Eliza

A few weeks back I dreamed about a man names Ahmed Haroun. He was the local carpenter in the town we lived in just across the border, before we evacuated; he built all the doors and windows in our house as well as a rough island just the right height for kneading bread in my kitchen. He was also our good friend. We visited each other’s homes on holidays and laughed over the kind of jokes that transcend language barriers. He is a stout man with a beard. For some weird reason I always thought he looked like a dark North African version of one of those traditional of St. Nicolas’ - stern and a little bit intimidating but undeniable kind. When we evacuated, our families each had baby girls just a few months apart. His was named Eliza, after me.

The night we evacuated, in the early hours of the morning when we were calling friends between packing and cleaning, we called Ahmed Haroun. He was in a town further North, a touchy place to be considering his open affiliation with the rebel movement. When Bryan called, his wife answered the phone. She said she was holed up in their house with the children listening to gunshots outside. She didn’t know where Ahmed Haroun was. Hours later we flew out and left everything, and everyone, behind.

In the months that moved into a year after we left North Africa, Ahmed Haroun was one of the few people we couldn’t make contact with. We made a few trips back and then in April finally moved back and started setting up our lives again. In all that time we heard rumors that he was alive and that his family were well, but we hadn’t seen him with our own eyes.  

In my dream he just walked in our front gate, calmly, like he had done dozens of times before. The dream was significant enough that I mentioned it to Bryan the next morning, but all in all I didn’t think much of it. But two or three days later that is exactly what happened. I looked up to see a man walk through our gate. I turned to Bryan and said without thinking, “If I didn’t know better I would think that was a thinner version of Ahmed Haroun.” And lo and behold it was. 

We sat and talked for a couple hours over tea. We talked about how his family got to safety and about his now-pregnant wife. We talked about the furniture we will need built for our new house. We talked about politics and laughed a little about the things we all left behind. And somewhere in the course of the conversation, much later than we should have, we asked about his baby. And with calm sadness, he told us how Eliza had died.  

A few nights ago my little sister Abigail (who is here for a visit!) and I were watching the Robin Hood movie with Russell Crowe in it. At some point in the film all the women and children and old people of Nottingham are rounded up and hustled into a wooden building that is set alight. There are several tense minutes of smoke rising through the floorboards and people screaming as the heroes rush to save the townsfolk. They do, of course, eventually save everyone; but before that moment comes when everyone stumbles out happily safe and alive, one of the women in the burning building frantically shuffles her little baby through a gap in the boards into the hands of a stranger in an attempt to save his life. The scene is brief and peripheral to the larger narrative. But when that moment came, I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breath. I literally had to turn away from the screen and concentrate on some trivial object on the table while I tried to choke down the sob in my chest. Even my incredibly tender-hearted sister had a understandable giggle at my overreaction. My emotion caught me completely off-guard, but I went to bed that night with a sick feeling in my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about that baby, and his mother who thought she was about to die. 

I don’t claim to have ever lived through great trauma in my life. I want to give the griefs and loss I have known their proper due, and I think I do that, but an honest look at my life shows no great violence committed against me or someone in my immediate family. My parents, siblings and children are all alive. I haven’t even been in a car wreck, for goodness sake.

And yet, I am living shoulder-to-shoulder with many, many people who have been through trauma, who have been hurt, who have lost children...and I think I am realizing that some of that pain rubs off on me whether I realize it or not. There is a slow motion, slow-growing, slow-accumulation of hurt that collects in the hollows of my heart while I am not paying attention. While I happily change the diapers of fat babies, or laugh over a joke with a friend, or cook supper for a hungry husband, sadness trickles into me without me ever feeling it. I don’t even know it’s there until I sit down with a bowl of popcorn to watch Russell Crowe shoot a few arrows and suddenly I am fighting off a panic attack.  

My friend Leah is a counsellor and has taken part in several trauma healing workshops in this part of the world. When I saw her last she mentioned how she is learning more and more about the spiritual discipline of grief. She only mentioned it in passing, and at the time I wasn’t in a place to engage the thought fully. But I have been chewing on it for a while now. And the thought that maybe there is something godly about grieving things worthy of great sorrow intrigues me. It comforts me. And scares me a little too. 

