En(courage)ment

I would like to share with you all in the world wide web a heart-warming experience from Monday, October 26th. I was out around Hardy (close to my place here) doing research with my field assistant, and we barely managed to catch a matatu in the rain. We were in a spot where little traffic came by, and we would have waited another hour to catch the next one. Still raining, we reached my stop, and my field assistant, Joseph Kamweti made a joke about me needing to do some marathoning now. I jump off the matatu in my Tevas, gray slacks, and green rain jacket. From that stage to my front door, there is no pavement, gravel or anything, simply dirt (mud by this point). So I start running, head down, looking to dodge the puddles in the road, not being able to see more than 15 ft ahead. I have the thought to transfer the contents of my pants pockets into my jacket but decide against it in favor of getting back faster. I run for about 10 minutes, and I’m just dirty and soaked by the time I reach the guest house. Frustrated, I go in the back door, and the cooks welcome me to Africa, once again. I squeak down the corridor towards my room to go change. What do I find a the foot of my door, but one package and one letter?
I thank God as I pick them up with a smile on my face. “Ellory Eggermont” and “Kalene Morris” say the return addresses. “This can only be good,” I say to myself as I bring them to my desk. I remove the soaked clothes, dry off, and change into some warm PJs. I’m not going out anywhere for the rest of the day. I do find my borrowed cell phone not turning on, and later, it would turn on and off on its own will. Broken phone number three. That’s more phones broken than I had ever owned.
Sitting down, I find my knife and open both. I take a deep, calming breath and look inside Ellory’s package first. Inside the Celestial Seasonings chamomile tea box, the first thing I see is the most beautiful, red, sugar maple leaf, taped to the inside of the lid. It’s my only experience of fall. You know, it’s terribly tough to live without four seasons. I open the box to find the front page of the St. Cloud Times from Oct 7th. She says it’s “just for packaging,” but I want to read all the headlines. Newspapers are significantly different here. Next, I see a Snickers bar and wild berry Skittles, but what is this? There’s some yellow thing in front of it. It’s cut-out of the letter “E,” “You can share if you want, but you shouldn’t. This is for YOU!” Needless to say, I took the advice and paraded my permission in Martha’s face when she ridiculed me as to why my wrappers were empty. (which is an odd fact because when I showed her what I had received, I told her I wasn’t too sure as to why Ellory would send me empty Snickers and Skittles wrappers…weird. Must be trying to tempt me…) Next, I found some great tea (Numi, Berry Black Fruitea Darjeeling Black Tea), and the best homemade paper I’ve seen. What a smile I have on now, even as I was so upset a bit ago. Finally, at the bottom, I get the most perfect letter, especially on a rainy day. I think those girls from the box in the summer of ’08 really know how to write the most without too many words.
I couldn’t wait to eat the candy, so I read Kalene’s letter while chomping on a snickers and some skittles. Some people just know how to bring back great, comforting memories, and other people can really do a good job (this being some great timing) at encouraging me spiritually. Thanks! Hearing about senior year helps too, since that’s all I’ve really got left at CSBSJU. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since I left. I’m sure it’ll come up again, so I’ll delve into it there.
What a relief it was to get some snail mail on such a day! It’s become pretty important now that the internet is mostly gone and quite restricted. Now that I’ve got a few things done, I’m planning on spending a huge chunk of time writing to people and sending more things. It’s exciting :)