taking my mind off it*

* it = impending doom

This weekend has been SO MUCH FUN. It's been incredibly emotional, but for the sake of my sanity, allow me to table those emotions and focus on the excitement.

Saturday morning I loafed around the house, watching movies and packing half-heartedly. In the evening I got myself on over to M&M's house...they're Americans doing full-time ministry work here and their family also goes to Abuja Ark Church. We had pizza and watched Parent Trap together. It felt so normal to be with them and enjoy family time. I mean, I'm not trying to graft myself into theirs, but it reminded me of my own family's pizza & game nights.

I took a big leap out of my comfort zone and did the corporate prayers in Church this morning. Praying publicly is something in which I'm a bit...how shall we say?...out of practice. But I've had a lot of time to think about why corporate prayer is so important, and it comes down to this (and this I shared with the congregation): the Body of Christ is meant to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. We pray to a God who knows the words on our lips before they are even spoken, but public prayer allows us to stand together in our joys and trials. It allows the body of Christ to encourage the afflicted as they are patient in tribulation and also rejoice in hope with those who are triumphant (Romans 12:12).

After church, a whole gang of us went lunch at Silverbird, where I said more goodbyes and made more plans for further goodbyes. (Sensing a trend here?) Tonight, another group of us is going out for fish. Apparently, this is an essential part of Nigerian nightlife that I have yet to experience. Who knew?! So, I'm making up for lost time tonight and going out with friends.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are working days. I have plans with friends in the evenings--I'm even double-booked on Tuesday. Wednesday is sanity day. Thursday is freak out/get my crap together day. Thursday night I'm on a plane.

So much for tabling the emotions.


4 days 'til takeoff.

on friendship

Jan and I were invited to a pool party/dinner party at our friend Bob's new flat. Also in attendance were 3 other female teachers from the American School and another young family from our church. Some were British, some Canadian, some a mixture thereof, some transplants from Zimbabwe to America, some Malaysian, and some good ol' Midwestern Americans. Some older, some younger, some married, some single, some divorced, some widowed. It was a beautiful mix of ages, nationalities, cultures, vocations, experiences, and vocabularies!

It looked a lot like the Body of Christ.

I have so come to love the people gathered together tonight. I love their warmth. I love their openness. I appreciate their humor. I respect their experience. I admire their willingness to invest despite the fact that most of us have spent lives in transient communities, always meeting new people and saying goodbye to others (and then there's me...about to experience it for the first time).

It was a great time to enjoy conversation, pizza, wine, and the 3 lovely children in our presence. We swam despite the threatening rain clouds and I had a blast playing around with the kids in the pool.

It felt a lot like goodbye, too.

In that bittersweet, let's-go-out-on-a-good-note-and-be-grateful-for-each-other kind of way. I think I've figured out (though it should have been obvious) that goodbyes are a time to edify, to encourage, to build up, to bless, and to send off in faith. Parents of college-bound children, take note. The international community has got it right. This is how we say goodbye. With love and laughter. With help and support. With a long list of contact numbers and friends all over the globe. With the promise of seeing one another again, even if it's not in this life.

I am at peace. Amen and amen.

bugs, bugs, and more bugs

I got to talk and pray with my dear friend Amanda this evening! What a blessing. She laughed at the following stories, and I hope you will, too.

1) Earlier this week, we discovered small piles of shavings underneath our kitchen cupboards, a sure sign of wood mites. I walked into the kitchen after school today and spotted a gecko on the wall. I actually spoke out loud to it and commanded it to go behind the cupboards and eat all the mites, which it promptly did. In response, I audibly exclaimed "Yesssss!" You know you've adjusted to Nigerian life when...

2) The rains have once again returned to Nigeria, and with them, the flying termites have come out of hiding. Imagine the body of a carpenter ant with the wings of a dragonfly. Two dropped down around me in the living room last week. I freaked and stomped on them. Then on Wednesday, I walked into the kitchen at school and found one of the cleaners frying a panful of wingless termites. And next to her was a huge 5-gallon bucket of them, fried and salted. You guys, they eat them here for the protein. As Hannah would say, sicknasty.