I don’t really know how to end this blog. I have been staring at the screen for a while now, trying to think of some profound or at least tidy way to close this up. But I’ve got nothing. I could say something heart-wrenching about a dead baby named after me, but the truth is I only held her once I think. I didn’t really know her. I could say something about the tragic lives of refugees in war-torn Africa, but that rings vaguely off to me too. There are tragedies everywhere - yes, here more than many places - but I am constantly fearful of painting over the beauty that is here, or ignoring the pain somewhere else. I’m not sure what all this is about tonight. Just a story I wanted to tell, I guess. Ahmed Haroun’s and a thousand others’ like him.

And to be honest, it’s partly mine too. 

Maybe more than anything tonight I am just realizing that these things don’t go away. These stories that aren’t mine claim me, and these memories I don’t remember play in my mind over and over again. And even as I grow desensitized to story after heartbreaking story, something inside me is rawer than I realized.

Scorpions

You know those people who are so stinking nice, who are always incredibly cheerful and eternally optimistic that you just feel perpetually guilty around them because they kinda just make you want to slap them in the face just to see how they would react (except you know they would just respond with more unnecessary kindness so you stick to your simmering irritated guilt)? Or is that just me who occasionally feels this way…? Sometimes I wonder if the things that I write here might nudge me a little closer to coming across as that kind of person than I want to be (though I know that those of you who know me best are laughing hysterically). But when I write about the incredible life I have been given in an amazing place and how much fun I am having living it, bugs and all, I never want that to overwhelm the voice of the bad days. The voice of the days that you just want to scream and throw the mildewed towel in. The voice of the days that make you think you really are out of your mind for trying to pull this thing off after all. The voice of the days that make you say, I don’t think I can do this.

I do have an incredible life in an amazing place and I am having so much fun living it. But oh my friends, the bad days are real. 

The weird thing is, I am not sure what made this particular day so bad. We are all still healthy. The rain has cooled everything off. Language lessons are going great. It was the day before Bryan’s birthday and I was trying to pull off our customary cinnamon rolls in a charcoal oven which, in retrospect, was probably a little bit selfish as I am pretty sure he would have preferred birthday oatmeal and a happy wife to the dubious delicacies I grumpily served up with flour in my hair over the din of screaming babies. But that is neither here nor there.

There were more bugs that usual that night. Scorpions were evacuating our grass roof en masse and I had echoes of a story I recently heard about a baby in the camp who died of a scorpion sting as I stepped on and barely bruised the forth one of the night. The girls were in atypical cohesion as they both resisted sleep with every fiber of their being, one flopping and singing rebelliously under her mosquito net while the other kicked and squirmed in my arms under our net. The night just felt like a weight that kept getting heavier and heavier until finally, before I knew what was happening I was throwing a pillow across the room and screaming a word I would have been soundly spanked for saying growing up. A startled Bryan took my even more startled baby outside to swing in the hammock in the dark while I laid in bed and bawled for the child that was surely now going to die of cerebral malaria because her mother was having a fit inside.

It wasn’t pretty.

It was close to midnight before everyone was finally asleep and calmed down. Bryan and I sat on our plastic chairs in the dark. He asked if I was ok. I said I wasn’t sure. I think he was probably looking for the thing that had upset me, the emotion I was feeling, the reason for my outburst. And a significant part of my frustration is that I didn’t really have one answer. It was everything. It was nothing. It was things too small to mention. It was things too big to talk about.

The scorpions in my house drive me crazy. The utter lack of space for a family of four in a mud hut drives me crazy. Spending all evening rushing babies from supper to baths to mosquito nets before the mosquitoes come out and obsessively checking my daughters’ temperatures drives me crazy. Eating lentils four times a week drives me crazy.

But that is nothing compared to the give in my heart when my dear friend, a mother of three (it used to be four) whose UNHCR-issued tent fell down in the first rainstorm, tells me with genuine kindness how big and nice my house is. It is nothing compared to the way I feel when I hear that the young man making blocks for our (even-bigger) house couldn’t make it to work on Monday because his ten-month old baby boy died of diarrhea over the weekend. It’s nothing compared to looking over the pile of wrinkly mangoes I am buying at the market and seeing thousands and thousands of people lined up in the blazing heat to receive their sacks of grain to last them to the end of the month.  

