Traveling

The one thing I can say for sure about today's trip to Lagos is that it will be something to blog about!

 

The original plan included our going together on a bus to Lagos this past Sunday. However, David decided that we didn't all need to go that early, so he went on ahead by himself, leaving Timothy and me to fly down today. He's already taken care of one errand, and we'll go together to do Thursday and Friday's errands. I sure am glad that I'm going to be in Lagos with my husband instead of alone, or with a stranger! Even better, we have a good friend who works in Lagos and lives in Jos, so he's been taking care of David and will hopefully help us get around. Phew.

 

So I'll go out to the Jos airport around 10am. I've only been there twice--once in 1995, when Mom, Jonathan, and I flew in from Lagos; and once a year or two later when Laura and I went to meet Jessica, whose family was flying in from the U.S. via Lagos. I don't remember much about it, except that it's pretty darn small. I've been told I can show up a few hours early, buy a ticket there, and then just get on the plane whenever they say to do so. Works for me!

 

I hope that when I come back on Saturday, I'll be brimming with a wonderful tale of adventure in the big city! Wish us luck!

Not in a blogging mood

I'd been meaning to wait until after Timothy's birthday and the U.S. elections to blog, but now that those events are past, I find myself sighing and dragging myself to the computer. I'm exhausted. I'm not sure why--maybe it's Timothy's rough night last night. Or maybe I'm just tired of looking at computer screens all day.

 

The older I get, the younger people seem to be when they die. Perhaps that's just stating the obvious, but it's hit me in the past week more than ever. In the eight years since I graduated from high school, four Nigeria missionary men have died of cancer--all family friends and fathers of my schoolmates. They've ranged in age from early forties to early sixties, but it's still somehow overwhelming to me. I wasn't close to any of them (at least, not recently), but I have happy memories about them all. And the saddest thing: two of them died just weeks before their children were married. Yikes. Talk about timing. It's a real reminder that we have absolutely no say in our coming and going.

 

I realise I haven't said very much in this post, and I'm sorry for that. But I've said my bit, and that's that.

Fear and trepidation

For the past four months, at least, there has been a huge elephant residing in our living room. It eats a lot. It costs a lot. It causes a great deal of worry and discomfort. But oops! We're not supposed to talk about it!

 

So I can't tell you why I'm probably making a pilgrimage to Lagos in the next two or three weeks. I can only tell you that I have hardly ever been more apprehensive about anything in my life. And that's saying a lot because I'm an obsessive-compulsive worrier. I could win prizes for the amount of worrying I've done in my quarter+ of a century.

 

I remember seeing a photo once, taken in the Atlanta airport, of a sign that proclaimed the Lagos international airport as unsafe for the wary American traveler. Fortunately, we're not going to the airport at all. On the contrary, we get to brave the big city itself.

 

To be honest, I know very little about Lagos, and I've blissfully enjoyed that ignorance. I realise that there are many Nigerians--resident in Lagos, of course--who would say you haven't been to Nigeria until you've been to Lagos. Well, my passport says otherwise, with stamps proclaiming my exits from and entrances into the Federal Republic. I've only been to Lagos once--13 years ago--and then it was just an overnight with my mom and brother. (The reason my dad was not with us is a story in itself, but I'll save that for another day.) We stayed in the Baptist Guest House between our flight from L.A. and our flight to Jos the next day. And it was pretty miserable.

 

This time we're going for a week. And we're going by bus. (David made this bus trip in May for his exams, and the 12-hour trip took 24 hours because of a huge church revival blocking the only road between Ibadan and Lagos--a one-hour drive in normal traffic.)

 

You could say I'm apprehensive. In fact, I think I said that myself. But really, that's an understatement; to acknowledge my true feelings would be to admit defeat. Lagos is big. It's crowded. To get where we're going by 7am, we'll leave our hotel by 4am. There's crime. There's noise. The weather is wretched. It's just not my ideal place to spend a week. But hey, this is important enough for me to make the trip regardless of the city's ill repute.

 

And it will take me a full week to get emotionally prepared for the ordeal! ;) So help me, I'll make it a trip worth telling about!

