The four-year-olds

I was disturbed from my morning reading by the sound of something crashing against the sheet metal fence surrounding our back yard. I looked out the window to see two of the neighbor boys, neither more than 4 years old, picking up rocks and throwing them against the fence. The boys are named Amada and Amadou. They are about the same size, bold and fearless with a touch of rebellion and they roam the neighborhood, often unsupervised, discussing their plans for mischief in proper French.

The sound of rocks hitting the fence can make quite a racket, and I suppose they were enjoying the effect.

I noticed a couple of chunks of bread that had been carelessly tossed into the “flower garden” which is an area surrounded in small rocks where I have tried to grow flowers.

Getting their attention from the window, I told the boys to stop throwing rocks, not at all convinced that this command would have any effect on their actions. Our backyard door was still shut and held in place by nails, as is its morning habit, so they must have come in through the hole in the fence on the neighbor’s side, or perhaps through the front door that opens out into the dusty road passing our house.

Just then an older boy came along and grabbed each of the little boys by the hand. He bopped them both on the head and they dropped the rocks they’d been holding. 

Before they were escorted out of the yard, the little guys reached down and each of them picked up a chunk of bread out of the dirt, dusted it off and went on eating as they were led out of the yard.

Where snails are large and elegant

I'm sorry to say that internet troubles have led to less frequent posts...but here's the beautiful African sky to cheer you up.

I consider myself lucky to have found these....

....and moreso because my husband bought them for me.

Sharing Bibles

Thanks to some generous donations, we have been able to share Bibles with others! This is one of our neighbor girls. She loves attending church but did not have money to buy a Bible of her own.

They talked in the firelight and Pamela said, “I’m not sure that our happiness won’t be the greater because it has come twenty years late. Twenty years ago we would have taken it pretty much as a matter of course. We would have rushed at our happiness and swallowed it whole, so to speak. Now, with twenty lonely, restless years behind us we shall go slowly, and taste every moment and be grateful.”

“I think, said Lewis, “I know something of what Jacob must have felt after he had served all the years and at last took Rachel by the hand…”

-from Penny Plain, pg 210

Memoirs of Travel

Is it Air France pretending to be Delta or Delta pretending to be Air France...? Somehow I can't seem to remember. It's 5am and I've been up all night.

I sit at my gate eating the snacks from the previous flight and drinking overpriced coffee. The crowds of luxuriously dressed black people have disappeared and I keep company with a not-too-friendly French lady who is also apparently going to Atlanta. 

A Muslim lady and I both walk circles around promising looking cylinders which seemed to be trash cans, but to no success. I sit with my pile of stuff feeling miserable. Red eyes, runny nose, and foggy brain. 

How many times am I going to have to do this? Probably many, because the life I've chosen means airplanes, expensive coffee, red-eye flights and long nights. 

It’s six months later and after a slightly panicked ordeal at CLT, I find myself sitting again, this time in the Dulles airport... it’s 5am again and I’m waiting to board the first of two long flights which will take me back to my husband and my new home.

We are in Ethiopia now...15 hours later the white crowds have shifted and changed to black, and I am standing out again... but I don’t care because I am almost home. It’s time to change clothes and wait for my turn at the crowded bathroom mirror. 

I am so tired I can barely think straight, but then the fog in my brain begins to lift as the heat presses in, and I stubbornly and confidently press my way in and through immigration, refusing the detours that mean money and delays. 

My eyes are burning from 24 hours without sleep. I squint into the brightly lit room, scanning the faces. 

And then I see him and the wait is over and I’m no longer alone.