of our heads jerking in unison with every jolt forward. This went on painfully for several kilometers.

We finally crested the hill and eased our way into one of the busiest intersections in Kampala, four huge roads spilling into a massive roundabout where traffic swirls around a singular patch of grass housing an ugly monument to something or other. There, we made our way slowly into the very heart of the chaos… and promptly stopped.

The car died.

The driver turned the ignition.

Nothing.

Outside thousands of tons of metal and glass turned to some strange viscous liquid and pooled around us like we were a mere rock in a stream. Hugs buses, Land Cruisers and pickups and thousands of motorcycles carrying their loads of mattresses, beer-crates, chickens or women in folds of diaphanous cloth all bled past us like some strange school of fish on their way downstream. Outside was the cacophony of organized chaos.

Inside was surprisingly silent. The woman in front of me scratched the skin between her braids with a long red fingernail and glanced at her watch. The tout fiddled with the wad of small bills interlacing his fingers. Someone behind be uttered a single loud cluck of indeterminate meaning, tongue rapping loudly on the soft palate of his mouth. Martha and I sat there side by side, the skin of our bare arms sweating into each other, an odd intimacy shared with a near-stranger.

We probably only sat there three minutes, maybe less, but it felt much longer. Eventually the driver turned the key once more and the van took a final gasp. It was just enough to propel us forward one last time and we wove impossibly through the masses and then coasted lifelessly down the other side of the long hill and into the waiting arms of a petrol station.

While the van filled with the smell of gasoline Martha beside me started to laugh, her huge breasts jiggling as she wiped sweat from her face with a fold of cloth. “We made it,” she said and gave me a little nudge with her elbow, “Today we are lucky, eh? Yes, this is our lucky day.”

That perspective is one of favorite things about Africa and one of the things I am most blessed to have been immersed in for about twenty of my thirty-one years. On some days it strikes me as sheer optimism with a pretty strong aftertaste of fatalism, but usually I recognize it for what it is - the eyes to see all the blessings that are strewn haphazardly all over our paths. Those inconvenient gifts that have a tendency to get underfoot and trip us up if we aren’t paying close enough attention to them.

I think of the time several years, three houses and two evacuations ago when Bryan was moving a huge water tank to better position it under a rain gutter. He had scooted it a few feet across the damp dirt just off our back porch when we discovered millions of carpenter ants pouring out of the earth he had disturbed and flooding across the yard. While Bryan and I rushed to get cans of bug spray to kill the hoard advancing towards the kitchen, our guard Ahmed broke into a huge grin and shouted, “No, no, don’t poison them. It’s a blessing. It is food for the chickens!” Then he trotted off towards the chicken coop whistling to our tribe of hungry hens.

I may have lived on this continent for most of my life, but I sometimes remain so blind to the blessings those around me seem to see so clearly. These past few weeks I have felt stripped down. Breaking my dang foot has probably been a big part of this. (It was a silly accident on a very aggressive flight of stairs, a fairly uninteresting story for another day – I will be fine.) Life circumstances have just left me feeling so incapable of doing what I want to do. Like I am still stuck in that matatu in the middle of the intersection unable to get the car moving at all much less in the right direction.

Tonight after supper while I was washing dishes on one foot (I insisted. Bryan has been doing everything else and I was determined to be a little helpful) I heard the sound of insanity in the living room. I hopped in with my soapy hands and found my crazy little family had moved the furniture out of their way and was dancing their hearts out to Andrew Peterson's ridiculous songs. I leaned against the doorframe for a minute and watched them leap about like maniacs, the girls laughing hysterically while Bryan swung them in circles through the air. And this time instead of hollering at them to be careful or to keep it down a little so the neighbors don’t think we are being robbed or something, I put down my crutches and decided to join in.

Cheap furniture is easy to move around. A still somewhat-empty house is great for acoustics. New rhythms of life mean that work and play have clearer distinctions now, making family nights more fulfilling than they have ever been. And, as it turns out, a broken foot dance to the lyrics of “Ten Piggy Little Toes” is good for try-not-to-pee-in-your-pants laughter.

Lucky. Blessed. It is something I am, whether or not I always see it that way in the moment. Sometimes I am still rushing to poison the very thing that is going to feed my heart. In this season of lingering uncertainty, growing understanding of the loss and new beginnings not quite off the ground yet, I am learning from the example of those around me - to open my eyes a little wider and looker a little closer. This is my lucky day.

Balcony

The walls are somewhere between mint green and sea-foam. The kitchen is tiny and has no drawers, but the little fridge and gas stove we bought used at a bargain fit in just perfectly. The calendar full of family pictures that my sister made me months ago finally has a place to hang. It’s one of the first things I put up.

