Past.

Our health compound in Yida, South Sudan

I’m sitting on my new front porch eating hash browns and drinking some very delicious coffee. Everything around me at this moment looks and feels like numerous vacations I’ve taken in the last few years, and so it’s hard to grasp that this is where I live now. Liberia is making a very good first impression. 

I was terribly homesick the day I arrived. This place is so different from Uganda and so unfamiliar. They say that when you go to a new culture it’s like you become a two year old- you can’t communicate, you don’t know how to cross the road, you don’t know what is polite to ask in a conversation and so on. I feel like in Uganda I had at least progressed to my teenage years, but now I am a two year old again. Anyways, on Day 1 that thought was a bit overwhelming, but now I’m just excited. I’m really excited to be here. 

I haven’t written anything anywhere about leaving Uganda. I don’t think it’s likely that I will, at least not right now. It was sad to go. There were lots of tears my last few weeks. I love my program there. I’m so proud of my staff. I’m so confident that their efforts can bring a real change to the communities they serve. I feel so privileged to have been part of something I felt so passionate about. Working with the women in Karamoja evoked a ferocious sense of mission in me that I had never experienced before. I felt like my heart was on fire inside my chest. It was a good fight, but it was a fight and every battle has its casualties. For a long time, once I decided to leave Karamoja, I felt guilty, like I had failed, like I shouldn’t have been beaten. But I don’t feel that way anymore. Just because you’re beaten doesn’t mean that you picked the wrong battle. It might just mean that you fought really, really hard. 

If I try and think back over the past few years a lot of it just feels like a fog. It was so busy, so intense, so everything it can seem like this indistinguishable blob of experiences. There are a few exceptions though- a few incidents or moments that stand out crystal clear in my memory. One of the clearest ones is of a night in Yida, South Sudan.

It was my last night in Yida when the market place in the refugee camp somehow caught fire. The entire camp was built of sticks and grass, and there had been not a drop of rain for months so the market stalls went up like match sticks. From our compound we could see the orange glow suddenly staining the night sky. Our medical centre (maternity and inpatient/outpatient nutrition) was located just adjacent to the market, with only a road in between and was also built of dry sticks and grass. We jumped in to our pick-up truck and drove as close as we could to the market, then ran the rest of the way to the medical compound.

The fire was unlike anything I had seen before. It was truly an inferno, absolutely huge, so hot, so loud and so close. Refugees were running with cans of water from the borehole, mostly I think to try and wet down nearby structures that weren’t yet ablaze, because there was no feasible way to check the fire itself.  When we got to our centre we found that the nurses on call had already broken a hole through the back fence so that the patients and their mothers could escape. The staff, along with many of the refugees, were busy hauling everything out of the compound through the hole in the fence- records, therapeutic foods, medications, our hospital beds. I think we all assumed that our compound was going to catch fire too, and so we were running, running, running, working together to throw everything in to our big metal trunks and carry them to a safe place.

Both our permanent nurse and permanent midwife were on leave, so I had been acting as overseer for our medical services. I felt like it was my responsibility to be the last to leave our compound, checking each structure to make sure that all our supplies had been retrieved, that there wasn’t one frightened person hiding in a corner somewhere.

Along with the numerous grass thatch structures in our compound, we had two large white medical tents- one for maternity and one for our inpatient nutrition. The last place I walked through was the nutrition tent. Everything had been removed except for the mosquito nets which had hung over the beds. They were tied to the ceiling of the tent and I assume they were deemed too time consuming to try and remove. Without the bed frames to give them some structure the nets were just dangling from the ceiling, twisting and turning from the breeze coming from the fire. They looked like ghosts. That’s my memory- walking through that tent with the specters on either side of me and the fire roaring like a dragon behind my back. 

In the end everything was (relatively speaking) fine. No one died in the fire. I don’t even think there were any serious injuries, if memory serves. Our centre, miraculously, wasn't even singed. By the time I had finished checking the compound the nurses were already digging through the piles of rescued supplies to find the med trunk so they could do their night rounds. Our little nutrition patients and their mothers were chatting contentedly on their hospital beds set up under some trees. The night was warm. Everything was safe. The next day rebuilding would have to begin, but the worst was definitely over.

I’m not sure why my mind has held on to that moment so strongly. I couldn’t say for certain, but I do wonder if it’s because my time in Karamoja reminded me of how I felt that night in Yida. That frantic, overwhelming feeling, feeling if you weren’t fast enough everything would burn to the ground. Feeling like I was alone, responsible, inadequate. Feeling like I wanted to fight, fight, fight until I didn’t have any fight left in me. I tend to think metaphorically, and that moment could be a good metaphor for the last few years. Hope coexisting with desolation. Peace alongside of panic. 

Don’t get me wrong. Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world, so while I did almost tear up with happiness when I made myself a pita sandwich yesterday for lunch, it would be delusional for me to think that I’ve landed in some sort of Utopian paradise where things will be “easy”. I anticipate myriad frustrations, long hours and so on.  I do feel, though, like I’m walking through the tent one last time. Past the ghosts, past the fire. Past. There’s a lot of work to do, but I am not destroyed and the night feels warm somehow.

Shifting day...

It's evening now and my earthly belongings (well, those which reside in Uganda) are about 99.9% shifted in to the new house (in Uganda you don't 'move', you 'shift').

