Ashby and Abram: Normal

We've been home for four weeks now, and are finally getting settled into a routine, which means that I'm getting settled into my role as Homemaker and Stay at Home Mom and Missionary Wife.

This means cooking and playing with the baby and texting my sister and answering the front door and going to church on Sundays and reading To Kill a Mockingbird with Abram in the evenings. It also means being watched all the time, struggling with language and friendships, forgetting to buy enough vegetables on market day and having to stretch the menu for a couple days at the end of the week. Abram is home in the afternoons, and he's so good with the baby, but I'm supposed to be letting him work, and shouldering most of the babycare. I do get to attend one of his classes (eschatology), which is fun because it hurts my brain and gets me out of the house three days a week.

Sometimes my life is frighteningly normal and I fear I will get bored, and it's probably something other mothers can relate to: diapers and diapers and dishes and...diapers. Did I brush my teeth this morning? Where did I put my phone? Did I wear this shirt yesterday? It's fine, but I forgot it has spit up all down the shoulder, but it doesn't matter because there's no one here to notice, but-- did I? I honestly can't remember.

But there are other days where I realise that our life is pretty bizarre. Filling up our bathtub with water to wash the dishes in later, because the pump is broken. Wondering which language David's first words will be in. Curtsying when I run into the school principal. Changing David's diaper on the steps outside of the church building, with about forty witnesses.

We tuck a mosquito net around my son every night as he goes to bed. We boil or filter all our drinking and cooking water. People bring fish straight from the lake, which is outside our front door, to our kitchen, and our friend Mary cleans the fish, guts them and fries them for dinner. A friend of ours lost his job because he is a Christian, so Abram is giving him work any way he can: cutting grass and planting tomatoes and washing the car and watering our lime trees. The mangoes are fresher and larger than any in North America. The rice we eat was harvested down the road.

It's a strange contrast. On any given day, if you ask me what's on my mind, the answer could be 'trying to figure out what to make for dinner', or it could be 'wondering if our friend's son/baby/mother will live through the night'. Will we get enough rain for the crops to survive? Will David get malaria? Will our neighbours have enough food to feed their family? Where did I put my phone?

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I'm writing this at a restaurant in the town of Mwanza, the nearest city to us and the nearest source of fast internet. David is in his car seat, on the table, casually gazing at the largest lake on the continent.

I know it looks like he's facing away from the lake, but he's not. Promise.

I want to romanticise his life; I brag about his passport stamps, his first safari, his friends from many countries. But we are not the first couple to raise a baby overseas. He's not the first baby to visit Lake Victoria. I'm not the first person to blog while my baby naps. He may or may not appreciate his life, and he may or may not grow to love Africa as much as we do. (Don't you take your homeland for granted? At least at first.) I would love for him to grow up as an 'African boy', barefoot and tree-climbing, and maybe work or minister here when he grows up. But I would also love for him to know his grandparents, and to crawl around his aunt's kitchen floor. Both have their perks.

Our decision to live here comes with its privileges and sacrifices and difficulties and rewards. This is not a novel concept; every couple makes choices that have their pros and cons. Every family has fun memories and adventures and every homemaker has experienced joy and boredom all rolled into one. Every mother has changed diapers in unusual places.

As I process this, I am grateful for routine, grateful to be home. Grateful that we have just enough adventure to mix up the tedium of a 'normal' life.