An African Journey: Post Five - The Very Best Part

There we were, minding our own business,

getting to know this new country,

these new friends,

this new work . . .

and then the world shifted.

Well, maybe not the entire world,

just our tiny corner of it.

And it took a while to sink in, too.

On the 4th of June, 1967, 

I wrote to my mom and dad and said this:

"I have been feeling lousy the last 2-3 weeks.

Attacks of nausea at odd times, extreme sleepiness

and a late period. I am going to see the doctor next week

to find out what the trouble is. Will let you know the results." 

What can I say?

I was young and . . . naive? 

Let's just say it . . . 

I was plain old stupid about the process of reproduction.

Yes, thank you very much, I did know how it happened.

I just didn't have a clue what happened when it happened.

So . . . stupid?

Yeah, that about covers it.

My mother just laughed hysterically when she read that letter,  

and her diagnosis arrived about the same time the doctor's did:

you are two months pregnant.

About four months along, sipping a Coke on the Garden Route in South Africa.

My husband's parents and younger sister came to visit us and took us on a wonderful three week trip to game parks and other beautiful places south of our home. I will write another journal entry about our travels to other parts of Africa while we lived in Zambia.

About 6 months along in these two faded black & white photos.

So. We were pregnant.

DEEP breath.

And so, the thinking and the wondering and the planning

and the gathering began.

My doctor was an American,

a member of the denomination with which we served,

and his work and his hospital were 40 miles away,

over a very, VERY bumpy dirt road, out in the bush.

I saw him three times during my pregnancy.

My everything- you-wanted-to-know-about pregnancy reading was limited, 

to say the least.

A friend who was a nurse had an old ob-gyn textbook,

filled with pictures and descriptions of 

all that can go wrong in pregnancy and delivery.

Lovely.

Fortunately, there were women living in our 

neighborhood who had borne babies before.

In fact, over the next four months,

four other women announced that they, too, were pregnant.

It was an epidemic!

Those of us who were newbies learned from the old hands,

and somehow, we muddled through.

Our baby was due on January 9, 1968,

and I worked as a teacher through the end of the term in

mid-December, grateful for papers to grade,

students to love and exams to prepare.

We found treasures to be repaired and painted,

I created curtains out of fabric bought in our town,

friends sent me maternity clothes and baby clothes

from home, carefully folded into 9x12 envelopes.

Over the next few months,

the reality began to sink in:

we were going to be parents.

Yikes.

January 9th came and went.

January 19th came and went.

My 23rd birthday on January 23rd came and went.

I lay on the bed, weeping, convinced that I would have this oversized basketball in my body for the rest of my life.

At about 6:30 in the morning on Sunday, January 28th,

I woke up with a strong back ache.

I went into our bathroom/laundry room and

sat on the edge of the tub, folding clean towels.

I remember being overwhelmed with

the realization that my life was going to change

forever

by the end of that day.

I was, however, still stupid.

I stood in the middle of the lawn at about 9:30 a.m.,

watching my stomach ripple under my dress,

begging my cross-the-street neighbor 

(who was pregnant with #4) 

to tell me if this could possibly be labor.

She just looked at me and said,

"Diana, get yourself into the car and drive to Macha."

So that is exactly what we did.

If you ever find yourself wondering how you might speed things along in early labor, I have a suggestion for you.

Find yourself a very bumpy dirt road and drive on it for about an hour.

I guarantee that things will pick up nicely.

We arrived at the hospital about 10:30 in the morning, went to a very nice room with a bath and my husband proceeded to talk to me about our travel plans for the summer, 

when our term of service would be ending.

I think I may have thrown the notebook in his face, 

but I can't be certain. 

It's all a bit of a blur.

At about 11:45, they wheeled me into the delivery room. 

Only, it wasn't really a delivery delivery room,

it was a surgical suite.

The doctor was a thoracic surgeon and he did a whole lot of chest surgery out there in the bush.

They didn't have a delivery table as such, 

just a surgical table,

and that sucker was hard.

His favorite nurse, who happened to be his wife,

gave me a small mask to put over my face with each

pain, a gas called Trilene.

I had no other medication.

At 12:12, just after noon on a glorious sunny summer day,

Lisa Ruth Trautwein entered the world,

a thick head of dark hair and a great set of lungs

announcing her presence.

And I distinctly remember sitting up on the table and

shouting, "This is fabulous! I want ten of these!"

As I said, stupid.

Sigh.

