Ultrasound

Saturdays are ultrasound days at the local hospital.

I am still amazed that this establishment, hardly more than a rural clinic servicing hundreds of kilometers in every direction, has an ultrasound machine at all. It has no running water. Its electricity is pumped in from a generator out back. The toilets are moderately clean pit latrines. But it has an ultrasound machine. And on Saturdays women with various sized bellies politely hidden under colorful tobes line the breezy corridors waiting for their chance to glimpse that grainy image of their baby. This Saturday, I was one of those women.

Bryan and I went in at ten in the morning. We parked under a flame tree in full bloom near to the store room where boxes of medical supplies were still being unloaded from the recent DC-3 flight. We walked into the building which has whitewashed walls, green shuttered windows and a broad tin roof. Everything smelled mildly of antiseptic which reminded me of the Dettol we used to wash out newborn puppies in as kids. People sat in small clusters in the courtyard or waited on benches in the hallways. Hospital staff in blue uniforms passed by carrying buckets or slips of paper. Two doctors care for the hundreds of patients in this hospital, but I didn’t see either one of them.

We were met by our good friend James, a Kenyan nurse who works at the hospital training traditional birth attendants in this area. He has birthed hundreds of babies in at least three different countries that I know of, and if given the chance, I would let him help me birth mine in a heartbeat. He is a gifted nurse and very good friend to Bryan and me. James showed us into his office, a dim room with a desk, metal cabinet and small hospital bed with a blue mattress. Behind him a door opened into one of the wards and I could see a line of beds, mosquito nets and a tall woman empting bedpans. In the bed closest to us, just beyond the wall, I could see two bare feet with their soles facing back towards us.

I told James about our first visit with the doctor in East Africa and that she had asked to be sent e-mails about our monthly checkups out here. I had assured her that we would have access to good prenatal care and James assured me that I had not in fact lied to her. We went through the basics quickly: blood pressure, good; urine sample, good; weight, good; uterine height, good. And then James asked us the question I had been waiting for, “Would you like to see your baby?”

On the creaky hospital bed I was actually a little shy to pull up my shirt so the woman in the headscarf could squeeze the cold clear gel onto my bare skin. In a world where I never show my shoulders much less my belly button it felt odd to be lying there so exposed, but no one else really seemed to notice so I let it go. James ran the ultrasound wand over my stomach and I craned my neck around to look at the tiny gray monitor. Bryan leaned in closer and two more women appeared from nowhere and stepped in curiously too. I guess it’s not every day you get to see a Khawaja’s baby. It’s not every day for me either so I didn’t mind the company.
The first thing we saw was what looked like an orange seed in a cashew nut. The image was fuzzy and honestly, I am still quite new at recognizing my own uterus. The grey and black and white static was bleary and confused. But then James settled on a place and our baby jumped to life. Even with my neck twisted back awkwardly to look at that tiny screen, I felt like I would recognize that unrecognizable seed anywhere. He was jumping and waving like he knew we were watching. She was dancing and moving like she knew she had an audience. Spastic, uncontrolled brand new muscle spasms have never been so lovely to behold. “Your baby is very energetic!” James said. “He or she is already taking after their father.” I replied. James took his time and let us take in our fill of newly un-flippered arm and leg buds, the broad curve of a little-less alien head and the breathless flutter of a heartbeat. The women around us tittered at our excitement and when I told them it’s the first time I’ve ever been pregnant they smiled happily and shook my hand.

We left the hospital only thirty minutes after we had arrived and without having paid a cent. (The hospital is run solely by a relief organization in the area.) As we drove home I couldn’t help but be so happy. I know that in a few months when it is 114 degrees outside and I feel like a beached whale, I am going to be thinking of all the other places in the world I would rather be pregnant. And the next time that craving for a Reeses Pieces Dairy Queen Blizzard hits, I might be a little pouty for a while. And if I go into labor early and have a baby in a hospital with no running water, I might freak out a little bit at some point along the way. But on Saturday, being told my baby was perfectly healthy by a good friend I trust implicitly, in a place that feels more like home every day, (and without having paid a fortune!) I was overcome with just feeling very, very blessed.

A Sunday in the Life

Because it’s a weekend and the dishes can wait one more day, breakfast is usually just bread from yesterday’s market dipped in honey, and maybe some bananas. The honey is thick and amber colored and tastes as wild as the weather it is made in. It’s sold in old water bottles and the first inch is usually crusted over with honey comb and dead bees.

