ali's african adventures

I am (and always have been) a root-sender. Wherever I am, I push quickly into the earth, hoping to find a foothold that will steady me against whatever might try to move me. It doesn't matter if I'll be leaving in ten days or ten months, I instinctively try to hold on to every place I've ever been. Parts of me have been left scattered around this world; Chavuma, Grantham, Tijuana, Bastion, Marburg.

It makes life hard, sometimes, this need for solid ground. Roots, however small, hurt when they are pulled up. I've been experiencing this snapping and tearing over and over again recently. Friday was my last day at work. I clocked out, hugged everyone in sight, kissed the plush cheeks of a baby I love and walked out. It hurt more than I thought it should have. After all, I'm going on to bigger and better things, right? I'm following God's plan and I should be excited and regret-free. Right?

God has impressed on my heart recently the importance of His words in Isaiah 58. If you pour out your soul on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will shine in the darkness and your night will be like noonday. In a way, I see this as validation of my need to be so firmly grounded. Pouring out implies to me a sort of reckless extravagance. It's not something to be done by halves, this spending of myself. It means that, if I fully abandon myself to this call, part of me will necessarily spill over. Part of me will be left deep in that ground.

And my roots were deep into that place. Inside those walls I learned more than I knew I could. I learned how to assess and how to advocate. I learned how to anticipate instead of react. I fought tooth and nail alongside warriors of medicine to pull children back from the edge. I was present for miraculous recoveries and I held mothers in my arms as they wept their pain and loss into me. I learned there to be a healer, a listening ear, a rock, a teacher. I learned to be a nurse.

So I guess it's okay that it hurt to leave. And it's okay to rest now, quiet in the knowledge that He will fill me up again in time to break me open, pour me out and let me push my roots deep into the Liberian soil.

These days, I find myself running through lists in my head. Silently cataloging the things I will miss when I've left the states and headed off to some as-yet-unknown African country. (Another story entirely, all that uncertainty.)

. Long, hot showers when I just stand and let the water beat down on my shoulders until I'm done thinking.
. Walks through my suburban streets lined with flame-orange trees, leaves drifting silently down as I pass under their branches.
. Stretching myself diagonally across my bed, limbs splayed out to cover the entire space.
. My mother's cooking (especially the rolls she just made, the ones with butter melted over their crisp tops).
. The luxury of getting in my car and driving to wherever I want. Just because.
. Calling a code and knowing that, within seconds, I will be surrounded by nurses, attendings, respiratory therapists and pharmacists.
. A closet so full of clothes that some days I find it hard to decide just how to cover my body.
. Sitting in my sister's hammock at the end of a day and talking about not really much of anything.


And then, all at once, the aperture on my perspective snaps wide open and everything comes into startling, narrow focus.

I'm going to a country in Western Africa, and I'm planning on missing things that those people have never had. The streets aren't safe because of pollution and overcrowding and violence. There are three doctors for every 100.000 people. Their sisters died at the hands of malaria, malnutrition and war.

And I care about what clothes I'm going to pack.


Who else sees the disconnect?