Monthly Archives: June 2010

June 27, 2010 · 2:55 pm

Yes, I’m Gone to Carolina in My Mind!

There’s something about that hauntingly beautiful song that makes me indescribably homesick. If you graduated from UNC, you understand exactly what I’m talking about-those lyrics just make you remember. Something incredible springs to life as the first notes float into the air-and all of the sudden, no matter where you are-you close your eyes and for the briefest instant, you slip back home. I’ve known for months that when it was finally time to write this last blog just before hopping in a taxi to drive to the airport, that’s what I’d title it.

Tomorrow, I fly home!

 My [unworn] “practical stilettos” and cheerfully polka-dotted rainboots are tucked safely away into the bright blue, monogrammed duffel bag that stood in such stark contrast to the gray city last October when I stepped out of the dilapidated airport and into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable. In a concerted effort to not do any more laundry by hand than I absolutely must, I’m rather mortified [and strangely proud] to admit that both of my duffels are bursting

Saying goodbye to Sophie a couple of days ago.

with dirty clothes that I can’t wait to run through a washing machine! [Though let’s be honest-did anything ever get truly clean when I washed it this year?] I may wash everything twice-just because I can! My Starbucks gift card is in my wallet [thanks Mr. Seamon!], my American cell phone is charged [and yes, the ring tone is still Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you”], and I have a stack of books in my carry-on that will almost certainly go largely un-read in favor of catching up on all the movies I’ve missed and buying a stack of overpriced magazines at JFK.

 

Last night, my team and I had one last pancake night. As we sat around the table eating stacks of chocolate chip pancakes and remembering out loud, I was struck by the simple fact that we are not the same five people that eagerly boarded that flight to Dakar last year. I am no longer that girl. I moved to Africa to share the gospel with people that don’t have another way of hearing it, and ended up learning that I need it every bit as desperately as the Muslim students that answer the call to prayer five times a day. What a wonderful, difficult, unexpected, painful, glorious process it has been to begin to understand that the gospel is not a story-it’s something that has to saturate and transform every shadow and nuance of my life. Not just the comfortable pieces, or the ones I feel like giving over to Jesus-all of it. God taught me that this year by taking away almost everything that I thought was valuable and necessary-and then showing me that He’s the only thing that I really need. Knowing Him and being loved by Him—that is enough! Jesus gave all of Himself for all of me—and I love learning what it looks like to respond with my life! Not casual, perfunctory devotion-but wholehearted, passionate pursuit of the God that has always  pursued me first and best.

"You must forgive me if I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind..."

Today is a whirlwind of “lasts” in Dakar-last memories [for a while] with four of my favorite people in the world. One last Sunday morning team church. One last meal cooked on a hot plate, one last conversation with the fruit stand man, one last taxi-bartering battle, one last night sleeping on the  floor, one last relaxing run on the beach. More reflections on this year and my team will certainly come this summer—but for now, I’m off to say goodbye to the city that has slowly become mine! I can’t wait to be home—if you hear about a girl getting arrested for causing a scene at JFK around lunchtime tomorrow, that will mean my attempts at self-control upon seeing Starbucks were the dismal failure that I expect them to be. And just a warning: I intend to throw my arms around the neck of the first man to so much as open my door for me, and kiss him square on the mouth. […just kidding, Daddy.] How drastically my life is about to change-everything from the way I’m treated to the food I eat to the way I dress and the people I’m around.

 And I am silly excited. :)

 Carolina, I’ll see you in just a couple hours! “I’m gone…”

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June 25, 2010 · 10:54 pm

When in Africa…[Of Villages, Safaris, and Two Dead Goats.]

We gave out soap in one of the villages that we visited, and someone brought along balloons for the kids. They were so cute!

I could have used about nine more cups of coffee last early Thursday morning, but Africa has taught me that dehydration is infinitely preferable to needing a bathroom in the midst of a trek across the barren African landscape. We unceremoniously stuffed 35 people into the oversized, rickety white clown car masquerading as our “bus”, and with a painful groan timidly rolled out onto the grimy streets of Dakar. As we scrambled to squeeze five sets of hips into each tiny row, I found myself wishing I’d started my “absolutely no rice unless I’m with a student” policy a couple of weeks earlier. [A policy that’s rather ineffective anyways when you simply replace rice with French fries.]

Hips and all, we were hurtling towards the villages we’d be working in for the next several days at a breakneck speed of no less than 14 MPH. The “little engine that could” did not, of course, have AC, but the sultry African air whispering through the open windows offered a fleeting distraction from the relentless heat. We became the unfamiliar instantaneous celebrities in three different villages over the course of two days. We were there to show a film called “The Jesus Film”-

With wild zebras!

essentially, a movie depicting Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection. It’s a great tool to use with people that aren’t familiar with the gospel and are not able to read the Bible for themselves-and as we understood it, the remote, largely illiterate African villages we were going to be working in had little to no access to the gospel. These were villages that predominately spoke Serai-an African dialect that unfortunately enough, no one on my team can so much as count to three in. Thus, we relied on the help of several translators to get from Serai to Wolof to French to English-which was in itself something akin to a rather impressive, globally savvy game of  “telephone”.

