Sleep is for Noobs

We pretended I was normal on the drive from the airport, and my gentle roommate suffered through the panicked crinkling of a thousand plastic bags, my horrified discovery of the explosion in my luggage, and my desperate search for an adapter that fit (no) – so that she could pray with me when I was ready - at about midnight.  After that sweet time of prayer, I roasted delicately on one side for most of the night, then flipped myself over and broiled to a tender finish, serenaded by a single lonely mosquito who was likely fighting a losing battle with obesity by morning.

My roommate and I had gotten off to a great start, but things quickly fell apart when I attempted to join her in Frenchland and then had to beg to get out again.  She got her revenge later.

“What time is it?”

“7:20.”

“Thank you.”

- After morning ablutions at least an hour later -

“Sorry, what time is it now?”

“7:26 here.”

Luckily, she is one of those women who is instinctively maternal to everyone in a 5ft radius, and her revenge consisted of Lingala worship songs all morning and getting me out of bed too early.  I also blame the bizarre timekeeping on the fact that our conversation was entirely in French, and Mom may have first given me the time in her home country and not in the country in which we now co-existed.

After breakfast and a round of team introductions (a few purely Spanish speakers, a few mostly French speakers, two translators, and one terrible lack of Xanax) which were not awkward for me at all, I watched my teammates prepare for their full-day bus tour and tried to make friends.

“Oh, we have to talk about the election in your country!”
“No, we don’t have to.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were from--  Are you from--?”

“Yes, but I hate it.”

Who needs friends anyway.

The retreat centre felt like an immense space of very green Canada in early summer - slightly chilly, but bearable - and I was slightly frustrated because

I was promised summer, so give me summer, drat it all to Amsterdam and back. 

And then I was immersed in a week’s worth of Powerpoint presentations in order to understand our organization's mission (Relief, Development, and Peace in the name of Christ) that I’d missed during my extended courtship of The Man.  Most of my orientation team (consisting of the leaders and the two teams of eight going to South America and Central Africa) were on a tour of Johannesburg that I definitely did not want to be on.  Pfft - who wants to be on a double-decker bus with an open roof going to the Apartheid Museum and learning about Soweto and Hector Pieterson.

Not me. 

At lunch, I was rewarded in the form of a shiny black wriggling dachshund jumping into my lap at the café.  He got to more bases than Filibuster (sorry, babe; you’re away and I’m lonely), but eventually he was just content to sit on my knee while I contemplated stealing him from his owners and leaving a trail of dogs I cannot care for across continents.

After all that training - no, I still don't know what I'm doing.  We joked that our organization wants to keep us in the dark for as humanly possible, ha-ha.

But srsly, tho. 

I faced a surprising number of questions as to why I chose Central Africa.

...I dunno.  I just...  Look, I rarely like people.  I love them because they are my family or my friends or they're silly or they need love.  That emotion does not come from me; God is love and I'm feeling an infinitesimal piece of His longing for His people.  This is the reason I am a disciple, and the reason I came to Africa.  So...  I, uh...  I-followed-my-heart-here.

There.  I said it.  It's not that I feel the people here are extra wonderful or need extra help - we're all incredibly helpless the world over - but...  I love here.  And for that reason alone, I want to live here.