We leave for church shortly after nine. We drive past people streaming into town balancing rope beds on their heads, swinging chickens by their feet or leading donkeys with full sacks of sorghum on their backs. Everyone is heading to town for market day. Even as we drive in we see the lorries with ostrich feather hood ornaments and outrageous paint jobs barely disguising metastasized rust loaded down with gunny sacks full of onions and limes. Men with scarves tied around their heads toss the sacks off of the vehicles to other men who carry them on their backs up stairs and into shops. They whistle and shout at each other while they work.

At the city square we turn down an alley and leave the simmering energy of town behind us. We park in the shade of a neem tree and walk into the courtyard of the dilapidated stone building. I can’t remember if the structure was originally built as a church or not, but during the war it passed hands several times and was even used as a goat pen once. Now, despite the fact that it is usually full to overflowing, it still brings the word “crumbling” to mind. The energy inside, however, speaks of anything but decay. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The room is long and narrow and the only light filters in weakly from the windows along the walls. A group of nearly thirty is singing loudly over the pulse of a drum and I suspect I am taking one of the singer’s seats as I squeeze into a school bench next to three other girls. When the song ends and people shuffle to wedge themselves back into the crowd, another language group is called and a dozen more men, women and children make their way to the front to sing in their mother tongue. On and on the musical chairs goes until every language represented has been given the chance to sing. When we all stand to sing together, in Arabic, English or even Kiswahili, we must overlap our shoulders like a handful of cards to make room for each other.

After church we make our way back to town for lunch. Under the green awning of our favorite restaurant we greet the smiley cook who is partially hidden behind a veil of smoke and steam bubbling from metal pots and clay incense holders in front of him. We place our order and step inside, crossing a greasy floor to the nearest free table. On the table is a red plastic bowl full of salt and a pitcher of water. We sip our cold Fantas and casually greet the men sitting at neighboring tables. We watch piglets and goats root at rotting tomatoes in the square outside. In an unlit room behind us a man rolls out sheets of filodough on a rack, preparing the sticky sweet basta for the evening crowd. Our food is brought on an aluminum tray as wide as our table by a boy in a well worn apron. Beans topped with jibna (a cheese much like feta) and diced onions are surrounded by an assortment of round bread and folds of sorghum kisra. There is a dish of vegetable soup and another of grilled meat. We tear off pieces of the bread and kisra and dip them into communal bowls of beans and greens. The food is good. Better than I ever imagined it could be the first time I tried it. We eat together, occasionally bumping knuckles over the hot peppers or limes and I think that whoever said food eaten by hand tastes better because it involves one more sense was probably right. After we eat we wash out hands from a tap in a barrel outside and carry on to the market.

Selling kisra

As is often the case, things have slowed by the time we get there, though dozens more mats than usual dot the ground of the market like a melted checkerboard. On the mats in the sun are piles of onions, tomatoes, limes, garlic, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, watermelons, soap, and clay coffee pots. Some men sit under umbrellas but most simply squat in the heat shouting out the price of each precarious mound in front of them. We pick our way through the maze, asking prices of some things, the names of others, slowly filling our guffa with groceries for the week. I am delighted to see a woman with a basket of eggs for sale, and even happier when she says they are not yet boiled. I am already thinking of the banana bread and pancakes we will have this week as she picks them out of their grassy bed and places them carefully in a sack for me. Women in gaudy tobes make the rounds too, scoffing at unacceptable prices and bargaining loudly. Small boys weave their way through the crowd with wide trays of roasted peanuts. Donkeys nibble at purple onion skins while their owners pile rope beds or sacks of flour onto the cart at their backs.

As we finish up our shopping and head back towards the ATV I feel a hard slap on my back which makes my stomach drop for a moment. But even before I turn I know who it is. Jema is standing there smiling broadly in his dirty white jallabiya and holding out his hand for a warm hello. I don’t know Jema’s story but I suspect either autism or something darker from the large round scar on the side of his head. I continue to be amazed by people’s gentle incorporation of him into daily life, and have watched him deliver tea to shop keeper’s porches or help the man at the “gas station” pump fuel out of large barrels. Today he answers my simple questions with silted grunts and dramatic gestures, a part of some story I can’t hear but wish I could understand. Eventually he ushers us on our way and we continue towards home.