Through the eye of a needle

It felt like we were trying to pass through the eye of a needle this morning as we drove to church. For the past two days, there has been some sort of religious meeting at the next-door polo field, blaring words that are unintelligible to monolingual ol' me. It went on all last night, too. I know because Timothy woke up screaming and wouldn't go back to sleep, so I was up at 2am, and the loudspeakers were still on full blast.

We left for church at 9:40, which would normally have gotten us to Hillcrest five minutes before the service started, with plenty of time to take Timothy to the nursery and sit down in the chapel. But by 9:55, we were still stuck in traffic around the roundabout by the polo field. Only once before have I seen such a to-do there. Nine years ago, on a religious holiday, my friend John mis-stepped into a 10' hole, breaking his arm and a rib, plus banging up his face pretty badly. On that day, it took us an hour to get from Hillcrest to Evangel Hospital--a distance of about 3 miles. That's the only time I'd ever seen it like it was this morning.

Vendors, hawking cloth, food, shoes, clothing items, etc. More motorcycles than I've ever seen in one place, and that says a lot. Vans full of men and women all trussed up in their best. People in brown uniforms and green berets directing traffic. Thousands of people on foot thronging the street. Noise everywhere: loudspeakers in cars reciting passages, people yelling, the loudspeakres from the polo grounds, policemen directing cars, horns blaring. David saw vans from at least three states, and I saw ones from another three. There were buses, lorries, vans, trucks, cars, taxis, motorcycles, and pedestrians--all congregating at the polo field. Cars were double-parked all along the main road and in the roundabout, barely giving room for moving cars to pass single-file. The van we were in was hit once by a motorcycle and then rear-ended by the car behind us. But we just kept going, inch by inch, until we were finally through the congestion. We arrived at the chapel only ten minutes late, which is actually quite amazing. I was glad, at least, that we were in time to hear the sermon by a special guest preacher (the man who officiated at David's and my wedding, in fact).

Needless to say, we took a different route home.

Going postal

I was so delighted on Friday when David walked into the house carrying a Priority Mail flat-rate box. Wow! We actually got a package: Cheerios and a cross-stitched bib for Timothy. It was so exciting! So thanks for that!! I know I must have sounded pretty pathetic in my posts asking for packages. *insert sheepish grin here* But it's always nice to feel loved. Admit it: You love getting packages, too!

Ode to my right foot

Earlier this year, I had a foot injury, and upon relating the story to someone, I suddenly realised that my right foot has quite a history of injury. So I decided to one day write a post about it. If this seems at all silly to you, I heartily agree. But perhaps you'll understand once you hear my tale.

 

I have never broken a bone in my life--at least that I can prove. The two times I've had X-rays of my right foot, there were no fractures. It's the times I haven't had X-rays that I suspect my foot was actually broken. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

We lived at Fay Avenue when was in second and third grade, and we had a chair that my brother had salvaged from a dumpster behind our student housing complex at UCLA. (Yes, even then, my family were dumpster divers!) This blue chair was a swiveler, and I used to love to sit in it and...well...swivel. One day, alas! My right foot got stuck under the chair while someone else was in the chair (swiveling), and my foot got injured. It was just a flesh wound, but I can still point out the ibuprofen-sized circular scar on the top of the foot. Battle scars. And so it began.

 

I've always detested athletics, so I didn't have any injuries during my school days. Okay, I did have a possible stress fracture in my big toe once, but that hardly counts. No, my next injury came at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. And I can feel the excruciating pain even thinking about it. We'd been allowed to store two 70-lb boxes in the college storage facilities during that summer, and I had to move my two boxes from my freshman dorm to my sophomore dorm. It was a fair walk, but my friends and I managed, with my two boxes loaded onto a dolly. My new dorm, however, had no ramp access up the front steps and no elevator, so we stopped outside the building to contemplate the dilemma. As one of my dear friends let go of the dolly handle to stand it upright, the cart rolled on top of my right foot. I was in immediate agony. Not only did the goose-egg on the top of my foot swell up until it was literally the size of a chicken egg, but I had to ask my friend to go in my stead on a downtown-Chicago excursion with a group of freshmen that evening. After icing my foot for awhile and getting crutches from the health centre, I followed another friend to her cousin's apartment several blocks away to have dinner there. We walked, I hobbling on my crutches. I decided then that I would rather walk in anguish than use crutches for several weeks. So even though the health centre had encouraged me to go into a hospital for X-rays, I ignored them. (And Heather's cousin was sweet and gave us a ride back to campus that evening.) Woe is me! I should have listened to the health centre. I just knew I'd be humiliated if I went in for X-rays, and they said, "Ha, it's barely hurt. You're such a baby." It was at least two months before I could wear closed shoes again--just in time for winter. But my foot was tender to the touch for over a year afterward.

