let there be light

it’s raining tonight. okay that is an understatement. heaven has cracked open and is bleeding down electricity with a startling rapidity. trees are swaying in ways that threaten structural integrity. the entire night sky is like one massive dying light bulb flickering between pitch black and daylight. they say swaziland is known for its violent storms and crazy lightening. the thunder can hardly keep up with it. the lightening has stolen my lights. i have a candle burning and a computer screen that can glow for at least another sixty minutes.

i’ve always loved storms. i’m sure that has something to do with growing up in the new orleans area. hurricane evacuation was our snow day equivalent. i remember playing in the rain under fat droplets and a sky gone mad. the old folks used to make you hush when it was storming because god was talking. they’d cover all the windows and mirrors, so the lightening didn’t kill you. it’s hard not to believe in god in a place where the power of nature and your relative powerlessness juxtapose themselves so keenly and so often.

when i went away to college i didn’t understand the existence of godlessness or the persistence of the bay area’s wintertime drizzle. it was infuriating. i wanted the thing over. just have a big storm. get it out of the system, and move on. however, i also realized as i grew older that storms aren’t all fun and games. people die. things get ruined. as i listen to god talk and remember why i love their eyes were watching god, i’m wondering how my patients are doing. there is a boy with chronic diarrhea whose mother cannot afford the supplies to boil the river water or properly cook for that matter. she was in tears and the nurse had this long conversation that she later translated in the most offhand of manners. she supposed that the lady’s tears had something to do with poverty. another understatement.

i’m also taking inventory on my patience. i started off real cool about the no luggage situation. i knew it was impossible that the bags would arrive when i did, but i did not expect them to take a whole week to come. i begin to chain call the airport and send an angry, irrational email to delta. i’m acting like an american. i have expectations from which i cannot easily extricate myself. i like my stuff. i love my shoes. i’m buying a few replacement items and borrowing some. when i show up to clinic in borrowed blouse, cheap slacks, and tennis shoes, i don’t want to cry, but i have no peace. it’s that deep. it’s hot in swaziland, and i note the male orphan wearing the oversized turtle neck dotted with tinkerbells. i watch the child i’m weighing step out of scuffed church shoes with no laces. i’m embarrassed by my materialism. i admit to myself, again, that what i actually need is so much less than i expected. and as i type that last sentence, the lights come back on.