At home we play a round or two of “Settlers of Catan” with Dan and Laura, and Dan wins again. We later try to skype family but the internet is moody and we can’t get through tonight. The day ends much as it began, with a light supper of fruit and maybe popcorn. The sun sets and the mosquitoes come out so we retire to the safety of our tent. We read in bed but after a while we begin to doze so we turn off the inverter for the night. Everything then is dark and quiet except for the drone of a neighbor’s generator. We drift off to sleep and wait for Monday.

Lemon Drops and Limes

Yesterday morning as I leaned off the edge of our back porch and stared at the contents of my dinner, lunch and mid-day snack from the day before splattered on the ground in front of me, I realized that the convenience of always being about five steps from "outside" just might balance out the inconvenience of having one toilet on the far end of the compound over the course of the next seven months.

Ah, yes. The grim stories of morning sickness that have filtered to me across the ocean in recent weeks are now mine to share in. But I take comfort in the fact that I am now a proud participant in the (in)glorious experiences that characterize some part of the lives of so many women throughout the history of the world. I am just doing it with a bad taste in my mouth today.
One of my favorite things about living in a part of the world that I didn't grow up in (or my parents either for that matter) is getting to see firsthand how vastly different people all over the world are from each other. But the one thing I like even more than that is getting to glimpse how shockingly similar people all over the world are to each other. I have a feeling that pregnancy and motherhood will give ample opportunity to witness this over and over again.
Yesterday Aisha, the woman that helps me wash clothes and dishes, let out a little snort of laughter when she saw me feebly nibbling raisins on the couch. "Are you sick?" she asked. "No. The baby is just making my stomach hurt." I then did a probably unnecessary pantomime of vomiting (which turned out to be a new vocab word for the day) and she laughed as I suspect only a mother of three can. She then picked up a wedge of lime from off of the kitchen table. "Suck on this. It will help." She said and set the lime on top of a canister of lemon drops that my mother-in-law swears contributed to her survival twenty-some years ago.
Later in the afternoon two other women, acquaintances from down-the-road, popped in for a visit in their shiny new tobes for the Eid weekend. After some small talk I hesitantly told them our good news, still a little unsure of the most culturally appropriate way to let the cat out of the bag. My bumbling was rewarded with lots of high-pitched and only partially intelligible gabble of congratulations and advice. One of the first things the woman in the yellow tobe said was "Suck on limes if you feel sick. When I had my stomachs I went to bed with a lime in my hand so if I woke up sick I could suck on it right away." "Don't drink coffee!" The other said. "The smell will make you sick." "And don't cut onions or raw meat. That will make you sick too!" "Don't eat hot peppers. They will make your heart hurt." "And don't be afraid to tell your husband no. Just tell him to leave you alone, even if he hits you!" This remark made me first blush and then cringe, though my guests cackled at what seemed to be their own joke, following it up with an assuring, "But he will love the baby so much when it get here. And he will love you for giving it to him." On and on the conversation went like a vibrant de ja vu of e-mails and phone calls from college roommates, aunts and sister-in-laws who have all carried babies very far away from here.
I have been feeling much better today and know that I am richly blessed to be so healthy so far. It was significant to me to hear my friends and neighbors talk yesterday about the babies they have lost along the way. "Just pray a lot. Pray all the way through and Allah will hear you," they say and their voices speak of both peace and loss. I am grateful for all these women in my life, both here and far away. Their strength and senses of humor are endlessly encouraging to me in this new adventure. I may just trying going to bed with a lime tonight…

The first of the obligatory awkward pose picture - 8 weeks and counting...

Having my cake and eating it too

Our final week in East Africa was so good. Though we spent a few days running around working on travel documents and logistics we were able to get away for a couple of days to celebrate our good news together. We jumped on a bus heading out of town and spent a couple of nights at a nice hotel on a nearby lake. Bryan was very excited to see hippos for the first time (outside of the zoo) and we both enjoyed biking through herds of giraffe, zebra, gazelle and warthogs in a neighboring national park.

But perhaps my favorite part of our time out was at a hospital back in the city where we got to hear our baby's heartbeat for the first time. The doctor says "our little orange seed" as we have taken to calling him or her (though apparently he/she is the size of a big raspberry this week) is growing perfectly so far and, with God's grace, will be arriving sometime around April 24th. We are so very thankful and happy.




And now, one hop, skip and several long jumps later we are home again. And as much as I enjoyed the luxuries of East Africa, it is so good to be back. We fell asleep in our own bed last night listening to the whirling, chirping, buzzing cacophany in the moonlight outside our big screen windows. We woke up to our ridiculous rooster and the twanging of stringed instruments floating across the morning from our guard's radio. Eid is just around the corner and town seems bursting at its seams with people buying food and gifts from shops overflowing with nice things.