I feel like I am having to tough it out to survive in a house that every single one of my neighbors would kill to live in. I stress over the health of my vaccinated children when I have every precaution and safety measure available at the tip of my fingers. I get bored with foods that people around me savor once in a blue moon, if ever.

The scorpions are a nuisance, but it is these opposing truths that split my mind wide open sometimes. They sit heavily on my heart, scrabbling for dominance over each other and kicking the wind out of my chest. It’s a claustrophobic feeling, like there is no way to escape the crush of reality.

(And then, to be honest, some days I really am just crying over the stupid bugs, not all the dead babies I should be weeping for, and that makes me feel crazy too.)

Earlier in the week I was telling Aisha, my closest friend from our years across the Northern border, about the scorpion I found in our bed, a few inches from Mary Katherine’s head. I don’t know what I expected her response to be. Horror, perhaps. Or empathy. Goodness knows she has probably had scorpions near her baby’s head in the camp. Maybe I was even looking for outright disinterest, as though I needed the assurance that it really wasn’t a big deal. Aisha’s life has bigger problems than stinging insects. But I didn’t get any of those things. She listened to my story and shuddered in distaste. But then she shrugged and said, “But God sees.” And that was it.

My horrible night is over and the claustrophobia has passed. Like it always does, a good cry and a few hours of deep sleep soothes the heart. But I know it will be back again at some point. And when it does, I will remember my friend’s words. Whether with comfort or trepidation, I’m not sure, but I will remember what she said. He does see.

First Rain

We finally had our first rain today.

The day was hot, suffocatingly hot, and sagged over us like a drunk friend. Around four Bryan left with the computer to go and try to send some emails from a neighboring compound. I piddled around the house with the girls who both seemed too hot to either sleep or play. I ignored the first few rumbles in the distance, we’ve been hearing thunder from afar for days, but as it grew louder we went outside to investigate. As I pushed Annabelle in her swing and listened to MKat suck her fingers snuggled up against my chest I scanned the sky, trying to figure out which way the storm was coming from. Storms in this place never fail to confuse me. They roll in from unexpected places and swirl in different directions all at once; the darkest clouds evaporate with hardly a sprinkle and unassuming white clouds let loose a fury of rain.

Today the sky in the Northwest was the color of a violent bruise and was skirted with gauzy white clouds that looked like they were in a hurry to get out of the way. A hawk fought for control as he circled in the wind, repeatedly skimming over the fleshy white blossoms at the top of our huge baobab that stood out sharply against the black sky. The whole image looked like one of the cliché paintings by amateur artists that I have seen in so many overpriced bookstores in Nairobi – melodramatic, unrealistic, beautiful. As the wind picked up and the thunder started breaking like the surf on distant rocks I could hear the voices of so many refugee children screaming happily from the direction of the camp, and I wondered how many people like us were standing outside waiting for the sky to break open.

I asked Annabelle several times if she was ready to go inside, and each time I was relieved when she resolutely said, “No!” Whether by biology or influence, she is my daughter. Eventually though the wind kicked up enough sand around us that it was hard to see, so we ushered ourselves back inside. By now the thunder sounded like an avalanche of rocks overhead and the first few fat drops were beginning to fall. The earth heaved a huge sigh of relief and closed it’s eyes in pleasure.

The mud hut that at times has seemed so uncomfortable was immediately more homey than it has ever been before. The girls lay on our big bed, reading books and kicking in the air respectively, in the warm light of recycled sunshine. I put a kettle on our gas range just as Bryan stumbled in the door, soaked to the bone but laughing because he was as excited as we were. As he dried off, I fixed us all mugs of hot red karakade which we drank to the roar of the storm outside.

After supper it was still raining so we bathed the girls in basins full of hot water on a table in the kitchen. We dressed them both in footie pajamas for the first time in weeks and tucked them in under the nets. Bryan lay with Annabelle in her bed and I snuggled with MaryKat in ours. The thunder was now far away, but the rain still tapped resolutely at the grass overhead. Happy frogs and bugs and bats all croaked and whirled and chirped up a raucous symphony in the sea beyond our little island. The girls fell asleep quickly. Bryan is snoring quietly as I type this in the dark.