Housing in one of the villages.

Over the course of two nights, we showed the film three different times. What a fascinating thing it is to share the gospel with someone to whom it is entirely new and enthralling-it causes you to notice the places in your life where Jesus has become dull and routine. There was nothing dull about the gospel those nights-as the crowds watched Jesus heal the blind and resurrect the dead, they erupted into elated, spontaneous applause! There is something wildly attractive about a Savior that restores pieces of a dreadfully broken world in a beautiful promise to one day redeem and restore the rest of it. To people that have only ever known the fear of animistic Islam [an interesting African spin on traditional Islam], the idea of grace is both impossibly confusing and irresistibly compelling. Against the crushing backdrop of detailed rituals and rules, unconditional love sounds too impossibly good to be true. And yet, there is an irrepressible, secret longing from deep within all of our souls that resonates with

Note the trash.

the idea of grace and has an unquenchable thirst for the God that is relentlessly pursuing our hearts.

While in the villages, the men all decided to kill two goats for lunch one day. When in Africa…

I have no moral objection to the idea of killing animals, and had even intended to watch them do it until I saw the endearing little things. One glance at those soft brown eyes and I realized that I could no more watch their throats be slit than slug a golden retriever puppy with a baseball bat. [And take it from one who now knows-don’t name your food before you kill it.] Matt captured the whole gruesome experience with my camera, and I enjoyed eating grilled goat chunks for lunch. [Me, Jane.]

My safari group.

Our debrief location was serendipitously situated in the middle of the most green I’ve seen in Senegal-and was right

Goat killing time. Apparently, this is how men bond.

next to a fantastic pool. I think the coolest part of the debrief time was when we all headed out on a safari—something I haven’t done since high school when I first came to Africa. Much to our chagrin, our truck wasn’t charged by a single animal-but we did see zebras, rhinos, and giraffes! [Oh my!]

And so here I sit, with just over two days left before I fly over the ocean on Monday. We dropped the SP off at the airport early this morning, and now it’s time to tackle a rather alarming to-do list of things that have piled up over the past week…

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June 17, 2010 · 12:41 pm

Daddy’s Girl.

Years and years ago, I decided that I wanted to marry my Daddy. I waltzed over to him, plopped down in his lap, threw my arms around his neck and adoringly asked him if he would please marry me when I grew up. There aren’t very many little girls that grow up and still hope to marry a man just like their Dad-but I am just such a lucky, grown up little girl. :)

For as long as I can remember, my Dad has made a habit of taking me out on Daddy-daughter dates. What’s funny is that now, years later, I have a difficult time remembering most of what he used to take me to do-…I simply remember being with my Dad.

I remember a conversation that we had as we walked together [probably on the way to a Russian ballet or dinner] on one of our dates. I was about seven at the time, and we were living in Kiev, Ukraine. I vividly remember the rough, gray, cobblestone street on which we were walking-it was fall, and to a little girl it felt I could practically swim through the sea of crunchy, golden leaves that blanketed the ground. Now, something you should understand about my Dad is that he’s the smartest person that I know. That’s not coming from a doting daughter-he’s simply that intelligent. We’re talking about a guy that declared a double major in music and chemical engineering in college-because his giftings are that diverse! He took higher level math courses at the University of Michigan-just for fun. [And consequently, was entirely baffled by the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to divide decimals for the life of me…]

And so the conversation that we had that crisp, Ukrainian fall afternoon is incredibly indicative of who my Dad is and one of the huge roles that he has played in the story of my life. We were walking through the leaves underneath a cluster of birch trees, and Daddy began to explain different kinds of love to me. As the big blue eyes that I got from him progressively widened, he explained the vast differences between agápe, éros, philía, and storgē love. [Yes, in Greek.] I still remember walking beside my Daddy, holding his hand, not understanding most of what he said but confidently believing that because Dad was saying it, it must be awfully important. And so I remembered. I rehearsed those Greek words over and over in my mind that afternoon and as I drifted off to sleep that night-and I never forgot that conversation [or the Greek!]. Now, as an adult, I understand a little bit better why Dad took the time to explain Greek to a seven year old little girl. You see, in a myriad of subtle, varied ways, my Dad has spent my entire life teaching me what love looks like.

