"Lori, we are not normal people."

Nicky’s amazingness
Saturday, 19 June, 2010

We had lunch of maize at her house. Then we came to mine.

We walked here talking about pizza. I told her when we cooked it, we had to follow my rules. What rules? The music we listen to and what we drink. OK.

I put on David Grey - Daddy’s favorite. We started making the sauce, the crust, the toppings. I told her which one was Daddy’s favorite song (at least the last time I cooked dinner in Ashby!!). She didn’t really react. I told her the title was Hospital Food. Laughter followed. She went to my computer to check the title, and laughed again when she confirmed I wasn’t lying to her.

We made sautéed broccoli for the whole pizza, and enough onions just for my side since she doesn’t like them. There are two kinds of cheese - mozzarella and feta. It’s still cooking. We forgot to add the roasted red peppers, so took it out to add them.

When we were making it, she wanted to do everything. I made the crust while she used a garlic press for the first time, chopped the broccoli (this will be the first time she tastes it) and stirred the sauce. She smelled every spice we added to the sauce. She grated the cheese. She put the crust in the pan, made some holes, and I showed her a better way to “squish” it into the pan gently.

I had to stand back and let my obsessive behaviors take a break while she learned to cook. I let her put the toppings on and held my tongue when I wanted to try to put them on more evenly.

I boiled water and made her hot chocolate. I poured myself a glass of wine, to her shock and amazement.

I told her, with the music playing, the pizza nearly finished, a glass of wine in my hand, and with Nicky in a small Namibian village, “Now I’m home.”

We discussed what home means - the feeling of being home, not the action of going or being home, or the physical location of a house. I am home when I’m with her.

We even washed dishes while we waited for the oven to heat up. The kitchen is cleaned up, the pizza is cooking and 3 boys have showed up. I’m sure we’ll wait to enjoy the pizza, Nicky and me. But it’s still home.

A small lie, and a half hour later, Nicky and I were back in my house with no company. We put on her new favorite song, Story of a Girl by Nine Days, and sat down on the floor with our pizza. I got my camera and captured the moment. I felt like a proud mom who had taught her teenage daughter something useful. Nicky was simply glowing with pride and happiness.

Turns out she is a normal teenager and doesn’t like broccoli. Next time we’ll make it with banana and pineapple. But she picked off the broccoli pieces and gave them to me, leaving her plenty of pizza to still enjoy.

We listened to some other music, looked at some photos and videos from yesterday’s culture competition and then left to walk her halfway home. She’d insisted on listening to my iPod so she can learn Beyonce’s If I Were a Boy. She sang out loud some of the parts she knew, mumbling the words she didn’t know. I asked her, “Do you know what she means when she says ‘take for granted?’” No. I explained it as to forget how good something is. She told me she’ll never forget how good I am. The same is true for me. I told her that for the rest of my life, she’ll be right here, in me, as I pointed to my heart. She said the same thing with the same location in her.

Nicky is too much, in a good way.

We got half way to her house and I decided to walk the long way home. My house was no longer a home with her missing from it, and I wasn’t ready to come back. I wanted to enjoy the cool evening air and watch the sunset on my short walk west.

When I was almost home, I found some of the kids who had competed in yesterday’s culture competition. I started singing whatever song was on my iPod at that moment. They laughed and thought I was making it up. Sophia came and put in the other ear phone so she could hear if I was singing the right words. Her look of amazement got the other girls interested in hearing the song instead of just my (probably pretty terrible) singing. I sang some Iron and Wine, Dixie Chicks, Brandi Carlisle and John Mayer - all music they never would listen to on their own. Every song was a new shock for them that I knew the words and the song.

Finally, their mother was calling them and the sun was almost set so I walked the rest of the way home before dark. They promised to visit tomorrow. But it’s those impromptu encounters that make my life here so much fun.

Roller Coaster Ride
Thursday, 24 June, 2010

When does this ride end?! I keep thinking I’ll reach the part where things slow down and the ride comes to an end, but it doesn’t seem like that exists.

Is life always this emotionally charged? Where one day I’ll love everything and the next, nothing seems to go right? Or that change can happen in the span of 30 minutes?

Because that definitely happened today!!! And this whole week has been like that!

Monday, well, that was a while ago, I can’t remember what defined Monday.

Tuesday was defined by the final hour of daylight. School was hard, it’s been hard for a while.

Oh wait, MONDAY just came back to me! After school, instead of going to study, Nicky and I walked to the nearby ministry offices to try to talk them into giving her a birth certificate even though neither of her parents have documents. The ministry of gender refused us and sent us to the ministry of home affairs, who also refused us. Both were men who talked to us and seemed like they wanted to help, but the “system” isn’t designed to help people. The walk was 4km and I refused the car that stopped (twice) for us on the walk home. I was so angry that I had to walk. I let Nicky know how pissed I was. I think she got it. I probably shouldn’t have let her know just how angry I was.

We were almost back to my house when she asked me, “Madam, how come when Mr. Mark was here, then he would do all the work and he would talk, but now you’re here and you do all the work, but you don’t talk?” “Talking” in namlish is kind of like gossiping, or just making your feelings known. I told her that I don’t like people to see me, that I like to do things quietly, that if someone sees my actions and decides to change themselves, great, but even if I talk, that change is only halfhearted because it’s forced, not by choice, so won’t last. And whatever changes Mark did create are pretty much gone - when it comes to behavior (sorry Mark).

That was Monday. And it sparked my current quest to try to compile a list of learners without birth certificates and get them printed somehow. My principal fully supports my efforts and even made eye contact when I brought the idea to him - that’s the first time I felt like her REALLY listened to me!