I like being in a world with indoor plumbing, broccoli, public transport, hospitals and ice cream for a while but I love this world of donkey carts, bucket baths, open air markets and head scarves too. I feel so blessed to occaionally enjoy some of the finer things in life with more appreciation than I might have before, and then return with fresh eyes to simplicity and what often feels to me like a good bit of adventure. Sometimes I think my life is a like helping myself to a huge slice of rich chocolate cake and then looking in the the refridgerator to find the cake still perfectly whole.

Good Things

Having some down time together in East Africa is always a welcome treat, and there are a handful of specific things I always look forward to when we are back here. Java House strawberry milkshakes just about tops the list for me I have to admit...

We also love going to see movies (this time out it's been Inception and the A-Team), hot showers, pedicures (those are my feet not Bryan's), wearing blue jeans, riding buses and matatus, eating sukuma wiki at sketchy restaurants in the middle of downtown, eating Italian at fancy restaurants outside of town, green apples, pears, cappacinos and...more milkshakes.

But there are a handful of things I am appreciating on this trip out that I never would have though twice about before. Things like ginger ale, plain toast, peppermint and crackers. Simple little things that have a knack for suppressing nausea. And that my friends is because I am oh so happy to tell you that we are pregnant! Most of you probably already know this from phone calls, e-mail or Facebook but I wanted to announce it here too. I will write more about it later. Right now we are still just enjoying time together and soaking in this big change. Just know that we are so happy and that we appreciate your prayers so much.

Cargo

One of the things we love about life here is that somewhat odd phrases like, "There's a cargo plane landing on the airstrip in two hours that has room on it if you want to go!" is cause for immediate action. Such was the case yesterday. Like other organizations working in this area, our policy is to spend ten to twelve weeks in country followed by two weeks out for R and R. However, unlike other organizations, we don't have our own planes flying in regularly so we rely heavily on the available space of other people's planes coming and going. The difficult part about this is that it requires a lot of flexibility and very loose travel itineraries. The fun part is that you never know quite what to expect.

So at about noon yesterday Bryan and I were plucking damp clothes off the line and stuffing them into our packs alongside travel documents and passports as we rushed to meet the plane that had decided to come in a day early. We managed to pack up in record time and jumped into the ATV with our coworkers Dan and Laura and started the fifteen minute trek out to the dirt airstrip. The UN has been pouring a staggering amount of money into repairing the road to the airstrip lately and despite dodging a few spastic bulldozers, we were making the best time we ever had on the freshly grated road. But as we eased around a bend in the road we saw something that made our stomachs turn.

The first thing that registered was two men sprinting down the road towards us, the second with a big stick in his hand. But our attention was quickly diverted from the men who sped past us to the Land Cruiser stopped at an odd angle on the road in front of us. Its bulbar was nosed up against a mound of dirt on the side of the road and all of its doors were flung open. A donkey lay sprawled in the middle of the road, its load of goods from the market scattered several feet in each direction. Three or four people were pacing awkwardly near the vehicle and one girl, an East African expatriate I recognized from one of the NGOs in town, was staggering towards us. As we pulled up and jumped out of our car she slumped to her knees. I could hear her hysterically crying, "Jesus, sweet Jesus!" over and over again. Following her tearful gaze we could see an awkward mound of fur under the front of the Land Cruiser. Next to it was a long blue form. "There's a man still there!" the girl screamed. "He's under the car." The next few moments were a blur of Arabic, Kiswahili, and English as people from three different countries tried to communicate through their anger and fear and confusion. We were already out of cell phone range so Bryan pulled out our satellite phone to try and reach the doctor in town while Dan went to the front of the car to try and get whoever and whatever was underneath out as safely as possible. In the midst of all this the man with the big stick returned and added his ire to the already volatile situation after unsuccessfully chasing down the driver of the vehicle who had fled seconds after the accident. Eventually someone else got in the driver's seat and began to carefully back the vehicle up. We all held our breath as the car rolled backwards crunching miserably over gravel and sacks of food. I was waiting for the screams of whoever was caught underneath the car and dreading what we were about to see. But instead of the mangled body of a person we all breathed a sigh of relief as we saw nothing other than a second donkey, bloody and obviously in shock, but unbelievably alive and thankfully, alone. Next to him was just a long blue plastic tarp rolled up with string. I never thought seeing such a badly hurt animal would make want to laugh with relief, but it did yesterday, though still through tears.