Winnie Worman, the doctor's wife and an excellent nurse, holding our 1 day old daughter.

I stayed at the Mission until Thursday, eating in their home. Dick spent the first night with us both and then returned to school on Monday morning to greet his students.

The doctor himself (Robert Worman) with our beautiful girl.

With Winnie and Lisa, outside my room. The government asked them to add 5 private rooms and I got to be in one of them. The entire birthing experience cost us about eight dollars.

We had a rocky first night.

Because my husband was with me, the nursing staff left the three of us alone that night. I very quickly learned how much I did not know about mothering, 

and, once again, how much I did not know about being a woman who carries babies and gives birth.

My baby cried non-stop. Nothing would soothe her.

 And I was more than a little bit weak and wobbly from very normal blood loss that scared and surprised me.

Because, as I've said . . . I was terribly uninformed . . . 

Yup . . . stupid.

By 6:00 the next morning, 

I greeted the nurse on duty like a super-hero of some sort. She took one look at our girl and said, 

"Oh, this one loves to suck. I can see it. Try this pacifier."

Glory be! It worked. From there on, it got easier.

In the picture above, Lisa is about 22 hours old.

I'd been up, showered, shampooed, curlered and combed out, (there were no portable hair dryers in the entire country of Zambia!) and in this picture, I am figuring out how to bathe an 8 1/2 pound human person.

Fortunately, she loved it. . . and so did I.

We brought her home and introduced her to our room and to the space that would eventually be her room.

Dick and I were both ecstatic, overwhelmed with gratitude,

sometimes anxious, but basically simply delighted

to be living with this entrancing creature.

She was, of course, the most precocious child in the history of humankind, smiling at 10 days, laughing big at two months, growing blond hair with dark tips.

Our African students adored her. I think she was the only newborn baby they had ever seen who had longish, straight hair, 

and they loved to touch her, to hold her, to stroke her head.

A Zambian friend loaned me her baby carrier and I used it as a pattern to make this one for Lisa and me.

There were no Ergo carriers in the 60's.

In fact, American and European parents 

knew nothing about carrying babies on their bodies.

I learned about it from my African friends 

and I used this sling all the time.

From the time of Lisa's birth until the time we left five and a half months later, I was called Bina Lisa by my African colleagues, most of whose first names I never really knew, as they were always called Bina ---- (insert the name of their first-born child). I have been unable to find even one picture of Lisa with our African principal and his wife or with the students who earned pocket money by helping me with my ironing twice a week. (Remember ironing??) They are among a small set of pictures that we haven't been able to locate as we've been scanning old memories into our computer.  But I have strong and happy memories of their warm acceptance of our baby and of the gigantic leap of respect our becoming parents engendered in the attitude of our students toward us.

This was Lisa's favorite position, hanging upside down, sucking vigorously on that pacifier.

All five new babies near the end of our time in Zambia. 

Lisa was the only girl.

Our next door neighbors, Rosemary and Harry King, holding Lisa at a staff gathering. Harry took the black and white photos you see in this and other of these African Journey posts.

The Kings were from Virginia. Millie and Dave Dyck, our neighbors on the other side - and the parents of Michael, born 2 weeks after Lisa and pictured above and below, were from Canada. He went on to become the head of the Mission Board of the Mennonite Brethren Church in that country.

Michael must have been teasing Lisa to make her pout like that. 

Mom and babe on Easter Sunday, 1968. Is she not the cutest thing ever?? 

(Until her sister and brother were born, of course. To say nothing of all the grandkids...)

We did take a trip on the way home.

But by the time we actually left in June, that trip

had been shortened considerably.

We spent one week in Kenya, visiting some friends who were teaching there, then about 10 days in Switzerland (pictured above) and Germany, visiting my cousin and some friends from UCLA.

We were so smitten with our girl that we wanted to get her back to the arms of our loving families just as quickly as we could. And she was a great traveler, too . . . until our very last flight. From Copenhagen to Seattle, she cried almost the entire way, then settled down as we made the last leg into LAX. 

That little one was just plain done with airplanes.

We were greeted at the airport by grandparents, a great grandmother and a small horde of aunts, uncles and a smattering of cousins. 

It was a deliriously happy time and

I think we brought home the very best souvenir imaginable, don't you? 

 Becoming a mother changed me in ways that are profound, 

in ways that I cannot articulate.

Carrying, birthing, nursing and tending three small persons is soul work, 

down deep living-life work, sometimes terrifying, always gratifying heart-work.

