Clement spent the summer in Malawi. He had clinicals to complete for school so we decided that if we couldn't be together the next best thing was for us each to go home. He spent six weeks working in a small district hospital and when we talked he shared his stories which exhausted me and melted my heart. Stories of a hopelessly understaffed hospital with meager resources, a pediatric ICU with patients but no staff, of children dying and pleading parents, of children healing and going home, of grateful happy laughing mothers. In comparison, my stories made me feel overindulged and underutilized.
A large part of me is home here. Being with my family, embraced by love and comfort and within steps of a pantry filled with food and a freezer with Blue Bell is wonderful. Challenges are more mundane and are faced in a familiar environment with my feet securely under me.
The remaining part of me yearns for that far away nonphysical home I have discovered, and the hope of a physical one. Here the hum of the air conditioner and electricity overpowers the calls of the birds in the morning and the insects at night. I miss watching the curtains dance in the breeze and shadow as I fall asleep and I miss waking up with the smell of the outdoors on my pillow. Periodically I twirl the ring on my finger to remind myself that Clement is real. We talk a few times a week. His laugh always sounds good in my ears. He writes that he is looking forward to the day when we will have a place of our own and live together indefinitely. Dreamy. I imagine again and again stepping off the bus in December and standing within reach of him at last. Then I imagine what will happen when our December holiday is over and he heads back to class. That vision is fuzzy and stressful. Will I be able to teach at the nursing school? Will I be able to get a visa that allows me to stay in the country for longer than a month? Will the money I am earning carry us through? How many years will we move across the planet closer and farther apart just to keep life going on in the direction of our dreams?
Time is passing quickly. Five months have flown by. I am working nights and sleeping days. The in between hours of insomnia I spend working on the nonprofit, writing, calling, feeling excited and hopeful then fearful, overwhelmed, and inadequate. The work is continuing and growing. It is so exhilarating to know that we have identified a real need and are working to meet it. I do not know of any other international organization that identifies high risk babies and moms at birth and follows them through their most vulnerable periods. I feel so much pride and gratitude, and I feel I am never doing enough. Mrs Namaleu, my friend the Malawian nurse who has taken this on as a job is phenomenal. She gives her whole self to the work and it is more than she can responably handle but she cannot set limits and I understand. If saying "no" means taking away hope we can only say "YES" and succeed or drown together. She is following over 80 infants, overseeing three feeding programs, and paying tuition for a handful of teens. We need money to hire more people to help, to buy a computer for her, to improve the programs. I am treading water and constantly stretching for a foothold or a hand.
The backdrop of life here is family. In this culture I suppose I should be at least a little embarrassed to live with my parents but I am not. I love meeting them at the breakfast table, my dad if I am up before the sun, my mom if I am not. I appreciate the wisdom of my father and the affection of my mother. I try not to be fearful as I watch them age in front of me. At times I feel a rush to hoard stories and memories. I want to cling and lay claim before they slip away. I am painfully aware of the blessings in my life and this pain is the heart of the challenge - how to feel gratitude without the anticipatory pain of future changes and losses.
A great irony of my life seems to be that at heart I am a homebody, a person who would happily live down the block or even share a house with my nuclear and extended family but I have followed a deeper compulsion to plant pieces of my heart around the world where they can never be fully reunited. And so I sit on my usual see-saw of worry and surrender, acceptance and self-blame. In the moments of balance I relax and give myself permission just to be here with all the love, frustration, and middle moments that entails.
This is the substance of my silence.
