family time

Family is one of the sweetest things in the world to me. I had the privilege of growing up in an incredibly close family, with cousins who were like siblings, siblings who are best friends and the best parents I could ever have asked for.

Last night, those parents came to Africa.

I haven't said anything about it yet, because I share one of my family's quirks; we don't tend to believe that exciting things are actually happening until they actually are. As in, I could be planning a four-month world tour and theoretically getting incredibly pumped about it without ever truly believing it would happen. (In this case, I think I'll be in China before it ever sinks in.) So while I planned activities for my mum and dad and told everyone on the ship that they were on their way, I haven't shared it here, because I wasn't sure it would be real until I actually saw them at the airport.

And then I was at the airport, holding a piece of paper with their names (a lifelong dream of my mama's) and all of a sudden it was real, and my worlds were colliding and my heart was spinning out of control.

Driving home through the darkened streets was like arriving all over again. I saw it all through their eyes, for the first time, even though we were passing things I usually don't see. Zemidjahns packing every available space and careening down the wrong side of the road. Little wooden tables lit by flickering candles, spread with anything you might want to buy. Women with loads swaying on their heads and a man carrying a string of shoes. I pass by all this every time I leave the ship, and two years has bred such a familiarity that I have stopped noticing.

Last night, it was all new again. I felt each bump in the road, my heart catching in my throat as the other cars came far too close. I wondered again what each little stall was selling, where the sellers lived when they packed their wares away at night, whether the children at their feet were ever going to get to go to school.

I saw it all, and it was all new.

And down on D Ward, there was another family today. A mama and a papa and their two girls, Amavi and Kossiwavi. Amavi is the proud big sister to baby Kossiwavi, twelve years to the baby's nearly-one, and she grinned from a lip split wide when I admired the little one. Papa is sleeping under Amavi's bed, mama with Kossiwavi, and all three of the girls have cleft lips. Mama has already had hers fixed here in Togo in a series of surgeries over a number of years.

Today, the girls had their lips repaired.

Kossiwavi went first, in the usual youngest-to-oldest style of the OR list, and so she was back to the ward before the morning was over. I was going about my work a little before lunch when I looked up and over to the corner where the little family is staying.

Amavi was lying half out of her bed, her neck twisted around to catch a glimpse of her sister. On the other bed, mama and papa sat staring down at their baby, their eyes wide with wonder. Kosiwavi lay sleeping on top of the blanket, tiny steri strips covering the neat row of sutures holding her lip together, and together they all stared at the baby.

A few hours later I got to be in the operating room, standing next to my own parents, while the three of us stared together down at Amavi's lip while the surgeon began making the cuts that would allow him to put her back together, too. For the first time in over two years, I got to share this place with the people I want most desperately to understand it, and for the first time in over two years, I know they finally do.

The only thing that could have made it better would be having my own little sister here.