Friday, the 7th
 |
| my helpmates for today |
I was up
until well after midnight last night just tired, and upset on so many levels –
really, just overwhelmingly disappointed in myself, for always trying to make
everyone happy, and then for things like not having access to my home computer,
not having consistent power to get things done, not being at home to help my
children.
And then
came the nightly heat waves. There are
periods of time when it is so stifling in my room, and it makes my head spin. And then on top of always feeling sick, these
times make it worse. There is also a dog
who likes to help me not sleep. I call
him a demon dog and Michael, if could he talk, would probably say the same
thing because the dog terrorizes him to no end. At least twice a day, the dog
will come tearing down the hill, after Michael while we are playing soccer, and
it scares the heck out of him. Nightly,
as soon as I shut off my lights, he literally stands below my window and barks
incessantly, all night long. It does not
stop until the lights come back on. When
we have power, sometimes I sleep with the lights on because I have to run into
the bathroom in the middle of the night and do not want to step on my computer,
which keeps the dog quiet.
There is
only one outlet in the room, and it is low to the ground on the wall opposite
my bed – which sounds like a large distance, but it is like two feet. There is a 2 foot clearance from the edge of
my bed to the wall. So when we have
power, everything is plugged in and charging in the walk way and I still step
on it without the lights on. When we do
not have power, I can slide everything underneath the bed so Michael does not step
on it, like tonight.
So I
finally decided that the only answer was sleep, and the dog was being
ridiculous. I really know that the dark one, feeling like he has me in a good
place, was like “I will send her a distraction, so she cannot rest or pray or
concentrate. I will break her.” So right
when I fell asleep, I woke up sick, but instead of going away after once or
twice, it lasted all night. I guess I
fell asleep after a few hours, because I awoke all shaky, that jittery OMG I am
not right sick. It was before midnight
back home so I tried to call my husband, like 6 times. I emailed, and waited and nothing. I just stared at the wall, until Michael woke
up and we had power so I logged into my accounts, and found that someone had
tried hacking both my email accounts, my facebook acct and tried to use my
other email address to reactivate my old facebook account. Again, the dark one.
I fed
Michael breakfast, still really shaky. I
know I am not right, and I also realize that the village is no place for me to
be this weekend. If I cannot order
waters without an urge, then I cannot speak in front of 1000+ girls at a
boarding school. I text Father Michael
and told him my decision. I sat as
calmly as possible, just trying to stay focused while waiting for Linda. Today is passport day.
Yesterday,
she got the call that the birth certificate was complete. They get sealed at the bank, and the bank
demands you get them by noon. So my time
to go to the passport office, was the same time that she was standing in different
lines at the bank to accomplish her large task, in order for me to even get the
passport process started. So she sent a
driver for me, and we were there and trying to get ahold of her to see if she
was ready to meet me.
Suddenly
my cell phone had no service, so she was sending me texts telling me to go find
Rhita, and that she was still at the bank, and I was not getting them. The driver was pulled off of the road near
the passport compound, and heavily armed officer kept coming up to the car and
yelling at the driver. I finally just
told the driver to just drop me off on the other side of the road, at the main
entrance and I will wait for Linda or Rhita.
He was very skeptical because he knows how unsafe it is, but he also
understood that we were about to have a serious problem on our hands with this
other guy. So Linda shows up after about
20 minutes of me standing there out front.
She gets us inside, through security, and I am not sure why, but I was
expecting like a DMV or large building with doors and offices and whatever.
Ha.
No. This was a huge yard, with military
tents for officials, and huge white holding tents for people to wait. Linda points me to a tent and said go there,
I will find Rhita and your paperwork. So
I wandered towards the tent and realized there was not a friendly face
anywhere. I stood near the back of the
tent, where I promptly got yelled at. “You
need to sit down.” There are no seats,
all 50 long wooden benches are full, and nobody is interested in moving one of
their bags for me. So I went to a
different part of the back of the tent where I got yelled at again. “I am sorry, I am just waiting for my lawyer
person who has my paperwork. As soon as
I find a seat for both Michael and I, I promise to sit.”