There is a long list somewhere of all the things one should do in the fullness of this life, many of which I will never get to. But I am nearly positive that one of them is weathering a storm in a mud-hut with your family.         

I am glad to have done it tonight.

Hyena Eyes

On Facebook I have seen lots of people refer to “#firstworld problems”; these issues usually are about various technological devices or modern conveniences. I also have some friends who have made jokes of “#thirdworld problems” which usually involve latrines or various animals in unexpected places. But this week I have decided we need a third category, something along the lines of “First-world-people-in-the-third-world problems.” Those problems that only those few first-world people have, but we only have them when we are in the third-world. I have had several lately. They include:

When you read at night, big moths keep turning the pages of your kindle touch.

Or, you can’t fit all the stuff you brought on the chartered airplane in your mud hut.

Or, you don’t have any clean clothes because the ladies who hand wash your clothes all ran off on “Tribal Warfare Day.” (A long story for another time…)

Or, you can only send emails on your laptop because the internet access in the aforementioned mud hut is really crappy.

Because of that last particular problem I have been blogging by sending my mom emails (when we can get them to go out) that she then posts on blogger for me. So if you have sent me a Facebook message or had some dramatic happening in your life that I haven’t acknowledged, it’s just because I haven’t been online in a while.

It’s been a good week! It still isn’t raining yet but several blustery storms have rumbled through bringing with them the sweet tang of rain that smells dark and leafy green, like the salad I have been craving. Whether our bodies are just adjusting to the heat or it has actually cooled off some, I’m not sure but I have been enjoying those moments that I am not sweating profusely.

With the hovering imminence of moisture though, all the critters in the vicinity seem to quivering with excitement too. We’ve had a couple scorpions inside and a rat in the kitchen (all of which Bryan heroically disposed of). One night we also had a hunting spider in our room, an eight-legged horror the size of a lobster with the speed of Usain Bolt. I think they are completely harmless (though I’m not really sure why) but this particular one ran over my foot three separate times as I got ready to crawl in bed, vulnerably undressed and with only a headlamp for protection, all of which made me act like the room was full of cobras. Bryan kept telling me to step on it, which to my credit I did, but it just feels weird stepping on a bug that is going to squish like a mouse, which it also did. Anyway, as welcome as the cooler weather is, I think our near future holds many more late-night escapades with vermin.      

A guy came by a couple days ago to change money with Bryan and lingered around afterwards to chat. He is both a butcher and a local pastor and as he prepared to go he asked Bryan, almost as an afterthought, “Oh by the way, do you want some hyena eyes?” Bryan though he had either misunderstood or was hearing an unfamiliar euphemism, but upon clarification he realized that the man was in fact asking if he wanted to buy the eyeballs of a hyena. When Bryan asked what in the world he would use it for the guy said they are great for being able to see better or for coming up with great ideas. He denied that it was any kind of witchcraft, apparently just that odd thing between science and luck and common knowledge (I mean everyone knows hyena eyeballs are good for your eyesight, right?). Bryan said we would pass this time but the guy said he would at least bring a pair by sometime to show us. Oh my. Just when this place starts feeling normal something like that happens and I realize just how far from Kansas we really are.

We went to visit our friends in the camp on Friday. We sat in a grass house and drank strong sweet coffee out of little porcelain cups while we talked. Annabelle drank about three cups herself and yet miraculously slept the whole walk home Every time I walk into that place something catches in my throat. Wind was kicking up phantoms of dust all around us as throngs of children trotted around us singing and laughing (not many white babies come by their houses). The kids, despite being snot-nosed and fairly naked, seemed healthy and incredibly happy. Older kids were walking to school or hauling clean water. Younger ones were playing or toting around siblings. And yet I was so aware of the weighty presence of a thousand stories – how those kids got here, what they saw along the way, who they lost, what they remember -  hovering all around us. Every time I go to the camp I feel like I’m walking through an unexpectedly pleasing room that is haunted. There is nothing overtly unpleasant in sight but you can sense a presence in the room that only occasionally slips by in your peripheral vision. Maybe I do need a pair of Hyena eyes after all.

