needed: r&r

I always say that you know it is time to leave somewhere when your grace for the place begins to run out. This morning it happened… It is time to take my R&R.

I woke up too early from my restless night under my stuffy mosquito net and looked towards the open door to see if the dawn had brought enough light to wake up and read without my headlamp. Although there wasn’t enough light to wake me up completely, there was certainly enough to illuminate a strange figure running across my floor. In my sleepiness I calculated. It was too small to be the hedgehog that lives in our compound, yet, it was too big to be a lizard. I waited for it to move again. Wide awake now, when the animal got brave enough to cut across the room, I reached my arm out from the safety of my mosquito net and threw a shoe. It rolled up into a little ball- the harmless baby hedgehog- I was relieved… And then I watched as a rat ran by from the other direction. There are rats in my room… It is time to take my R&R.

I escaped to the outside world (which is relatively about 10 feet from where I was attempting to sleep before) and decided that since I was up early on my day off anyway, I’d boil some water to make some pseudo-coffee in my french press which is being held together by duct-tape (I’ll get a new one on R&R). I entered our “kitchen area” which my housemate and I generally refer to as typhoid corner, and fired up the stove (think what you take on a camping trip, not what is in your kitchen). The gas had been left on too high and my arm was nearly engulfed in a flame that singed all the fine little hairs off my right hand… All this for a cup of bad coffee when today I could really use a good latte…It is time to take my R&R.

I opened my laptop to capture these thoughts and was greeted by a big dried smashed bug just next to my Pentium 4 sticker- almost like a “windows Darfur” seal of approval. Something crunches when I hit the right arrow key and it sticks- what makes those small hard bugs want to get inside my keyboard anyway? … Daisy needs and R&R too.

I hung up the 12^th weekly inspiration card from my Tuesday Angel on my cupboard door this week, signifying that I’ve almost reached the half way point of my time here in Darfur. Thankfully it also signifies that I have earned my R&R just in time to correspond with my evaporation of grace for the roaches in the bathroom (which make the Anastasis wildlife seem mild), the flying ants that attack my face at night, and the cloud of flies that swarm around me even as I sit here typing at 7am… My 13^th week is R&R.

Today I will spend my day off doing my laundry by hand with the mystery blue powder soap and eat some ramen noodles- my luxury Friday food. But really I’ll be dreaming about next Friday when I will be feasting on yogurt and olives and sipping a latte at Nairobi Java… because my mind is already on R&R.