3) I bought a box of macaroni & cheese at the supermarket this week. It was expensive and it wasn't Kraft, and the macaroni was neither fun-shaped nor individually packaged, so I should have anticipated what came next: As I emptied the pasta into the boiling water, I watched a bunch of tiny black flecks pour out, too.
Oh yes, my good friends. Some kind of small bug (fruit fly, perhaps?) had infested the pasta, laid eggs, and were in various stages of development when I decided to cook my mac&cheese. I scooped out the fully mature bugs while it was boiling, and strained out all the tiny larvae, too. But some of them had worked into the holes of the pasta and hatched there. Those suckers got boiled, salted, milked, and cheesed along with the pasta, and I ate it, bugs and all.
I told my flatmate and she said, "Wow, Maggie, you have become a true Nigerian!" Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment.

Heat and other Adventures

Today's post is brought to you by my dear friend Amanda, who pointed out that for more than a week, you all have had to read about dead bodies each time you check for updates. And that's just not pleasant. Thanks to Amanda, you will read something new today! It's not much, but at least it's not dead bodies, right?

Hot Season is here. Soooooo-oh-oh-oh here. Here, and awful. Those of you in the Midwest or even just slightly above the equator may have trouble conceptualizing what 108 degrees Fahrenheit feels like. Let me try to paint you a picture: As I passed the threshold from my classroom to the outdoor courtyard, a wall of the hottest, stickiest humid heat knocked me in my chest, in a way that first sucked all the air out of my lungs and then made it impossible to inhale. It felt like drowning--the only logical way to get oxygen is to breathe, but you really don't want to inhale because you only have the option to breathe water. Okay, so like that, only with thick, filmy, hot air instead of water.

Better yet, just preheat the oven to 114 degrees (that's the forecast for tomorrow) and then stick your head in and take a breath or two. Or don't. Because isn't that how Sylvia Plath died or something?

Oh. One last picture-painting attempt: today during my 8th grade class, a drop of sweat rolled down the back of my knee. The. Back. Of. My. Knee. I have never sweated from there in my entire life. Good to know Africa is bringing out a new side of me.


Highlight of the Week: I held Parent-Teacher Conferences last night. One Mom told me in Serbian that I'm her kid's favorite teacher. The interpreter goes, "She says you are Vladimir's...how you say?...fohvreet?" I love international schools.

Follow-up and Chipmunks

I don't suppose that was very wise of me--posting about sketchy security-related events without providing any further news. Allow me to rectify the situation.

I'm fine. Abuja is fine. Everything is secure. In fact, roads were clear and safe by the time I left school yesterday. Nothing to see here; move along. I apologize that I gave any cause for concern.

I went to the movies today. Silverbird is a brand-new complex in the heart of Abuja, and it boasts movie theaters on the top floor, restaurants, shops, even a little bowling alley (which looks more like skee-ball at an arcade, if you ask me). Most of the store spaces are still empty, that's how new it is. Construction is still ongoing; there are cranes in the parking lot, and the access roads are not yet paved. Nigerians are impatient when it comes to these things (and this is the closest thing we have to a mall), so it's been in operation for the past few months.

Anyways, I went to the movies with a Nigerian friend. Said friend fits multiple categories: friend, little sister, neighbor, boss's daughter, 10th grade student, etc. Today, going to the movies, she was my friend. She chose Alvin and the Chipmunks. As a testament to my otherwise finite patience, I went anyways. (The last time I went to a kids' movie was 5 years ago and I was nannying 4 children under the age of 12.) Needless to say, it wasn't what I would have chosen, but that's okay.

So we're 2 of 4 people in the whole theater. Which was cool, until a massive group of youngsters came streaming screaming in. I rolled my eyes and hoped none of them would sit behind me and kick my seat. As they chose seats all around us, I thought I recognized a face or two. Don't be stupid, Maggie, I thought, and don't assume you'll recognize every black kid that lives in Abuja.

Then I realized I did know them. All of them. Even their names. Turns out my entire 6th grade class decided to meet up at the cinema today. And what's more, they all thought it was really cool that Miss Thomas was there, too. Score one for Miss Thomas. Hugs all around.

I wonder how fast this is going to spread through school: that Miss Maggie was at Alvin and the Chipmunks (which is pretty cute for a kids' movie, I guess) or that she was in jeans and a T-shirt, or that she was with a student. I'll tally how many comments I get on Monday and let you know.