 

My next incident was the day after I graduated from college. My dear sister had come to the dorm to help me collect my absurdly numerous belongings, and we'd decided to pick through the dumpster before the trash truck came. (Lucky for us, the person driving the trash truck that day was an MK friend of ours from Nigeria.) I'd just found a futon for my sister and thrown it down to her. I jumped down after it and landed on the curb edge, twisting my right ankle beneath me. Ugh. My sister helped me hobble back upstairs to my dorm room, where I sat on a chair and watched my roommate continue to pack feverishly. A friend of mine stopped by, and I discovered to my delight that he had basic emergency medicine training. Yay! He wrapped my foot in an ACE bandage, told me to take an anti-inflammatory of any sort, and half-carried me downstairs to my sister's van. What a guy! Later that day, my sister took me to urgent care, and the X-rays showed no broken bones. But they did charge me an arm and a leg for the time spent and an air-cast, and they rented me a pair of crutches. This time I really did use them. The trouble was that you're not allowed to drive if you have crutches in your car for your use. So I lay on my sister's couch for a week, reading books, watching movies, talking with her, and enjoying being pampered. I was crushed to miss the dancing at a folk dance/sing the week after graduation--the last big folk bash I attended. By the time my friend Amanda got married four weeks later, I could hobble around in my strappy white sandals. No one even knew about my ankle. But that was a bad idea. I wrenched it again during the wedding, and I was back to wearing the air-cast for another few weeks.

 

My next incident was almost two years later. I was helping people at my church in San Diego set up for a special Renaissance party when the boys carrying a table behind me dropped it. The table landed against the back of my right foot. Everyone immediately took care of me, but I was in a lot of pain, and I sat out for most of the party that night. My host family made an appointment for me to see their orthopedic surgeon, and she took X-rays, but proclaimed that she thought I had only torn my tendon. Only. That's all! So I was back in an air-cast and got to wear flip-flops to work for my last few weeks of employment before I left for Nigeria for two months. Oh, and I highly recommend not injuring your foot right before a long journey. It's just a bad idea.

 

Well, it was almost two years after that that I hurt my foot this spring. Oh, well, the first thing I did was mis-step off the stairs at church and sprain my right ankle--the day of my little brother's 9th birthday party. Poor Mom had to cope mostly by herself with six little boys all yelling and screaming about one thing or another. But that healed well, and then, when I was carrying something in my house in late March, I knocked over a chair onto my right foot. Now, I know that doesn't sound like it would do much damage, but it hurt like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't touch the top of my foot--not even to wash it--for over a week. Even when I got into bed at night, I couldn't bear to put the sheet over my foot. Again, I had to wear flip-flops for literally months. The first time I put on sneakers after that was the end of May--two months later--to see if I could wear them while we were traveling in the States. By then, the pain had reduced enough so that it just kind of throbbed instead of panging.

 

So there it is, the story of my right foot. It's been through a lot in its day. And I'm sure it won't end here. But maybe now the curse will lift, and I won't have any more nightmares of hobbling around on crutches.

 

Thus ends the ode to my right foot.

Passing the time

I exercised tonight for the first time since I can't even remember when. Okay, sure, I get daily exercise hauling Timothy and his carseat around. And I take walks with David sometimes. But this was 100% intentional and entirely my own idea. This hardly ever happens!! I am awful at exercising. I come from a sedentary family, so I didn't grow up with sports at all. And I have so many excuses not to exercise--reasonable excuses, even--that I can almost always convince myself to pass.