Meeting Lisa was my introduction to that work

and that meeting took place a long way 

from the only home I had known to that point.

There is a very real sense, however, that birthing her in that wonderful place cemented in my spirit, 

my heart, 

even in my body, 

this truth:

home is not a geographical place 

so much as it is an emotional space,

a spiritual point of connection and commitment.

All of her life, Lisa has been able to say,

"I was born in Africa."

And we have been able to say,

"Africa was our home."

And those two things go together.

I will happily join this long story with Jennifer and Duane:

 
And one week later, this will be my first entry in the Parent'Hood synchro blog, joining through Joy Bennett's blog:

Quiet for the Weekend - August 24-26, 2012

These pictures are over 40 years old, taken in the Southern Province

of the country of Zambia. We went fishing one day, an afternoon off.

We watched some local boys, and then a good friend and his small boy showed 

my husband how to find fish in this large pond.

We laughed and enjoyed the beauty of the day.

And that's why fishing is a heavenly gift, so very suitable for weekend quiet.

    After this, Jesus appeared again to the disciples, this time at the Tiberias Sea (the Sea of Galilee). This is how he did it: 

Simon Peter, Thomas (nicknamed "Twin"), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, 

the brothers Zebedee, 

and two other disciples were together. 

Simon Peter announced, "I'm going fishing."

    The rest of them replied, "We're going with you." They went out and got in the boat. 

They caught nothing that night. 

When the sun came up, 

Jesus was standing on the beach, 

but they didn't recognize him.

      Jesus spoke to them: 

"Good morning! 

Did you catch anything for breakfast?"

    They answered, "No."

      He said, "Throw the net off the right side of the boat and see what happens."

     They did what he said. 

All of a sudden there were so many fish in it, 

they weren't strong enough to pull it in.

       Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, 

"It's the Master!"

     When Simon Peter realized that it was the Master, he threw on some clothes, 

for he was stripped for work, 

and dove into the sea. 

The other disciples came in by boat 

for they weren't far from land, 

a hundred yards or so, 

pulling along the net full of fish. 

When they got out of the boat, 

they saw a fire laid, 

with fish and bread cooking on it.

     Jesus said, "Bring some of the fish you've just caught." Simon Peter joined them 

and pulled the net to shore—153 big fish! 

And even with all those fish, the net didn't rip.

     Jesus said, "Breakfast is ready." 

Not one of the disciples dared ask, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Master.

       Jesus then took the bread and gave it to them. He did the same with the fish. 

This was now the third time Jesus had shown himself alive to the disciples 

since being raised from the dead.

John 21:1-14, The Message

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers. 

Herbert Hoover

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.

Doug Larson

If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is high church.
Tom Brokaw

Like they say, you can learn more from a guide in one day than you can in three months fishing alone. 

Mario Lopez

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
-- Chinese Proverb
Joining Michelle, Sandy and Deidra and their weekend invitations to slow down, center and lean into rest.

A question for friends using Blogger: 

recently, anytime I cut and paste, I get this weird white background.

Don't have a clue how to get rid of it.

Any ideas??

An African Journal - Post Three: A Living Landscape

Where we are teaches us a lot about who we are.

I am a Californian, born and bred.

Oceans, mountains, deserts - 

these are in my blood,

part of my psyche.

Cycles of wet and dry,

hot and cold,

sail-filling winds and

soul-slowing stillness -

these are part of me now,

not to be separated out,

placed on a shelf somewhere

like a seldom-read geography tome.

The real geography of this place is part of my soul.

Perhaps that's why the geography of a different place,

a faraway place,

never felt alien to me.

I ran to it, embraced it, let it fill me up -

as much as a 21-year-old is capable of such rapture.

It was dusty and dry much of the year.

And as a Californian, this look I knew.

But anything short of jungle could grow there,

and grow it did, all over the savannah.

 And all around the edges of our small neighborhood,

with its dirt roads and driveways,

its brick houses, wide-open sky views, flat-topped trees

and all that red clay, just beneath the dust.

Grasses of all kinds flourish in this climate,

turning brown in the dry season,

but bright green when watered by seasonal rains.

The cloud formations were breathtaking,

the ground fog during 'winter' was not.

Much like California, we enjoyed three seasons

in Zambia rather than four:

Hot and dry,

warm and wet,

cold and foggy.

 When we first drove onto the campus, we were flabbergasted

to see tall poinsettias - and they bloomed every year,

bringing spots of bright color to the green and brown.