We eventually made it to the airstrip and climbed a ladder into the belly of the cargo plane. Webbing flapped behind our seats, holding back thirty-five feet of air in the now empty cargo bay as we lumbered down the dirt airstrip and up into the low lying clouds. The praying girl who had also been heading to catch the same plane put a scarf over her face and slept. And as I closed my eyes on tiny propeller-blurred trees and rivers outside my window and settled into the deafening roar around me, I found myself saying a quick prayer too. I really, really hope those donkeys survive and go on to live miraculously long lives and tell their donkey grandchildren about the day they took on a Land Cruiser. Because if they don't survive, I suspect there will be a family in a village far from town that will miss them very badly.

Good Run

I often kick around ideas for a blog when I run in the evenings. This week I had flirted with a few random ones: how extracting maggots from my cat’s leg (I won’t tell you how many) has given me great peace that I didn’t miss my calling to the medical profession after all; how much the faded photographs a soldier showed us of himself crouching in tall grass with an automatic weapon reminded me of sepia tinted images of my father-in-law in Vietnam; how sad I am that a good friend is getting ready to move away and excited I am that my baby sister is about to start college. But as I set out to run last night all these pieces of the week peeled off and fluttered to the ground behind me. And at the end of a long week, it’s the memory of my run itself that lingers most.

I set off around six. Dark clouds were building in the southeast, but rain has been illusive lately and I didn’t expect it to come through. But I hoped it would. Though I am running a lot these days, I’m still not one of those people who enjoys it much more than how I feel afterwards. Though my runs get longer every time I go out, not a single one begins without the fleeting thought of “Can I really do this today?” So I play mind games with myself to get through it. Don’t start running until the stream and don’t stop until you get back to it. Short run have four different sections, long runs have six. Run fast up hills, slow down them. If a path separates then joins itself again, take one branch out, the other branch on the way back in. And always sprint the last stretch home. These rules structure every run I take.

In the first village I passed through I greeted a man digging around his sorghum and an old woman sitting on a stool with several babies at her feet. But after that point I saw no one else on the trail. The sandy path was full of prints under my tennis shoes – cows, goats, a bicycle track and little bare footprints. A lone black donkey trotted down the trail, easing me over into the grass as he made his way resolutely somewhere and I wondered if anyone was looking for him or expecting him. I heard lizards scuffle in the brush as I went by and birds cry from small trees but saw none of them. At one point a torn black plastic sack made me wince as it slithered near my foot. I was jumpy after my friend who often runs the same trail killed a puff adder sunning itself on the path last week. This made me start thinking about how I would say “I’ve been bitten by a snake!” in Arabic but all I could come up with was “I’ve been eaten by a snake!” which I fear would provoke more laughter than assistance getting to the hospital. I decided right then that I should look that one up, just in case.

The rain hit at almost the furthest point out on my run. It started as a light drizzle but steadily gained momentum until it sounded like the footsteps of thousands of little feet running in the grass beside me. It hit my forehead in cold drops and rolled down my nose into my open mouth. It soaked through my nylon pants which began sticking to my knees. I expected laughter as I ran through a second village, a crazy white woman running in the rain, but all I saw were sheep huddled under a baobab tree and smoke misting out of small huts. There are so many baobab trees in the village that I was almost untouched by raindrops through its entire length. At the edge of this village there is an old hand-dug well that they say was built as many as ninety years ago by British soldiers. I have always wondered why British soldiers would dig a well this far out of town and am curious if they thought the baobab grove was as beautiful as I do. There are usually a handful of women there pulling jerry cans on long ropes up out of the ground who offer me a drink as I go by, but yesterday the place was abandoned. And yet yesterday, I suddenly would have liked nothing more than a drink from that well.

At the rock where I turn around for long runs I almost broke a rule and actually stopped. The rocky green mountain rose wet and magnificent on my right. The heavy black clouds were rumbling menacingly behind me, still dropping cold clean rain. And the most unnaturally pink sunset was flaming directly in front of me, hurting my eyes with its brilliance and throwing my exhausted shadow back towards the storm. It was breathtaking. It seemed like I was the only person in the world, which felt beautiful and frightening.

But I didn’t stop. I slowed long enough to take try to soak it all in for one long moment, breathed a deep “thank you,” and turned back into the storm and ran home.