ali's african adventures

Shore leave expires tomorrow morning.

For the normal person, this means nothing. For us on the ship, it means everything needs to be tied down and secured, something I spent a good chunk of this morning doing. (The sore wrist and awkwardly placed cut on my hand from where a rogue sink fell on me were a little extra bonus.)

It means one last extra load of laundry, one last long, hot shower where you let the water run while you shampoo your hair, knowing full well that once we leave the dock we'll be on water restrictions for the next six months.

It means sitting on the dock, staring at the shadows of the mountains against the night sky, not knowing if you'll ever see them again and not really caring, because shore leave expiring is the anticipation of sunsets over the open ocean, dolphins at the bow and, in about a week and a half, the warm, red smell of Africa.

I'm sitting on my bed and from my porthole I can see the captain walking along the dock, making final checks of the mooring lines we'll soon be throwing off. The HoJ is playing football with friends from Canada and Australia and Italy, and over the sea wall the dark ocean stretches out like a promise.

There's talk of wind and waves, so I'm afraid my new-found love for sailing might disappear just as easily as it found me, but despite the forecast, I can't wait. It feels a little like Christmas Eve, only this time the present waiting under the tree is a whole new country to experience.

We sail for Togo tomorrow. A whole new country, filled with people living stories I haven't yet heard. We haven't left the port, and I'm already impatient to arrive.

It's been ages, hasn't it? Since I've blogged? Truth be told I've just been taking a break. Stepping back from the whirlwind of this past year and just breathing. When I sit down and think about, when I realize that, within the last twelve months, I've been in eight countries on four continents, it makes me lightheaded. I got married, I moved back to Africa and then my home sailed to Spain. In a couple of weeks it'll head back south again, to yet another country, yet another language to learn. This, frankly, all seems insane. When I look at my life, written out in black and white like that, I can't imagine what I'm doing. Why I'm crazy enough to want this.

Because wanting this means missing them, the little ones who drool on my shoulders and snuggle into my arms to fall asleep with round bellies and soft fingers wrapped around mine. It means I see photos on Facebook and pray that they'll remember me when I come back to visit. And inevitably they don't, and I have to smile while I ask them if they know my name and the whole time my heart is breaking just a little because they never do.

Wanting this means I miss out on seasons, on the crisp fall air and the smell of damp earth in the spring. Granted, it means I skip the slush and frost of winter, but it also means I don't see snowflakes, perfectly formed, falling to land in clusters on my eyelashes and sleeves and the mittens my friend knitted for me, the ones I never get to wear because it's too hot for mittens in Africa.

But this, all this messing about in boats, in the end this has much to recommend it. When I came back this time after being at home for a couple of weeks visiting family in the States and Canada, I was amazed at how it all smelled like the sea when I walked onto the dock. All around me were the sounds of waves and the lights of the city reflected on the water and it smelled like the sea in summertime. I don't usually smell it, accustomed to it from long familiarity. But then I went away and came back and the salty breeze whispered to me that maybe I should never have left in the first place.

Because at nighttime there are crickets here in Tenerife, singing underneath the palm trees. We walk through the streets and I'm holding a stranger's hand, only he isn't a stranger; he's the one I love the most. And I'm stepping off street curbs without ever looking because he went first and I know he's not going to steer me wrong when my fingers are curled into the callouses on his palm. We're walking in the alleys of a Spanish city, the stones uneven underfoot and the clock in the church tower pealing out the hour, and none of this seems strange to me. It feels like home, and when I can stop thinking and analyzing and just let myself be, I realize that it is.

I always thought home was a fixed address, the one place you plant your roots and claim forever; I'm starting to realize that my home is nowhere and everywhere. It's in New Jersey and Toronto and Liberia and Ecuador. Home is this ship and a dock in Benin and a farmhouse in a small town in Ontario. It's where I've been and where I've yet to go, and it's all of these places at once. And I guess that's why I want this life. Because this life means I get to be home in Africa.

And I can't wait to be there again.




(Where's home for you?)

I'm sitting here on the first day of the new year, and I don't feel any different. Twenty-six and I'm already jaded, becoming numb to the passage of time, it seems. My dad put it best, around 12:02 this morning. The most wilting hour of the year is the one right after midnight on New Year's. Right then you feel like everything should be different, everything should be new. But all I felt was tired. Not full of the promise of the new year, just ready for bed.

Which is why I'm glad I've been keeping a blog, writing down my experiences and putting them out there for strangers to read. (Hi strangers!) Because I just spent the better part of an hour flipping through the electronic pages of my journal here, and I can see how far I've come.

I was so lost when this year started. Just home after the most incredible year of my life, and I had no idea where I fit in. Being in Liberia had changed me in some fundamental way, and it wasn't until I went to Texas in February for a training course that I realized just how different my perspective on the world was. I finally realized just how blind I had been.

Life went on from there in a whirl of wedding preparations, and on May ninth I married the love of my life, Phil, herein referred to as the Husband of Joy. The wedding was a blast, but I didn't feel truly settled until I was back on the ship, a place I'm coming to see more and more as my home.

In Benin this time, I met a little baby who took my heart and filled it with love. Love, which was what I needed when I stood at the head of a line of people and one by one closed my ears to their cries, one by one told them no. And just when I thought I couldn't go on, when I thought I was far too breakable to be doing this work, God reminded me that with Him, I'm enough.

The year picked up speed from then on in, with patients that seemed sicker than ever. I turned twenty-six, my second birthday in a row on a ship, and I got a present that I really hadn't expected. Just when it all seemed to be going well again, with babies gaining weight and getting better, and just when I thought that the year was going to hold so much less tragedy than the last one, baby Hubie got so sick. I cared for him, watched him struggle, and on the Monday morning when he went back to Jesus, my heart was shattered.

God has a funny way of picking up the pieces, though, and soon enough I had stepped into a new role, one that challenged me in so many ways, made me think about anything but myself. The challenge was never so great as when we were caring for the VVF ladies.

It seemed fitting that the year ended with my favourite story, the one of Wasti and his mama. It was the first time I had ever needed to know how much a cow costs, and it was the perfect way to end the outreach.

We closed our doors on on November 27th, after I discharged the very last patient, Benedicte, and the ship prepared to sail. We left Benin and I was fully epecting to spend the next twelve days being miserable and seasick. Instead, God showered blessings on me, and I enjoyed sunsets and dolphins and all the stars ever.

And so here I am, after all that. I look back at it and I know that I'm not the same person I was on this day a year ago. I've grown so much. I've learned to love more deeply, to cry more freely and to laugh with even more joy. My heart has been broken and pieced back together what feels like a thousand times, and of course I'm not the same.

I can't be the same when my heart is so different, when everything is new.