Suddenly
Linda appears and tells me that she has found Rhita, but now Linda is leaving
me but will be back soon. I ask her if I
can sit up towards the front on the metal benches or if those are taken or for
something else, because people are leaving from the front and it is slow to fill,
maybe I can hop in. Everyone else seems
to have folders and pieces of paper, so maybe they are hearing their names
being called. She assures me that I can
sit anywhere, and I better before I get into real trouble.
So I go
up front, wait for someone to stand, and hop in their seats. Instantly I can feel peoples eyes all over
me. I realize that people are feeding
into tables in front of me. The tables
in front of me are desks with gigantic stacks of passport applications on them,
and things are being stamped, reviewed and then the files are thrown into
boxes. After about an hour, Rhita finds
me. She is with a man who has a file
with Michael’s name on the front. He
marches to one desk, grabs the guys stamp and stamps all 20 pages inside. Next, he marches to another desk and yells at
the lady working it to do call me next.
Rhita urges me up front, the lady glares at me, and signs a bunch of
stuff, and then the application gets thrown in a box on the floor. Rhita pulls my arm and maneuvers us outside
the compound where we wait and wait and wait for Linda. After maybe an hour, Linda gets off of a boda
boda and hands Rhita a stack of cash, and Rhita disappears.
Linda
finds a taxi for us, and on the way home, she tells me that this morning, she
was waiting for the birth certificate at the bank, and was late because the
bank had a hold up. Then when she had
got me through security, and disappeared, she was talking to the passport
official about expediting our passport application. For an average citizen, it can take 3 months for one to be completed. However for adoptions, it can take
longer. The lawyers normally pay an
expediting fee to fast track adoption passports, but when they came today, they
found out that the official had upped the amount that he requires to fast
track, so Linda had to hop on a boda boda and run to the bank she had just left
to get money. I told her if that ever
happens again, then I prefer to pay the difference and go to the bank later,
versus standing outside by myself for an hour, with a small child and no cell
phone to know what is going on. She
laughed and said it would not be right but she is thankful that I would be willing.
I told
her that I would need to go to the Surgery, which is the British run hospital, if my sickness keeps up. I probably have
a virus, coupled with my body reacting to my malaria meds, but I cannot keep on
like this. She agreed, and we will go
tonight or tomorrow if I get worse.
I spent
the rest of the afternoon on my bed, trying to entertain Michael. I was running out of options so pulled out a
stack of prayer cards, looking for my Padre Pio one in particular. Michael instantly grabbed them and started
going through them. He would look at
them and babble, and pass it to me, and then do it again. He did this for an hour and then we fell
asleep.
I am not
sure what tonight or tomorrow will hold in store for us, but I have no choice
but to have faith.
Notes from my prayer journal: I am
so needy, so totally dependent on God for everything. I try to depend on people, but I know that it
is not right. St. Monica prayed “in
groaning and weeping” and this exactly how I feel, groaning and weeping, giving
everything I have to not go drop off Michael with the lawyer, get on the plane
and go home. People, before I left,
would ask, “Oh, so long, how will you ever manage?” And I always replied, “I am not thinking
about it. I have no choice in the matter,
so I will not even think about it. I
have only ever been away from them to go to Africa over a year ago. But I was with people, so I was
distracted. I have no idea how I will
handle the silence and their absence.” I
thought I would have more contact with them, so it would be no big deal, but I
have not due to the time differences and the business of their schedule there. And so I sit and groan at God, loudly telling
him whatever I am thinking, offering up these things for people I know who are
in greater need than I.
“Look to the Lord and his strength, seek his
face always.”
-
Chronicles 16:11
Soundtrack song of the day – Optimistic - Radiohead
Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
The Gift God Gave September 10th, day 16
The Novena
to the Divine Mercy, Day 7, those who venerate and glorify my mercy and immerse
themselves in me.
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