I'm not sure what I was thinking, but for some reason I thought that if I spend the weekend organizing my stuff, drawing maps of the old house and the new house, assigning a code to each room so that the movers would know which stuff was to go where, and even tagging the doorknobs of each room to make it clear WHERE THINGS WERE SUPPOSED TO GO, for some reason it would go off without a hitch. I had this far fetched idea that my organizational skills would prove so epic that I could stay at the office all day with only occasional check ins, during which time I would simply congratulate the movers on their skill in interpreting my codes and doorknob tags.

Alas, this was not to be. I went to the house first thing in the morning, only to see room #2 being loaded in to the truck with room #1.1 before Room #1.2 was loaded! No! The next thing I know, a truck loaded down with Room #4 rumbled past, leaving Room #3 untouched. Heartbreaking. Why did I even try? No, seriously. Why did I even try? It's like I just forgot every single experience I've ever had. I've learned nothing.

In the end I spent the whole day moving. No probs. It was hilarious. Particularly humorous was the transfer of the cats to the new house. I commented on needing to come back to get the cats and my housekeeper said, 'The kitten is in the truck already.' I was confused. Why was the kitten in the truck? Did she climb in of her own volition? Has she been watching reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies while I'm at work and was struck with an undeniable desire to channel Grannie? I inquired further.

'I saw that she was in one of the bags I put in the truck,' my housekeeper informed me.

"Yes," added my driver. "She is in the truck...and maybe she has been crushed."

Cue me frantically calling for the kitten who is allegedly stacked somewhere in the back of the Land Cruiser. There is no response. I slump my shoulders and go to open the door. I reckon I might as well drive the truck full of belongings to the new house before beginning the cryptic task of locating my potentially deceased kitten. Thankfully, when I opened the door she literally fell out of the truck- just as pot bellied, cute and alive as usual. She's actually sleeping on my lap right now. It's been a long day for her.

So, here was are in the new house. The floor paint was still wet and we didn't have water in the kitchen this morning, but there is water now and the paint continues to dry. I know it is. I'm watching it.

Shout out to the plumbers who finished installing the toilet just moments ago. At the moment it appears that there is an elaborate web of rocks and sticks bracing the tub, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that I should not try and bathe there this evening. Looks like I'll be sneaking back to my old tub! Technically, we are renting it for two more days...

I should go. I also found a gecko painted in to the floor in my room. Literally. A living gecko was painted over and is the middle of my floor. I need to find a butter knife and dislodge his unfortunate little corpse.

Haha. Weep. Ha.....ha.

I spent most of the day in my apron, cleaning and packing up my house. I'm moving- just two compounds over, but still- moving. This will be the third house I've lived in during the 14 months I've lived in Moroto. It's always a bit of a process, primarily because I seem to attract stuff the way a magnet attracts metal filings, but I don't mind too much. It's just life at the moment. A bit transient.

I like my transient life for now. It's exciting and hard and always full of the unusual and I don't get the sense that this season will end any time in the near future. I'm okay with that. I get to be a part of amazing things and see so, so much. The pattern of moving-->engaging-->uprooting of the last (what? 5?) years has definitely made me a better and stronger person.

But I can't help but hope that one day there will be a season where I can stay. In my  home. In my apron. Picking flowers from the garden for the supper table.

Mercy

A lot of people here think my name is Mercy.

It would be really touching if this was a name people gave me because I was just so especially merciful, but really it's just the fault of some cultural differences and my accent.

Here in Uganda people put their surname first when they introduce themselves. So, for example, if your name was Paul Yates, here in Uganda you would say that your name was Yates Paul.

I still introduce myself with my first name first and my last name last (old habits die hard, I guess!) so people assume that my last name is my first name. With my thick, nasal North American accent, Massey comes out sounding like Mercy.

Still, it's a good name to aspire to.

One community made me a welcome sign with their interpretation of my name on it. It's the thought that counts! I told the women in another community that my name meant "cow horn" and that made things much easier. The Karamajong certainly have a word for cow horn!

Stronger

A year ago today I was slinging my duffel bag into the trunk of our rental car to head to the airport, unexpectedly en route to South Sudan. I flew from Charlotte to New York, and then on to Amsterdam. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I woke up suddenly with the words, “love is stronger than death” burning and rolling over and over in my mind. I heard them almost audibly, and when I heard them I knew that Brian had gone to be with Jesus.

This is an awkward story to tell people because if sounds fake and overly sentimental, but that is what happened. I checked Facebook in the Amsterdam airport and found his wall filling up with words of love and grief and hope. A life well lived is mourned in a beautiful way. When someone leaves us, and one of our primary emotions is thankfulness- thankfulness that we had any time with them at all- that is beautiful. Brian lived his life beautifully, and the world is poorer without him.

 

I feel like I hardly have the right to miss him, so let me mark the anniversary of his passing here on this little blog that hardly anybody reads. I miss you, my one in a million friend. So thankful for your life. So thankful for a Love that conquers the grave.

Auld lang syne...

Favorite photo of 2012, taken in Yida, South Sudan.

Bye, bye, 2012. I would never have thought that I'd be sad to see you go, but I am. For better or for worse, I think it will be a good long while before I see the likes of you again.