I find being alive quite exhausting. I mean, it's hard, right? Good, but hard.

I wasn't very well last year, and during the worst of it one of my oldest and dearest friends told me that all I had to do was to stay alive. That was a relief. It seemed like a reasonably achievable, if not necessarily desirable at the time, sort of a goal.

For the past few years waking up in the morning has been pretty overwhelming. Then having to get up, take a shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, get to work on time, make decisions big and small, maintain relationships, try to figure out how to live rightly in such a messed up and complicated world. Man, you lost me at "get up." It's been terribly difficult.

So, back in May of last year I took a couple months off of work because I wanted to get better. So I came home and saw a doctor and lots of terms like "depression" and "burnout" and "anxiety" started flying around (which validated what I already suspected but still didn't love to hear it).I started counseling. I slept a lot. I started taking medication. I exercised a little bit. And I got worse and worse until I didn't want to get better anymore. That was when my friend told me that all I had to do was stay alive.

But then things began to slowly turn around. Overtime I stopped feeling sad (or worse, feeling nothing) all the time and started to feel like the old me was coming back- the old me who's heart used to ache with joy for no reason and see beautiful things everywhere. It felt like the color was coming back. I can't begin to tell you how relieved and thankful I was when that started to happen. The last few months things have been better overall. I think it was a lot of factors. Medication. Time. A good doctor. A lot of sleep. Work that I love. Going back to Liberia. Ending some things that needed ending.

I've been noticing more and more chatter about mental health these days and I think it's good. Depression is the worst, and hiding it doesn't help. My counselor told me once that if I am willing to be honest about my story other people will feel like they can be honest with their stories and we'll all be better for it, and so I keep meaning to sit down and write this. It's nothing profound, really. Just noting that my name is Keren and I struggle with depression and I'm still here.

The truth is that I've had a few slumps during what's been a general upward trend during the last few months. These last few days have been one of them. No reason, really. I'm just learning that, for now at least, depression is something that I manage and not something that I "fix". I tried a little bit of everything to try and get back on top of things and now I know that it's a little bit of everything that can help me be well. And sometimes even when I'm trying my best I still have bad, bad days that I can't explain. But I can learn to take those days in stride and not give up.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,    whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Baka,
    they make it a place of springs;
    the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
They go from strength to strength,
    till each appears before God in Zion.

                                                                                     Psalm 84:5-7

Shillings...

Today is the first time in at least eight years (maybe even twelve?) that I haven't had some Uganda shillings tucked away in my travel wallet. I always kept a few bills- just enough to get a taxi from the SP guesthouse to the nearest ATM.

My friend needed the shillings. She left Liberia today en route to the Philippines with a two week stop over in Uganda. She needed money for a taxi from the airport. I had the currency. Giving her the money was really the only sensible course of action, but I almost couldn't do it. It's less than $10, so it wasn't the value that made me feel a bit panicky as I handed over the bills. It just the symbolism those shillings held for me. I always kept them in wallet because I always intended to go back to Uganda, and I did- a lot of times.

I don't regret leaving Uganda, but I do think about it quite a bit. Giving away the money said to me that I don't know when (or if ever) I'll go back, and that makes me truly sad. I want to go and visit my program.Oh, gracious, do I miss my program. I want to go to Kampala and eat really awesome Indian food. I miss my cat.

Anyways, blah blah blah. Just wanted to let the internet know that I miss having some shillings in my wallet.

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.

Thirst...

I've been walking through a particularly painful season for many months now and the strain of it is bringing out all the worst in me. This has been hard, but I am learning not to put my hope in the idea that my circumstances will change, but rather to put my hope in the truth that I will change- for the better.

Thirst

Another morning and I wake with thirst

for the goodness I do not have. I walk

out to the pond and all the way God has

given us such  beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,

I was never a quick scholar but sulked

and hunched over my books past the

hour and the bell; grant me, in your

patience a little more time. Love for the

earth and love for you are having such a

long conversation in my heart. Who

knows what will finally happen or

where I will be sent, yet already I have

given a great many things away, expect-

ing to be told to pack nothing, except

the prayers which, with this thirst, I am

slowly learning.

-Mary Oliver-

Happy Valentine's Day!

....from South Sudan.

(Kissa, this is especially for you and Phil and the godchildren, of course. When are you going to get Facebook already? Just kidding.)

Some Yida scenes...

The maternity ward and the nutrition center.

Our swing in our tree in our compound.

Our grass office.

It's a long story...

...but here is my new home in the Yida transit camp in South Sudan. Further bulletins as events warrant.

B.

We've both spent the last week getting ready to leave. I couldn't stop thinking about that as I packed and repacked.

I am getting on a plane again tomorrow morning, and I wonder if you will have arrived at your destination by the time I arrive at mine. I've been thinking about when I was getting ready to leave for Mozambique and you told me to just go for it- to go with my whole heart. I don't think that you wanted me to leave, but you cheered me on when I did. I wish I could be as selfless as you, but I can`t. I don't want you to go.

I've been thinking about how strange it is that you are the one who is supposedly dying, and I am the one who is supposedly living. I find this odd, when it is me who is filling bags with more and more weight. Bags full of pills to ward off malaria and boost my nutrition. Full of clothes and lotions to keep away the heat of the sun. A million and one things designed to help me limp along somewhat successfully in this wretched planet. You on the other hand have been slowly letting go- letting go of the need for morphine and radiation and chemo and surgery. Away from the hold of pain and fear and disappointment. It seems like you are actually the one who is going to go on living, while we stay here and feel the sting of death and decay. I think that at some point I will be happy for you because of this, but tonight I am just sad.