One of my earliest memories is of building a sandbox with my Dad in our back yard in breathtaking Vermont. I imagine that he probably had a myriad of things on his to-do list that sunny afternoon as he always does-but he took hours to construct a sandbox with my little brother and I even though at three and four years old, in our eagerness to “help” we grossly slowed down the process. I’ve always known that no matter how demanding his life was, my Dad wasn’t too busy for me. During my sophomore year of college when it felt like my world was rapidly unraveling, this looked something like my Dad immediately dropping what he was doing to talk to me whenever I called-sometimes multiple times a day. Love takes time for you.

I remember on one of our earliest dates, Daddy switched places with me on the sidewalk and explained to me that a gentleman should always be the one to walk closest to traffic, in case a car veered off the road. My Dad would get hit by a car for me any day of the week-and to this day, I notice if a man doesn’t insist on walking on the outside of the sidewalk. Love is joyfully sacrificial.

When I was a much smaller version of myself and this was a much cheaper idea, Dad started buying a rose for every year that I was celebrating on my birthday. Yes, that means that I’m up to a giant bouquet of 24 roses come April 19th! I get roses every February 14th as well. Love is extravagant.

Any time I was home from college-even if it was just two hours for dinner-Dad would run outside and tinker around with my his car to make sure that everything was working correctly. I can’t even be more specific than that because I’ve never so much as checked the air in my tires-that’s a Dad thing. He was determined to do everything in his power to make sure that I was as safe and protected-he always has been. Love always protects.

One of the most unwavering pictures in my life has been sleepily walking downstairs every morning to find my Dad sitting in an overstuffed chair, reading his Bible. He puts vast amounts of time into his walk with Jesus-something that very clearly overflows into all of his other relationships. Love is consistent.

Those are just a few snapshots-it would take an impossible amount of time to detail everything that my Dad has taught me about love. Our dates have evolved into breakfast out, normally-a cinnamon roll and tea for him, and a bagel and caramel latte for me.  I can’t wait to get to go out with my Dad next week! Since I won’t be around this weekend, happy early Father’s Day, Daddy! I love you. :)

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June 15, 2010 · 11:54 am

Of Fairytales and “Diabeetus”.

Back when the scheming began.

When I was a very little girl, I used to routinely slip into blissful daydreams about a world in which I made the rules. In that fairy-tale world, I’d fall asleep no earlier than 4:00 AM. CNN would be cheerfully swapped for Cartoon Network [Popeye, anyone?], I’d never eat pea soup again [mostly because it tastes like vomit], nobody would ever be permitted to drink anything other than chocolate milk [because really-when you’re a kid, why bother?], and all clothes that didn’t have a home in my rather gargantuan dress-up box would be promptly burned. [I mean, if it doesn’t go with your fuchsia feather boa, sequined tiara and pink wand, do you really need it anyways?]

 I also had this magical idea about all sidewalks being converted into gigantic slip-n-slides, but that’s another story.

 One thing that was absolutely essential in my idealistic dream of the “adult-world” that I intended to create upon my release from the captivity of my childhood was my concept of dinner time. In my world, there would be no thank you helpings [apparently my Mother didn't understand that she too is bound by the laws of the Geneva Convention]. I was resolutely determined that there would always be dessert which would always come first […you know, just in case] and always be chocolate, and “meal-time” would become a fluid concept in favor of a sort of buffet-style existence. In adult-world, if you felt like having chocolate chip cookies, 82 tootsie rolls and a coke slushy for dinner, well by golly that’s what you’d have! [I mean, your body knows what it needs, anyways…]

 Cue last night. My fantastic [really, they’re incredible!] team and I decided just before my run [oh, the irony!]  that we

Before our epic cookie fail. Stupid toaster!

 were positively sick of food in Dakar. When you’re cooking on a hot plate in Africa, your options are awfully limited-and I think at this point we all feel like we’ll explode if we buy one more rotisserie chicken or so much as smell another kabob. Sadly, we joke that in Senegal, we only eat to stay alive…we’re that sick of the food. As we dolefully sat in a circle bemoaning the fact that we were going to have to eat again and daydreaming about Chik-fil-a and Fosters Market in Chapel Hill [okay, so that second one was just me], a slow smile crept across my admittedly previously pouting face. You see, the petrifyingly beautiful thing about being an adult is that ready or not, you finally get to make the rules! In an effort to make dinner time slightly more entertaining, I hesitantly asked what people would think about only eating the things we liked for dinner. I wish you could have been a fly on the wall as, in a hilarious display of childlike impetuousness, that group of twenty-somethings started shouting “jello!” “slushies!” “pudding!” “ICIIINNGGG!!” and a myriad of other foods generally not considered to be even the tiniest part of a “healthy, well-balanced meal”. Now, I should clarify that the food list we came up with isn’t indicative of our favorite foods, but rather a little bit of what is available in the city and a LOT of what sweet friends and family have sent us in care packages over the past several months. When we were done, our list looked something like this:

  1. Strawberry jello
  2. Blue slushies from our kool-aid slushy mix
  3. Coke
  4. Grape kool-aid
  5. Butterscotch pudding, complements of the Jello company
  6. Sugar cookies [thank you Jessica King for that mix!] made in our toaster oven
  7. Cream cheese frosting
  8. Green squirty-frosting [Thank you Dayton’s Mom!]
  9. Fat-free Pillsbury vanilla frosting [Thank you Ben’s Mom!]
  10. Pringles
  11. Nutella crepes
  12. Street meat sandwiches [ghetto-fab]
  13. …fruit salad. I couldn’t help it.