Tukul

The mud walls of my tukul are perfectly smooth, like a flat brown beach at low tide after the distant waves have worn it even. In one place a large handprint is textured next to the doorframe, a quasi-permanent reminder of someone who used earth and trees to make my home. Small creatures I have never seen or heard live in the walls, and every day with appreciative guilt I delicately crumble the tiny tunnels of their front-doors that have emerged like coral in the night. The seaside imagery is ironic of course; it is unfathomably hot. The tukul (also mocking irony of a name too if you ask me) tries it’s best to cool off at night and cling to the few degrees it has on the world outside but by early afternoon there is a suffocating feeling of claustrophobia in the complete absence of anywhere cool to go that is hard, yet very important, to keep in check. But blessed evening does eventually come, and the sun that has by now bleached even the sky dead and white, slips below the horizon. We eat outside, we bathe the babies outside, and then we sit outside, me with my skirt hiked up in the modest cover of darkness, and talk under an orange moon. After we have bathed (also outside, but behind matted walls) we join the babies indoors, crawl under our mosquito net and kick the beautiful Kashmiri bedspread that I insisted we bring with us to make our tukul more homey (and it was money well spent) to the floor. If you lie just still enough you can almost will yourself to stop sweating. The tarps under the grass roof breath in and out softly with the night air making it feel almost like sleeping inside a warm, earthy animal. And amazingly or obviously, I’m not always sure which, I rest.

The first few days were really hard. The girls were adjusting to the heat (weren’t we all) and it has taken us a while to get unpacked and settled into our two room hut. There was lizard skin in my wok. You get sun-burned in awkward places if you stay in our roofless latrine for too long at the wrong time of day. My two-year old was running around saying “landmine” (a Danish company is clearing mines in the area; we’ve heard three since we’ve been here). My baby refused to be held by anyone except me for all twelve hours of the day she wasn’t sleeping. It wasn’t fun. Exciting, fulfilling, hilarious…yes; but not fun.      

But around day six that changed. My little gas stove and plastic shelves full of pots and pans are set up and I have made some beautiful bread in the charcoal oven that sits outside under the neem tree. Annabelle, my filthy beautiful Annabelle, is loving being outside 90% of the time and experimenting with words in new languages. We had her second birthday party last week, incidentally the same day we bought a donkey and cart to haul water from the borehole or cargo from the airstrip (as I’ve said before, we’re that ghetto organization that parks their donkey next to the fleet of Land Cruisers…) and I’m pretty sure she is expecting a camel for her third birthday. Mary Katherine, though still a mama’s girl, is now happy to sit in her sweaty sweet fat rolls in her swing for a while. Trips to the market in the slinky folds of my cumbersome tobe are so much fun. People ask where I learned Arabic as I pick through their piles of onions. It’s good to talk. Friends from our years in K who now live in the camp stop by to visit and we catch up as we drink warm juice in the shade. Our guards, Harun and Jafar, two older Rotana men with sinewy arms and deep-set eyes are kind to our children who rummage through the rope they braid out of fan-plants; they teach us words in their language.

A few days ago I gashed my upper arm on the zinc of our front door as I dodged a lizard that I was sure was going to fall on my head as it slipped on the tarps of our ceiling. The cut hurt and will leave a raised scar. But even that is fun to me. To watch my husband patch me up and watch my body heal…that is exciting or interesting or fulfilling or something. To live somewhere where you get dirty every single day. Where you always know how full the moon is or which way the wind is coming from. Where you always have a pitcher or something set aside for the visitor that you don’t know about, who you can be sure will be here before too long. Where you stay up talking about what Arabic word your daughter learned today and what we should name the donkey. Somehow, even as I sweat my eyeballs out, breath curses on the freak-of-nature plant growing up through my cement floor and contort my brain for vocabulary and conjugations I haven’t used in a long time, I am having fun. Which makes me think I must be in the right place.

Back

Some people are such great writers that that make the hum-drum of ordinary life profound and interesting to read about. I feel those are the real writers, the people who can take the everyday and make it fascinating and meaningful.