I love you a lot, friend. I really do. You are the best man that I know. I will always be so thankful that I knew you, and so honored that you wanted to know me.

Journey well. I know that you will.

Hope...

Hope is like a path on the mountainside.
At first there is no path.
But then there are people passing that way,
And then there is a path.’

-Lu Xun-

The purge...

I'm back in Canada for a visit, and currently at my folk's place. One thing that I've needed to get done for ages is to rid my parent's basement of the piles of Keren-related memorabilia that have been littering it for, well, decades. I knew it was time when I walked into my old room and realized that it looked as though I had died and someone had erected a shrine in my honour. It was me, everywhere! On the walls, in boxes in the closet, choking up the bookshelf. It was way too much.

On the whole, it's been rather refreshing to throw away bags of old odds and ends and officially giving up on projects I'll never complete (i.e. scrapbooks- I HATE scrapbooking). It's also been somewhat entertaining unearthing things like old notes from my friends in high school (oh, the drama!) and a stack of handmade cards from my first class as a student teacher (my favourite being the one written by an anonymous 9 yr old that reads, "Miss Massey is made of chocolate and rainbows!").

On the other hand, I've found some parts of the process a bit sad. I spent six years in undergraduate education and I worked myself to the bone during that time. I worked while I studied (regularly working all night and then attending lectures the whole of the next day- perhaps not one of my most prudent decisions) and jumped into a ream of time consuming extracurriculars. At the end of those six years I had a handful of credentials, ridiculously high grades, no debt and not a shred of energy left for anything. I was even tired of people. Sometimes I think I'm still suffering from a bit of undergraduate fatigue.

Strangely enough, throwing out stacks of old lecture notes and workbooks from that period in my life was surprisingly hard. I knew I'd never use them again, but somehow having a row of cardboard boxes full of uni related memorabilia was validating. I had evidence that I did something and that it was worth all that it cost to do it. I've been putting off getting rid of this stuff for years, but this time I finally accepted that never would I sit my grandchildren down and read them one of my truly pedantic exegeses of words from the original Greek. So, I threw it all away with the exception of that stack of cards and an essay I wrote ages ago about feminism which I figured would be good for a laugh.

There is a line from the old TV show The Wonder Years that says, "Change is never easy. You fight to hold on. You fight to let go." I've been thinking about that quote both whilst sorting through boxes and whilst bringing the UK chapter of my life to an end. It is always a struggle to hold on to the things from the past that you should keep. It's always a struggle to let go of the things from the past that have no business in your future. It is never easy. I've found it hard to leave many places in the last few years, but I found it especially difficult to leave my home and community and life in London.

Change is hard, at least it's hard for me, but I am learning that all that is really changing is the props and the scenery (which I can let go) but that the real, true, important things remain the same (like God, and relationships- those are the things that I'll keep).

Let me conclude with a classic photo of me at my 6th grade science fair which I came across in my rummaging. I was a nerd from the womb, it would appear. Please note my yawn-inspiring project on "Tides". My three most pressing questions about this photo are 1) did I need glasses that thick, 2)why do I look so interested in the topic, and 3) why do those other girls look so interested? Maybe I paid them off to pose for the photo. By the by, I kept that project for YEARS before it got thrown away.

Out for a curry...

Logan, I keep forgetting to tell you that Flat Stanley and I went out for lunch last month just before he posted himself back to you. We went to a place called Camden. There is a big market there and if your mom ever comes to visit me I will take her there- she would love it!

Glad to hear that Stanley made it back to Three Hills safe and sound! Hope you are having lots of fun. Give my love to your sister and brother. I miss you guys!

Gifts...

This could easily be a Mary Oliver tribute blog. I love her poetry.

I've been thinking about this particular poem lately, and not because I'm unhappy or because anything is wrong. There is just something about it that I think is very beautiful and true and deeply comforting.

Hope it encourages someone out there today.

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

-Mary Oliver

Old material...

Cousin Laura,

I was looking through some photos from my brother's wedding and this one reminded me of something...something from the past...

(Victoria, Canada, 2011)

Which was, of course, this photo. Are they not strangely similar? Why are our facial expressions exactly the same? And what possessed us to wear scarves on our heads?

(Mucombeze, Mozambique, 2010)

Sadly, this is not the first time that something like this has occurred: http://notlikejacob.blogspot.com/2010/03/dear-laura.html

I think we're in a rut.

Egads...

I haven't blogged in ages. Please accept this link to my recent Facebook photo album as a proxy for the 15 or so blog posts I should have written in the last little while:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150834402225215.746907.804750214&l=f8b553aba2&type=1

The project...

Since getting back from my brother's wedding my focus has been on getting my dissertation finished as the due date draws nigh...very, very nigh.

I told my tutor that I would get my first draft to him by today, August 10th. In retrospect, that was a bit ambitious.

Anyways, after a rather sleepless night, a brief nap at dawn and then a few more hours of frantic edits, my first draft is submitted!

I stumbled out of my room at about 1:30pm exultant and full of joy! According to my housemates I also bore a strange resemblance to a mad scientist.

And now I guess I'd better clean up the post thesis-writing mess...