The shady side of our new home encouraged calla lilies and 

coleus in every color combination.

The front yard featured a row of bright coral-colored

flowers I had never seen before -

gerbera daisies,

always twisting toward the sunlight.

 Our campus was completely flat,

making it an ideal space for soccer matches -

a sport new to us in 1966.

My husband learned it well enough to coach it;

neither of us learned to love it.

 We lived about two miles off of the Cape-to-Cairo road,

a main thoroughfare going north and south on the continent

of Africa. Our town of about 2000 was a delightful place,

where something interesting was always bound to happen.

 There was a hospital, a small elementary school,

two general stores,

a butchery,

a bakery

and a small book store,

run by the church we served with.

 Acacia trees graced the southern entry to Choma,

sheltering the post office at that end of town.

And the train stopped in Choma, too.

A steam train - just like the picture on the sign below.

And we rode that train about twice each year,

sleeping overnight,

waking with cinders in our hair and on our clothes.

It was in our local train station, the first week we arrived,

that I had one of the most profound experiences 

of my young life. 

My husband and I got separated for a moment just as a train pulled up. Surrounding us was a veritable sea of Africans,

waiting to meet friends and family 

or to board the train for a new destination.

Every single face around me looked 

different from mine.

Every one.

And like a shot to the gut,

I had just the tiniest inkling of what it feels like

to be the minority - for the first time in my life.

This is an insight that simply cannot be bought,

or even taught,

and I am grateful for it.

The bus stop was right outside the bookstore, 

across the street from the bakery.

Bags and babies hung from every window,

from every baggage strut,

and the energy of a newly born country

poured out into the street.

This is the local police,

and this is the fire department.

There was one house fire in the two years we lived there,

and this team successfully extinguished it.

One of the two banks in town, about to have its

name changed as the nation of Zambia was four years old

at this point. Any reference to its former name 

(Northern Rhodesia) was being eliminated.

Note the drug store next door - called the Chemist.

As a former colony, many Britishisms remained.

A young mom, baby on back, getting ready to cross the street.

I don't think she had to wait long.

Every once in a while, a touring car would

whiz by, making a stop for supplies or refreshments.

This was a highlight for the local community.

We met Australians, South Africans, Germans 

as they were heading either north or south on the transcontinental highway.

At the other end of the transportion spectrum,

we sometimes saw this coming down the main street.

Cattle were visible signs of wealth in Bantu society.

The Tonga tribe was the main group living in the

southern province, and despite the fact that it was 

officially against the law of the land, 

brides were bought and sold . . .

with cattle - lobola must be paid.

These gentlemen are the tribal elders

and it was their primary job to palaver,

to meet and talk.

Every day. All day. About anything and everything.

I never did get used to that as a know-it-all

20-something.

Looking back as a knows-very-little-indeed 60-something,

I believe this constant communication 

contributed to the well-being of both the 

tribe and the family.

Things got thoroughly talked through

before hostility developed.

This nice looking man was proud to be the owner

of a rifle and he asked me to take this picture.

I was happy to oblige.

We lived at an elevation of just over 4000 feet and it was suggested that at least once a year, 

we travel to sea level to take a break, 

get a little richer oxygen and basically rest up. 

We did that exactly once.

My husband's parents and younger sister 

visited us the second summer we

were there, and the five of us took a wonderful trip 

which I will write about sometime soon.

But one place we could get to in an afternoon

was about 120 miles south of us.

 From this angle, a peaceful river.

 From this one, a glimpse of why the local people called

this place, "the water that thunders."

Victoria Falls, one of the wonders of the modern age.

Astounding, spectacular, magnificent - words fail.

Completely fail.

My husband took a truck load of students there on 

a field trip one year.

Not one of them had ever seen it.

Not one.

One hundred and twenty miles.

It is the landscape of a place that gets in under the skin.

The contour of the land,

the shape of the sky,

the colors of the plants and flowers,

the presence - or absence - of water.

And this is a landscape that fed my soul,

that invited me to grow,

that gave me hope,

that taught me about time and seasons 

and hard work and good rest.

This is the landscape in which I became

an adult,

a wife,

a mother,

a more careful critic of the church,

a searcher after God's deep truth,

and a whole lot less of a know-it-all.

I am grateful.

Joining with Jennifer and Duane, if he's open this week, 

Emily, if she's open and Ann's Wednesday group.

Better late than never, right??