Aching for Life

I was welcomed home by Ryan with beautiful flowers, and  Zeke, with an initial hard stare and then a hand in my mouth and a big smile. It's good to be back. Zeke started feeding himself while I was gone! A peace offering for my patient boy - a maraca made from a gourd

To cap off a fruitful week in Uganda, we went white-water rafting in the Nile this past weekend. It was my first time really doing white-water rafting (we did some baby ones in Malaysia which totally did not count at all) and I was one part scared, one part excited to be in the Nile. There were 4 rapids in all, 2 Level 5's and 2 Level 4's. The very first one was a level 5, and it was a straight drop! Note my wide open mouth. In between rapids the water was calm. Because we got so hot paddling in between, it felt great to jump in the calm water and paddle and float with cormorants from time to time, and to enjoy the view of the lush river banks. We had gone through three of the rapids and I was feeling pretty good about it - enjoying them kind of like intense boogie boarding. Perhaps we could get through without flipping! (We had practiced flipping once before we started, in calm water, and it was harder than I had expected to get out from under the raft.) The la...

It has been a tremendously fruitful week. On the very first day of interviewing, I had exceeded the goal I had set for the number of teachers I would interview for the entire trip. Every principal I approached welcomed me into their school and helped organize their teachers to talk to me. It was also entirely God's grace that the five schools I visited were so different in size, resources, and the types of vulnerable children enrolled - a rich base from which to compare the experiences of the teachers. And some of these teachers truly inspired me. A lot of the teachers gave textbook responses concerning the vulnerable children in their classrooms, but some of them very frankly talked about the enormous hurdles they face in trying to care for them. Their schools may be lacking resources, but they were clear-eyed about what was needed and offered radical, insightful suggestions. What stuck with me most of all was their sincere desire to love the ones who didn't have much lo...

Before the official work of interviewing starts, first - a safari!  On Saturday we got up at dawn and set off for Queen Elizabeth Park, a 6-hour drive from Kampala. (Brave Adam rented a 4WD and was the sole driver - this meant at least 10 hours of navigating dirt roads with giant (truly giant) potholes and inexplicably large speed bumps through rural Uganda, as well as 2 hours of weaving through survival of the fittest traffic chaos downtown. And some of that at night too!) The plan was to arrive at Queen Elizabeth around midday, have lunch at the lodge, rest and recover at the pool (or with a massage), and then go for an evening safari drive. All went as planned for the first 4 hours of the morning. We were in good spirits, excited to see the animals, and (for the other 4 who had been in Kampala for two weeks) happy to leave the city for the weekend. There was lots to look at, so I didn't mind that the ride was bumpy and dusty. (Dry season means that the red eart...

It was shockingly easy to get through immigration - it took all of 15 minutes. Adam was kind enough to pick me up at the airport, so all I had to do was hop in the car and we were on our way. We spent the first day running errands - changing money, getting sim card, buying groceries. It was a great way to get a feel for the pace of Kampala and to get introduced to life here. Adam explained a whole bunch of stuff to me, like Ugandan politics and such. But I'm afraid it was one ugly bird that captured my attention and kept my fascination for the rest of the trip (causing my frequent and sudden stops while we were walking - I had to take another picture!). What's this in the sky? Dirt flecks on my camera? Cue David Attenborough: the Marabou stork. This picture is helpful for scale - the Marabou stork is what looks like a largish statue on the corner of the building - but not too helpful to show how disgusting the bird is. I'm afraid that I don't have a good ...

[Written 1 hour away from landing in Nairobi] Morning light is creeping up the sky from the horizon, a deep orange. The morning star hangs low. Even though we are flying across the face of the earth, the sky is seems to hold still even as its colors brighten slowly, slowly. The ground is lit up. I see a mountain with a sharp peak on the horizon - just a silhouette. But down below is a large lake, faintly outlined against the dark earth. I'm going to be stepping on African soil for the first time! Lord, what a gift! Taken two hours later en route to Entebbe

I'm sitting in the Schipol airport of Amsterdam, two hours into my ten-hour layover. Amsterdam is a whitish grey, drearily cold. The airport itself is cheery, with nice lounging sofas and chic shops and cute little restaurants and tulip bulbs for sale. But I can't help feel the thousands of miles between me and my husband and baby. Airports are so displacing, and I've always felt a bit sad when travelling alone. There is a part of me that was excited for the air travel part of this trip to Uganda - finally, no baby! Free time to read! But now that it's happening, I'm just longing for home - which, now just means wherever my husband and son are.   Where I sat for a few hours during my long, long layover  

I am sitting in SFO, listening to a poor dog whimper and howl behind the check-in counter because he is in a crate and missing his owners. It makes me think about my baby, who I hope is much less aware of his circumstances and in a much happier mood. I'm about to fly to Amsterdam, then Nairobi, then Entebbe, Uganda! I am joining dear friends there and will be interviewing teachers for my MA thesis. Ryan and his mom are graciously stepping in to take care of Zeke so I can have two weeks off for this adventure. Pray for them and for me. I can't wait to share stories and pictures of the trip with you!

Zeke has started to get more and more mobile. His tumbling crawl has turned into a frighteningly fast scoot, and his small size means he gets into little nooks that Ryan and I have trouble following him into. Yesterday, Zeke crawled around Ryan's office chair and under his desk, looking around, mesmerized. in my attempt to keep him from banging his head on the metal legs and from pulling out all the wires behind the desk, I followed him into that little nook.  He reached for the side of the desk and pulled himself up. Then, like he always does, he craned his head upwards and looked, lips apart, eyes wide open.  couldn't help but look up with him, and in that moment, Ryan's uninspiring piles of notes and papers took on new shapes, forming strange silhouettes against the glass. Psychologist Flavell said that he would gladly trade all his award to be able to see through a child's eyes for just a few minutes. I'm not quite able to see through my bab...

Back when I was teaching HKCE English Lit, we went through a piece called "A Letter to Our Son." While my revelation of the author's later divorcing of his wife and rejection of his family made it impossible for my students to be moved by the piece, to me it remains a beautiful letter. He writes about how he and the mother met, the painful birthing process, their falling in love with the baby. At one point he calls him "little," and talks about how he used to disdain that word, but realizes that there is no other word to describe his baby. I thought about that today when Zeke stood up at the coffee table, his shoulders just above the tabletop. Zeke has tripled in weight the last few months and grown much longer, yet because he is standing up and in that posture takes on the semblance of a grown person, he looks smaller than ever - a munchkin, a miniature, heartbreakingly short and adorable with his little arms and little legs. Little fingers, little hands...