I am not that kind of writer.

After several month in Kenya, a beautiful and interesting place to be sure, but one where my life takes on the easy flow of nice grocery stores, hot showers and computer office work, my blog has just about flat-lined. (Granted, Annabelle and Mary Katherine are as much to blame as indoor plumbing.)

The good news though is that I am now back in North Africa and after only four hours in my senses have been absolutely assaulted. If my daughters will allow it, I am looking forward to more time writing in the months ahead. It certainly won’t always be profound, but I think I undoubtedly live in one of the most fascinating places on the planet and if I don’t write about it I think I will explode.

To say that you live in such a marvelously interesting place though is not to say that you love everything about it. Far from it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I am experiencing a fair amount of culture stress right about now. When we boarded our flight in Entebbe, I had just collapsed into my seat with a sleeping MaryKat attached to me and a ridiculously overstuffed diaper bag and purse shoved to the floorboards when an irritated and heavily accented voice in the aisle a few rows bag grumbled loudly, “Ah, who is causing this jam?” The voice belonged to a slick looking politician type in a suit and pointy shoes, probably the kind of guy that could easily affect whether or not I get to stay in this country, and who clearly meant nothing more than to vent a little. And yet, I spent the first twenty minutes of the flight going over my Arabic verb conjugations for phrases that involved words like “jerkwad” (or their near equivalent anyway).

We landed in the capital city and stepped into what truly must be one of the most hellishly entertaining airports in the world. We hit at rush-hour, something I wasn’t aware that airports even have. Along with about three hundred other people (literally) we were pushed through a single door and into a crush of people that vaguely resembled clumpy lines all melted together. Long air-conditioners looked down at us from the walls like a practical joke. UN officials, aspiring politicians, soldiers and one other family with little kids (turned out to some South Africans working for the local brewery) all shuffled forward patiently, cheerfully even, in the passport waving chaos. Mark Katherine strained her sweaty head out of the ergo baby to gaze up at tall faces towering over her. Annabelle nestled comfortably in the undergrowth of humanity, eating her fruit snacks and following her Papa’s shoes.

When we made into out into the open-air of the airport parking lot, and old Eritrean woman who had been on the plane with us came up and patted MaryKat’s pudgy led pitifully. She then shook her head and said, “The heat…?” followed by “And the mosquitoes…?” I smiled and shrugged, to which she raised her hands upwards and said, “Allah.”

My thoughts exactly.

Before we got to the guesthouse where we are overnighting before heading up to the camp where we live tomorrow on the bush plane, we stopped to change some US dollars into local currency. Our skinny taxi driver with scarred arms eased the van onto the side of the road near the market and we were immediately besieged by a dozen guys with shiny watches or ivory bracelets and bockets bulging with bank notes. The taxi driver casually told us to lock all the doors then started passing wads of cash between the driver’s window and backseat while Annabelle made faces at the crowd pressing their faces up to the glass to see her. After the adrenaline rush of the black market, we only stopped once more, this time for the driver to sample and try out some vibrating, blinking car freshener the dashboard from a street vendor (he bought two of them).

After offloading our stuff we walked down the road to a local restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat. We crossed a busy street full of as many women as men, some dressed in leggings and denim and loping down the road in flocks like dark supermodels, others were swathed in the sheer folds of their tobes, like memories of another era. Dinner was nostalgic for me, bringing back memories of eating on the street in a northern town when we lived across the border. We ate bread and grilled chicken. A platter of sliced fruit was blended into juice as thick and sweet as pudding. And for dessert we picked at the cloyingly sweet folds of basta peppered with nuts that we selected from a glass case full of delicacies. Smoke clouded the room and pleasantly burned our eyes; Rihanna and an Arab voice nextdoor competed for prominence in our eardrums. The girls soaked it all up like this was as normal a dinner as any other for them. Which in some ways maybe it was.

