Life

I'm a little over halfway through the third decade of the time God has granted me on Earth. My life is better, worse and different than, yet the same as I had imagined or at least hoped that it would be.

My sophomore year of high school, I had an English teacher who asked us to write a letter to ourselves about where we would be and what we would be doing ten years from that moment. I don't remember what I wrote, but it was probably something generic about how I'd have graduated from college and have a normal job. A normal life, you know? Whatever normal is. All I know now, is that I certainly didn't write that I would be married to a romantic, outgoing, break-dancing doctor. And while that doctor saves lives in a remote village in the Amazon rainforest, I would be raising our daughter in a large city in a South American desert.

Another lesson in that English class taught me that “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” While we spend time doing certain jobs or internships or taking specific classes that are supposed to eventually help us get to where we want to be going, our path may not be straight and the destination we have in mind may not even exist. When I finished college, I was Kenya bound and then would travel to Peru for my year with a Fulbright Grant. Upon completion of that prestigious opportunity, I would return home and lead a normal life. Well, there you have it again. Normal. What's normal? Whatever it is, I didn't achieve the normal life in the Midwest that I had imagined.

Just in the past couple of weeks, the three of us each encountered something unexpected.

While returning to our house from a nearby bakery, I decided to cross the street with Iris to avoid an extremely low hanging live electrical wire. Paying little heed to the woman at the other end of the block who had her back turned to us, we naively continued on our way. Just before reaching the barefooted individual, a horrible stench reached our nostrils. Stepping out in the street to go around the alleged epicenter of the foul odor, we looked over to see the elderly woman churning the sewage below the sidewalk with a stick as if she were churning butter. Who would have thought? Why anyone would do such a thing is something I will likely never know and probably never want to know.

Meanwhile, Igor continued to survive the Amazon. What I'm about to tell you may make you chuckle, but it is no joke in jungle to encounter creatures when one has no idea as to whether or not they are venomous. Seated in his room, Igor saw his family of geckos getting their fill of insects near the window. He noticed something that he'd never seen before, just as it burst into his room and began to screech. Making an incredibly loud sound that he described as “the screeching of a bird”, the butterfly-like insect with a one foot long wingspan swooped around his room. Fearing the foreign critter, he covered himself in clothing to protect himself and went to battle with a bucket and broom. After five minutes, Igor won the war and threw the corpse outside. Igor learned about that creature as a few nearby boys began to howl with laughter that the doctor had been frightened by a giant cicada. One creature that wasn't dangerous. Hopefully the next one isn't either.

Iris, too, was startled by an insect. She normally is filled with curiosity about most things and tries to get her hands on everything, but a large tan-colored cricket flew onto her toys and the onto the wall next to her as she looked and let out a yelp hoping I would rescue her from the terrible thing. I did. She clung to me while we captured Señor Grillo (as we named him) and helped him out the window.

All of this is just to say that I have millions of ideas about what may happen in my life, yet little to no direction for the future and at this point couldn't even write a letter to myself about where I'll be in two years. My plans barely extend to next week when I intend to fly to another continent with a ten-month-old as my travel companion to watch my brother marry his best friend.

Life. Always an adventure.

I'd love to read a line or two from you in the comments section about how your life differs from what you may have previously planned or imagined!

Living Alone

“I know you'll like it. There are lots of trees. The people are friendly, but we'll have to adapt. There's nothing comfortable about this place...” said Igor just before the cell phone connection became too full of static to make out any intelligible conversation.

Since that first call, I've learned a bit more about the place Igor calls home and Iris and I, too, will call home in a few months. Ringed by mountains draped in tropical rainforest, lies the small village accessible only to those willing to leave the luxuries of modernization behind. Crossing streams and rivers and riding a rickety route, he arrived in a village in which indoor plumbing is non-existent and pit-latrines in scarce supply.

I only recently came to the realization that for the first time in his life, Igor is living on his own alone. He tells me he's suffering and I know that he is in some ways. Many anecdotes he has shared take me on a journey down memory lane to Kenya and the challenges life presented there. In many ways I would love to be in rural Bellavista with him. I would like to make him more comfortable, listen to him, and share our daughter with him. But then, in some ways perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. I wouldn't wish for anyone that they live alone all their lives. I know there are people who do truly enjoy the solitude and independence that such a lifestyle offers, but I simply can't fathom living that way forever. What I do believe though, is that living alone for a short time is an experience that everyone should have. It helps with introspection and also teaches a person to value what others contribute to the home.

While he lives in one small room without access to plumbing, he shares his habitat with a variety of critters mostly of the insect and arachnid sort. Just today I heard from Igor letting me know that in his window he found a spider the size of his hand. I pitied him, then begged him to do his best to get rid of such visitors before Iris and I arrive.

Iris and I continue to enjoy our lives of luxury in a cooler climate comparatively, without heavy rains and mud to wade through, low on unwanted pests, and safe from most tropical diseases. In one month we'll trade this life for the American one and then all too soon return for vaccinations and immigration paperwork before boarding various means of terrestrial transportation to take us to our final destination: a one or two room home deep in the jungle where we will keep Igor company and bring his many moons alone to an end.  

Dual Citizen

The first dual citizen in our family!

The Fight

“Let me go!”  “I‘ll kill you!”  “I dare you!”  “Don’t touch her!”  Those words, and many more, burst through the night into our open window. 

Iris, who had just fallen asleep, began to whimper.  Suddenly and silently, she bolted into a sitting position, eyes wide-open, looking at me, looking at the window.  Try as I might to lull her back to sleep, I could not.  She was concerned by the unusual sounds she was hearing. 

Glass shattered and more shouts split the darkness.  Igor, Iris and I looked out the window trying to see where the racket was coming from.  Our side of the street.  My father-in-law called up the stairwell to our apartment to ask if his second son was part of the ruckus.  We didn’t think so. 

We climbed the stairs to the roof to cool down, and if we’re honest, to be a bit snoopy.  We weren’t the only ones.  We laughed as we saw people sitting on nearly every rooftop for a block and a half, people in most of the windows, and others with their cellphones filming a few drunk couples’ foolish dispute that they’d taken to the street. 

The police, who rarely attend to any problems and often pick up and immediately hang up the phone when it rings for an emergency, happened to be driving by and decided to stop.  For Iris’s sake, we returned to the hot apartment so the little wiggle-worm could crawl.  We never did see if the officers took anyone away.  After about fifteen minutes inside the noise died down and the fight seemed to be over.

It isn’t often that we hear that sort of squabble, but with an eclectic group of neighbors, one never knows what nighttime will bring, or daytime for that matter.

Playful Crawler

Iris has begun crawling and is making me quickly learn to think like a mischievous baby ;)  

Since all of our floors are cement or tile, I sewed her some little knee pads.  

Igor's Graduation

Saturday evening we celebrated Igor's graduation.  

Here's how we cheered on the doctor:

Craziness

Craziness.  That's what it is (to me, a foreigner, at least).  Living in a large city in the desert, we were told this morning that there would be no water available today or for the next two days as there will be maintenance work done on water and sewage pipes.  Fortunately we have a tank on top of the house that stores water so haven't been without yet.  We have seen men, women and children carrying buckets of water from a school, which is not in session so isn't using the water in its tank, to their homes so that they will not be without when the current water runs out.  Just in case, we also harvested three buckets of water.  Igor did a nice job of covering them to keep the mosquitos from using the water as a breeding site.