Tuesday. School was hard. It’s been hard for a while. Study was miserable. There were very few teachers and I gave up trying to teach after 30 minutes. I read my book instead. I wanted to go home, curl up in bed and disappear for a while. Well, Nicky knows what’s best for me and when she came over, she wouldn’t take no for answer. So I walked her home to long way instead of hanging out at my house. I could tell something was up, that she wasn’t happy, so I tried to get it out of her on the walk. Nothing

By the time we got to our normal parting place, I still had no idea what was eating her, so finally we parted. I gave her a hug (which I don’t usually do) and she really melted into my body, absorbing my love for her. When I left, I turned back to say, “See you tomorrow” and I saw a tear fall of her cheek when I turned to look at her. People just don’t cry here. They cry when someone dies. I went back, maybe against her wishes, and sat in the sand, also crying at this point. To see her in so much pain that she’s actually crying, but not having the words to express that pain, was too much for me to take. I was already emotionally off, having had a really bad day in the classroom. And that put me so far over the edge.

We sat in the path in the sand for at least a half hour. I started asking a lot of questions: Are you feeling sad? Frustrated? Upset? Hurt? Did something happen at home? At school? Did your mom say something to you? Augusta? Did you start feeling this way yesterday? This morning? At lunch? Just now when you came to my house? I finally learned that Augusta had said something to her yesterday about the clothes. (On Sunday, I’d given her all of my clothes that I don’t wear - it was 2 giant bags, mostly shirts, a few pants, a few shoes, and told her to share them with everyone she lives with and everyone she knows.) Augusta told her that I should have given her the clothes, that they’ll just be wasted.

I was angry. Nothing is wasted when it comes to Nicky. Nothing I do for her, nothing I give her, nothing I feel for her. Jealousy is huge here. Why should she deserve so much love from me? Why should she be worthy of my friendship? But I think of it the other way - that I’m lucky to have her! No one treats me the way Nicky treats me - completely normally! She has no expectations or demands of me. It’s an equal friendship, sisterhood really.

So finally, Nicky was composed enough to go home and I walked the 15 minutes back to my house, talking out loud the whole time about how great Nicky is and how much I love her. Just before getting home, she sent me an sms from her mom’s phone asking me to tell her something good so she would feel better. I sent her this message: Nicky, I’m just talked to myself the whole walk home about how great you are! You were so young when I met you over a year ago and you’ve grown so much since then! You are the most caring person I know in Andara and I will love you forever, no matter where I am in the world. She wote back: i.love.u.more.then.u.do.love.u..u.are.the.nice.person.i.have.meet.in.my.life.whith.love. She gets it. She gets me.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday, yesterday, was another really bad day at school. I just wasn’t connecting with the kids and they were getting to me in every way - testing my patience all day. There was no study because the soccer team had a game, so I stayed home to type the 10+ pages someone had asked me to do on Monday. I was trying to decide between a run or a nap after I finished, but Nicky showed up before I was done, so those options were both thrown out the window. When I finished with my computer, she took over and listened to whatever music she wanted and played some games. I turned to my book and went outside. But just having her there was comfort enough, even though when I’d seen her walking to my house, I was trying to figure out a polite way to not hang out with her.

Somehow she ended up outside with me and getting hold of my book! It’s way above her level of reading (that of a second grader in the states probably) but she opened it up randomly and started reading anyway. I was glowing. She’d struggle through a hard word, turn to me for confirmation and then ask what it meant. I have to look for a more age appropriate book than “My Prison, My Home.”

We walked half way to her house earlier than usual, and I brought N$2 just in case we got hungry (it’s about a 10 minute walk). We hadn’t eaten together since Sunday, so I was craving that bond, rather than the actual food. We decided to each eat 1 fat cake instead of our normal 2, and I sent her with N$1. I continued onto our usual spot to sit on the days we get fat cakes for lunch and waited for her to come back.

She came with only 1 fat cake! There was only 1 left! It was the one that had been rejected all day - it was small, cold and hard. It was the worst fat cake I’ve ever eaten! But we pulled it apart into 2 pieces and shared it anyway. We laughed about how bad it was, talked about our days and about the upcoming weekend. I told her, “Nicky, I had a really bad day until you came over, so thank you for coming over.” She didn’t understand until I’d told her 3 times. So she asked why my day was bad! We talked about that.

She asked about Kaitlin, another PCV, and my best friend. We talked about what it’d be like for me here if she wasn’t in Namibia. She asked how I’d feel if she went home! I said I’d be sad, but would be OK. At one point, we were both quiet and she looked like she was busy thinking. I asked what she was thinking, what was going on up here, as I poked her head. She told me, “Kadiko.” Nothing. A minute later, she told me, “Wate.” Not true. She was thinking how one time I’d told her that if Kaitlin went home, I’d just live at Nicky’s house.

I love that girl more than I can explain. Nicky, and Kaitlin both actually. I’m lucky to have such wonderful people so far from home and my family.

Today was better. There was a moment in 7A where I wanted to walk out and cry, but I kept it together, got over it, and had a great class with them. In study, I taught the grade 6 learners how to use a condom. The girls were quiet and terrified looking. The boys, in their separate class, were loud, excited, and willing to ask a lot of questions - what is menstruation? Where do girls get breasts? How does a girl get pregnant?

Nicky of course came over after and it was nice to have her. It’s always sad to walk her half way home and turn around to come back to an empty house before dark. Once the days get longer, she’ll get to stay longer, or I’ll be able to go and eat dinner with her.

One more day and then a break