We don’t have any furniture yet so we are just eating on a trunk and sitting on a bunch of colorful mats, but the carpenters who work on the side of Ggaba road say the beds, couch, table and chairs should be here by Monday. (Inshallah, I say to myself, just in case.)

The hot water heater works brilliantly and the electricity hasn’t been off once since we have been here, even with a couple of thunderstorms. The bathroom in the master bathroom is a little on the tacky side, a chrome modern look that wasn’t quite pulled off. But the house has lots of windows, and despite being full of nooks and odd tucked away spaces, it feels bright and airy and open. There is a guest room that is currently functioning as my private gym, the first space in months that is big enough for me to do my “Ten Minutes Pilates Solutions” by Laura Hudson without kicking over a suitcase or Pack N’Play. Oh Laura…She has literally, literally been about the only constant thing in my life beside Bryan these past five years. The places she and I have been….

My favorite place in this house is the upstairs balcony. It overlooks our small patch of private green grass and some of our neighbor’s grass too, a quiet and incredibly friendly Canadian family with shy little boys. (They have probably never heard so much screaming wafting over the wall in all their lives.) From here I can see out over our crumbly little urban neighborhood here in the heart of Kampala – potholed dirt roads winding between the columned houses with tall gates rimmed with razor-wire and the rusting tin dukas selling tomatoes and stale biscuits through cut-out windows. Several houses are unfinished and on the grey half-walls of one, a graffiti artist has painted portraits of Nelson Mandela, Tupak Shakur, Gollum from The Lord of the Rings and the words, “One Love.”

Beyond our neighborhood there is only the rolling skyline of Kampala, deep green pushing up between slabs of cement and glass, roads, buildings, markets and slums, life teeming under the weight of the city, bursting out of every breathable crack. In the warm breeze that brushes past me I hear the hum of all great African cities – the purr of a thousand motors perforated with the screech of car horns, whistling and hammering intermingling at a nearby construction site, the wail of a street preacher undercut by a mournful call to prayer, chickens, dogs, goats and ducks all competing with the thump of an R and B artist’s song tumbling out of a passing bus. And most prominent of all simply because he is right outside the front gate, the nasal ebb and flow of a knife-sharpener’s cry accentuated by the chime of his bell and clatter of his tools on the stony road. All of these sounds blend together and soften each other’s edges creating an almost constant buzz that I find inexplicably soothing.

From the balcony I can see a cell tower about half a kilometer away. Every evening two or three figures are perched at different heights on the angled rails, some of them dizzyingly high. At first I thought they were maintenance workers or repairmen. But they are there every evening, different people at different spots, and I have come to realize they are just people enjoying the time of day and a bird’s eye view of the city too. I like that. I wonder what they think about up there, if they are the same kind of things I think about up here.

After eight months of living in guesthouses and other people’s homes, we are finally unpacking our bags. When Bryan came out of North Africa this last time, something inside me broke a little and I knew I needed rest, the kind that only comes from living in a space where you can cook and laugh and yell at your kids and make love and cry and wrestle with your babies and dream out loud as loudly or quietly or happily or sadly as you need to. I wanted that place to be North Africa. I still do. And I am still holding out hope that it will be.

But until it is, this is where I will be. In a little green house in Kampala cooking in a tiny kitchen and praying on a pleasant balcony. We are hoping it will just be the home we can rest in when we can’t be up North, the place with familiar sheets and our brand of tea in the kitchen cabinet where we can plug into life and work and community when gunshots or rumors force us away from the home we most want to be in. A place that keeps us safe and sane, and yet close by, watching and waiting for that door to crack open again so we can shove our foot back in it. A place that keeps us grounded and thankful.

Of course, it isn’t exactly that right now.

The new sheets aren’t in fact familiar and I have yet to find my favorite brand of tea here. I can never remember which light switches go to which lights and I haven’t learned to subconsciously maneuver around the trashcan just inside the kitchen door so I won’t knock into it every time I step inside. When I wake up in the middle of the night starring at a high white ceiling from my mattress on the floor in takes me a minute to remember where the junk I am (and I am talking, like, which country we are in, not what part of the house).

It isn’t home yet.

But as I wash new cups in the sink after breakfast I think about how we picked out these cups by ourselves, plastic and cheap though they may be. They are ours. I think about how I chose the brand of dishwashing soap and the crust I am scraping off of the bottom of that pan is from a meal I cooked and served my hungry family as we ate it together alone.

And all of that, silly though it may be, makes me think that though it isn’t exactly home yet, hopefully it will be soon. Maybe my secondary home, maybe not. Who knows. Only time will tell. But a home nonetheless. And though it may not be the most familiar place to me now, it has given me the gift of shallow roots and a sense of gratitude.

It is with both fear and hope that I suspect that everything else will follow in good time.      

My loves eating supper in our current dining room

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