Snapshots

I wish I could go back and tell my nine-year-old self to drink it all in.  

"Sara," I would say, "believe it or not, years from now, people will want to know what you saw, what you felt, what you thought about the smells, the sights, the sounds. Open your eyes. Etch these moments, these images, into your brain for the rest of your life, so that until your dying breath, you can remember the first time you came home." 

But I can't. And those memories are gone.  

I started out trying to write this in the same format as my earlier post, a narrative in chronological order. But I honestly remember so little of those first couple days in Nigeria. My memories are mostly snapshots of very specific details rather than a Bigger Picture. I know I should remember in vivid detail my thoughts and impressions from the moment I stepped off the plane, the moment we drove into our new town, the moment I first saw the house I would call home for the next 15 years, the moment I met the girl who would become my best friend. They were such life-changing moments, and yet I have no distinct memories of them. I can't tell you my first impressions or what hit me the most because I just don't remember.  

Thinking back now, I realize how significant this is. I was nine years old, but I was still young enough that the differences between my young childhood home of southern California and my new home were not stark. I'm sure that at the time, things seemed foreign, and I consciously thought about those differences. But they must have been subtle enough to not get filed away into my long-term memory. The important things - my family, going to school, and playing - were consistent enough to simplify the transition. On one hand, I guess it's a testimony to the resilience of children, and I hope that my children are as resilient in the face of all of the life changes they have undergone and will continue to face in their lives. But on the other hand, I grieve the loss of those first impressions. While I can describe for you the experience of returning to Nigeria – with more and more detail depending on my age upon return – and while I can give you details about the road from Kano to Jos, about our new town and compound, I can't go back to the first time. That fills me with sadness. 

So let me give you the snapshots I do remember and try to fill in the gaps as necessary later with descriptions from 35-year-old me. 

*snap* It was hot when we got off the plane in Kano. There was no gangway to the airport terminal; we stepped off onto the tarmac itself and walked to the terminal – not a long walk by any means. We had lots and lots of boxes – 40? 50? I'm not exaggerating. It was a lot. An American missionary who lived in Kano, Terry, came to help us through customs. He was tall and made us laugh. 

*snap* That night at the guest house, we were served pancakes for dinner, and for the first time in two days, I ate. I was just so relieved that our first meal in Nigeria was a familiar food. We drank the water in the dining hall, but my dad had drilled into us kids that we would not be able to drink the tap water in Nigeria, ever. Our minds had been filled with fear of cholera, hepatitis, yellow fever, meningitis, dysentery, typhoid, malaria, and hookworm, all of which came from tap water for all I knew.  

["Guest house" was a new phrase to me, and I learned that it referred to a sort of hotel with blocks of rooms or suites and a central dining hall or meeting area. This guest house was run by our mission in collaboration with the church that the mission had established years and years ago, ECWA (the Evangelical Church of West Africa).] 

*snap* The following day, Saturday, we squished into a large van with as many of our boxes as could fit. There were a few other missionaries riding down with us, an at-least-five-hour drive to cover roughly 200 miles. (In the rainy season, driving times usually increase with the number and severity of potholes.)  

*snap* We stopped and got soda ("minerals") in glass bottles. I discovered Fanta Orange for the first time. (It's not "orange Fanta," peeps; it's "Fanta orange." Come on now.) We also got little plastic baggies of roasted peanuts ("groundnuts"). Yum!  

*snap* We ate at a neighbor's house that night. We had pizza, which tasted different to me because the base was tomato paste instead of tomato sauce, and I feel like we had Kool-Aid, which was a special treat for our hosts, since it had to be brought from the U.S. (I'd never had Kool-Aid before, as I'd grown up on diet soda and Crystal Light.) Our hosts were Australian, a general practitioner and his wife and four kids. Their third child, Shelley, was my age and would be in my class at school. I don't know that I'd ever met an Australian before, and while Shelley didn't have an accent because she'd been born and raised in Nigeria, I loved listening to her parents talk. I've no idea what they said, as I'm sure I wasn't paying a bit of attention; I just liked hearing them. Oh, and they had Chinese-lantern-type lights in their living room, so it was dim but lovely. 

*snap* We ate lunch the next day at another neighbor's house. This family was from Ohio, both parents were doctors, and they had three daughters. Their eldest, Ruth, was my age and would be in my class at school. At some point yet another neighbor family came over to meet us – a general practitioner and his wife and three kids from Georgia. Their eldest, Jessica, was a year ahead of me in school. After we ate, the girls took me rambling through the backyards of our little neighborhood. It was lightly raining, and I remember feeling as though I were trekking through a jungle, pushing aside leaves of banana trees in the pitter-patter of a rain forest. It was surreal. 

That's the end of my distinct memories from those first few days. From this point on, everything just kind of blurs together. My descriptions will be drawn from years of memories rather than specific images. 

Coming up next: Where did you live?