Note the sad icing faces on all but one of the cookies. It was a valiant effort!

Elated, we decided to call it “Diabeetus Night”, and without further ado divvied up the list, and spread out to divide and conquer like so many cowboys and Indians. There is a sort of secret delight when an adult acts like the five year old child we all sometimes long to be again.

We didn’t even use individual plates-last night as we watched Tom and Jerry on Christy’s laptop, we sat on my kitchen floor [there remains the minor detail that Christy and I have next to no-furniture] with a heap of gangrenous charcoal hockey pucks masquerading as sugar cookies with green frosting, a huge vat of strawberry jello and a bunch of spoons. I felt, for all the world, like those kids from Lord of the Flies must have felt before they started knocking each other off.

 I confess, after “course” number four or five, we began to feel a little sick, and had to call off diabeetus night-but never fear, we had slushies for breakfast at our team meeting this morning. ;)

Jello has never tasted that good.

 

If you’re interested in the inspiration for “diabeetus night”, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kATetEFGEbE

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June 14, 2010 · 10:38 am

She’s Making a List, and Checking it Twice…

With Ian and Emily before her Nutcracker recital last Christmas! ...Christmas simply captivated me as I was writing-I can't help it. If you know me, you already understand.

Two weeks from today! Two weeks. That’s fourteen days, kids. How did I get to this place? Life happens so quickly.

This is one of my very favorite ways to slowly start the day-I’m up before anyone else, sitting in my living room with a giant vanilla hazelnut au lait. I’m one of those odd people that revel in early, lazy mornings alone-…as long as I don’t wake up to an alarm. :) The only things that could make this more perfect would be a Christmas tree with sparkling white twinkle-lights, a gloriously overstuffed chair, a cabin in the mountains, bucketfuls of snow softly blanketing the world outside my window to the tune of James Taylor’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and a roaring fireplace. Christmas is always magic! S’marvelous.

Last night, Dayton and I sat around singing Christmas carols at the piano for a couple of hours in a happily successful attempt to avoid working post eight o’clock. I’m probably daydreaming so much about mountains and snow because we’ve hit new levels of scorching, searing heat in Dakar lately. Additionally, in a perfectly ghastly turn of events, our running water has decided to…well, run. Probably off to the Alps.

This weekend has been consumed with checking off my ever-growing “must-get-done-before-I-hop-on-a-plane” list. After inventorying everything I’m leaving in Dakar to make sure that I don’t buy things that I don’t need for next year, I’ve come to some rather startling conclusions…

1. Nobody needs this many Hello Kitty bandaids. Nobody. I’m going to have to get some sort of gaping, gushing wound to save face. Or, given the fact that I brought boxes of Hello Kitty bandaids to Africa, is it already too late for that?

My roommates from college and some of my best friends after one of our epic Christmas parties. This picture is so indicative of our personalities...

2. I have enough advil to supply every pharmacy in Dakar for at least a month. What was I thinking? I barely ever need it, but something about “I’m moving to Africa” sent me into a sort of panic that resulted in obscene amounts of medications that may forever go unused.

3. Rainboots? Really? I lugged my bright blue, polka-dotted rainboots across the Atlantic? Cheers to being prepared for anything, …but let’s take those home, shall we?

4. Two very full bottles would suggest that I have barely touched the vitamins my sweet Mom insisted on buying me at fancy-shmancy GNC. Sorry Mom.

 Life is rather frenzied because on Friday, my team and I are taking the SP to work in some villages a couple hours away, and we won’t be back from that and the SP’s debrief time at the beach [it’s a dirty job…] until next Thursday. And then, in case you haven’t been counting with me, I fly out just a few days later, at the crack of dawn on Monday morning. Thus, I have been determined to finish all of my shopping, do massive amounts of laundry in the sink one last time before I’m back in washing-machine-land, say goodbye to all of my students, pack as much as humanly possible into just two little duffels [cross your fingers], and check off the rest of that to-do list all before Thursday night. Type A personalities like mine absolutely thrive on weeks like these…

Christy and I ice skating in breathtaking Paris just after Christmas this year. Perfect.

Have yourself a merry little Monday. :)

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