But three things made me think of it tonight. One is that I actually like the size I'm at right now and would like to stay this way. Another is my friend Lisa's blog post about exercising. And the third is a conversation I had yesterday with my husband. (Note: David enjoys exercise, especially playing football, but he doesn't make me feel guilty for not exercising myself--at least, not usually.)

I'd been thinking about trying it tonight, once Timothy was in bed. But then he decided to be naughty and stay awake until 9:45. I was tired. I decided to go to bed instead. While I was sitting on my bed, brushing my teeth, I suddenly realised that a big fat honkin' mosquito was perched on my hand having a grand ol' time. Nope. Not bedtime yet. I got out one of our several cans of insecticide and doused my bedroom with it. I pulled the door shut to make sure all the mosquitos died, and I thought, Well, what the heck? Who needs sleep anyway? So I put on Rebecca St. James' God with the volume down low, did some stretches, and then just started doing whatever seemed to make sense. I'm no aerobics master, nor am I a dancer except in the privacy of my own home. But I moved my arms and legs, and now I am sore. To me, this signifies exercise! I just have to figure out a way to make myself do it regularly. Is anyone interested in an exercise accountability program?

And now my bedroom is clear of the insecticide smell, so I can go to bed! Bon nuit.

Storm of the season

Something woke me up at about 3:15 Friday morning. I'd been dreaming of being somewhere with my family, and in my dream, my friend Adena had run through pouring rain because she wanted to show me a Sunday school lesson...

 

When I awoke, wind was gushing through the house. My first thought was to close the doors to the toilet room and shower room, since they creak like no man's business, and I was afraid the noise would wake Timothy. I jumped out of bed and wrestled the wind to shut both doors, to no avail. Neither one has a working door handle, so we usually just shut them by wedging them with towels. When the wind is blowing as hard as this was, though, there's nothing we can do to keep them closed. After stumbling several times over the empty bucket we use for flushing--and making a horrendous noise--I gave up and went back to bed. Nothing, I realised, was going to keep Timothy from waking up in this storm except the grace of God.

 

David woke as I got back into bed, and I told him I was too scared to go into the living room. The wind had picked up and if possible, was even stronger as time went on. And the rain had begun in full force. I knew I hadn't closed the louvered windows in our living room, and that the wind was blowing straight in--as usual--from the northeast. I dreaded what I might find.

 

But then the lightning started--mostly just the rumbly kind among the clouds rather than the sharp ground-to-cloud kind--and I knew I had to unplug the computer and anything else we valued. I groaned, flung back the covers, and ventured into the living room.

 

What a sight!

 

The wind was buffeting the curtains, and one rod had already fallen completely off its supports, leaving one of the supports dangling with perhaps half an inch of screw still in the wall. (Remember that our wall is extremely crumbly, so it's hard to make anything stay in it.) I hurried over to the outlet where our electronics are plugged into a voltage stabilizer and surge protector, and I reached out my hand. The coffee table blocking the electrical stuff from Timothy's play area was wet. I cringed, prayed I wouldn't get electrocuted, and yanked the surge protector plug from the voltage stabilizer. The cord was only slightly wet, and I hadn't been shocked. Phew.

 

My next task was shutting the living room windows. Some of them are really rusty and don't shut easily, so that was a huge task in itself. I finally got most of the louvers shut, breaking one pane and cutting my hand on another. By the time I'd finished closing all the panes, the carpet was thoroughly soaked near the windows. As I walked back to bed, I realised the carpet was wet in the whole room, and that meant everything else was wet--furniture, chairs, Timothy's leather shoes (oops!), toys, even a few of our books. Everything in the whole living room was likely to be wet.

 

I just couldn't take it. I refused to think about it and climbed back into my cozy bed to listen to the wind and pounding rain. The storm lasted for another three hours. Timothy woke up scared at 4:15, so I brought him into bed with us, and he went right back to sleep and slept the rest of the night.

 

When we got up in the morning, it was still overcast, and I assessed our living room. The carpet was drenched, The curtains--both hanging and fallen--were soaked. The curtain rod would go back up, but I'm guessing it won't last more than a day or two. The cover of the book that I'm reading was wet but not soaked through. Everything else was merely damp. So all in all, we didn't do too badly. But it was quite a storm--the strongest storm of the season!