I am writing from the mosquitoey porch of the guesthouse now and should close before the generator goes off. We fly “home” tomorrow and I am full of mixed emotions. I am more exhausted than I hoped to be going into life in a mud hut at the peak of dry season and that intimidates me a little bit. This is going to be hard. But I’ve realized that in life, you really just get to pick your stresses, not whether or not you are going to have them. And at this point, I will take the stress of a mud hut over the stress of floating through life in other people’s houses hands down. It feels like time to be back. The honeymoon high I feel at being back tonight (and I do feel it if I didn’t make that very clear..) is sure to burst in a week or two, no doubt. But when it does it will be replaced by the intimate frustrations of living in a place that drives you out of your mind but that, on most days, you wouldn’t leave for the world.   

It’s good to be back.  

Elections

I keep wanting to say “It’s so good to be home!” but considering this is one of over half-a-dozen places we have “lived” in the past six months that doesn’t quite feel right. But it is so good to be together again. Last week was one of the hardest of my life, (which is probably a good indication of just how easy my life has been up to now). There is nothing like watching your babies struggle though. Just like I was all jittery about our physical safety only after we were a thousand miles out of harm’s way when we evacuated North Africa over a year ago, I was similarly sick with worry about Mary Katherine only after I felt pretty confident she was going to be ok and could let down a little bit. Now I think about that drive to the hospital and look on the nurse’s face when we got there and just feel shaky inside. But we are all together again now, and all healthy and moderately rested. To those of you who have been praying for our family, thank you so very, very much.

We have spent the last two weeks in a house that is new to us here in Nairobi. It belongs to some good friends of ours who also work in North Africa, but travel back to Kenya as a family several times a year. They were looking for someone to help cover rent and we were happy to spend some time as a family in a place a little more private than where we were before. It’s in a housing estate across town from where we usually stay and backs up to the Nairobi National Gamepark. There is a treadmill upstairs which I have been making good use of as I try to get rid of those last lovely pounds Mary Katherine left me with. As I run I can see over the game park fence; a couple of weeks ago I counted over 200 zebra strolling by only a few hundred feet away, oblivious to the sprawling suburbia all around them. A sweet Rhodesian Ridgeback named Uchie is part of the package and she has been quite hospitable. There is satellite TV and Annabelle has been soaking up enough “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” and “Charlie and Lola” to last her through a childhood in the boonies. (Bryan has also gotten hooked on American Idol after years of mocking me for liking it, but I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.)

However, as nice as playing house is right now, I still haven’t completely relaxed into it. It’s on a side of town much less familiar to me and harder to access by public transport. I haven’t gotten to know any of the neighbors yet. And like in any house any where, there are sounds at night that make me curious and uneasy for no good reason.

Perhaps part of the reason for my unease may have something to do with the elections going on in this country right now. You may have seen something about it on the news. Five years ago the presidential elections left over 1,000 people dead so people are understandably concerned this time around. And now that results have been delayed for a second day, people are getting anxious.

We are traveling to Tanzania for branch meetings on Sunday, a little bit later than we had planned on since the doctor didn’t want us to travel with MaryKat for at least a week after she was discharged from the hospital (and even that took a little bit of convincing). So we are just lying low this week, catching up on piles of office work at home and keeping the TV on the local news channel. But the week in the hospital put some of our contingency planning on the back-burner so we had to make a quick trip out yesterday to stock up on things like groceries, phone credit, gas and a few extra US dollars just in case. Town was noticeably quiet. The grocery store was picked over - there was no UHT milk or frozen food of any kind. A handful of us rummaged through the left-over produce with polite urgency. Police with AK’s strolled quietly down the aisles and a couple of soldiers nonchalantly bought cigarettes from the cashier. Everyone seemed normal. But uneasy normal. 

Every time my phone blinks out or the electricity cuts off I give Bryan a dramatically ominous look, something I attribute to a childhood spent planning for coups and crises that never actually took place. But as an adult, an adult with a little more experience in political instability, and, probably most importantly, an adult with babies, these things aren’t just exciting now. Yes, my college roommates can rest assured I am still the crazy girl who daydreams of dramatic escapes and harrowing get-aways that make great stories years later over a cup of tea. That side of me exists I think to make me well-suited for the life I feel like I have been called to lead. 

But tonight, that side of me sleeps lightly next to the side of me that checks the locks on the doors an extra time and prays for peace.