today in words

The phone on the edge of my desk vibrates and strums the most pleasant among all the other ringtones. 5:30 am. I wonder if I will ever wake up without eyes plastered shut, muscles slow to function, fingers stiff. This city is wide awake, as is the rooster nearby. There is a huge fly buzzing at the window behind my curtains. I crawl out of the netting and pile of sheets and blankets. I pull back the curtains and swat at the fly. He is quiet and dead I presume. I silence the alarm and check messages. One from Kim Brown and one from Catherine telling me the weather is nice and she has been to pick blackberries. She’s at Mom and Dad’s. And one more saying we have home group on the other base tonight night. I shuffle to the tiny electric kettle and turn on all the lights, hoping to wake any creatures who come here in the night. I fill the kettle and the French Press with heaping teaspoons full of the Folger’s Brazilian Roast that Christine sent to me in a care package. I go to the fridge and open the vegetable bin and get out a carrot, a beet and half an apple from yesterday in a ziplock bag.  I dice it all up and throw it in the Nurtibullet. I decide it needs greens and go back for lettuce. I submerge that in bleach water and go back to the kettle and Press and my coffee begins to brew.  I throw ginger in the juicer too and breakfast is made. All joints are moving now and I know my name. I open the computer and put in the mcel stick and wait for it to dial up or whatever it does. I release a grateful sigh. It works! Emails from Flo and Beth and Betty! I make mental notes to write them all back. Not today. Tomorrow maybe when I can use the internet on the other base. Or maybe tonight if the neighbors are still picking up the signal. 7:15 already! 15 minutes to dress and apply makeup. I choose from the clean laundry pile. Not yet put away and ready to wear. Dressing is simple and usually involves some variation of the same outfit most every day. Yesterdays shirt still looks and smells okay. Still bummed about the bleach stain sprinkled on the front of my brand new linen shirt. It comes from bleaching everything in site. Fruit. Vegetables. Dishcloths. Bamboo cutting board. Wooden spoons. Utensils. Sponges.  I pick a skirt from the laundry pile. Black skirt from the Alpharetta Target off Highway 400 that I got on my way to the Brown’s the Friday before I left. I paid regular price. $14.99. Perfect fit and length and fabric for here. I stuff my 75% off Jansport backpack (another Target find) with my English binder, a bottle of water, lip gloss, a pen, a notebook, two sets of keys (house and work), an empty ziplock for the bread roll in the large basket by the gate and sunglasses. 

The walk to work is never dull. I pass an array of garbage and junk. Mostly soda cans and plastic bottles and hair. Synthetic black girl hair. Running in East Point I used to see the same garbage over and over. Newport Cigarette boxes and Funonion wrappers. And a good many chicken bones. Here the constant is synthetic hair and a variety of plastics. Today, the rare find is a Hannah Montana backpack that lookslike it has been ran over by a Semi. With very little discretion, the male urinating fountains are there too. I roll my eyes and sigh deep and look at the ocean instead. She is breathtaking. This morning she is turquoise, by the afternoon she will be dark blue. 

School is there awaiting me and our students hustle in with their little notebooks and sweet English greetings. They make me proud. Help is there in the form of English speaking visitors. I send the girls off with them and the boys and I start where we left off. They are learning tenses- I am. I was. I am going to. I will. I used to. I was going to. We do this over and over and they frantically take notes. We practice out loud. We do a long list of vocabulary and I draw and sketch and my black skirt is covered in chalk dust. They repeat. I say each word. They repeat again. I say again. They repeat. They repeat with every intonation of my own, every accent, every syllable and I hear little Southern accents echo me. I smile. I try to enunciate and sound more like Aunt Phylis and less like Gomer Pyle. And then certain words, long A’s, certain vowels in certain pairs, and my twang becomes theirs. 

Ali arrives with a helmet on her head to take me into town on the back of her motorcycle. I hate motorcycles. My insurance doesn’t cover riding on the back of motorcycles. I get on. I flinch every time she changes gears. We dodge huge potholes. They are really not even potholes and more like massive pieces of missing road. We dodge children and cars and goats. We pull up to the mechanic shop to find it closed. I peer through the cardboard window and see my scooter in 6 pieces. I was promised it would be ready today. She lay there is the same pitiful state she was in over a week ago. Thursday, I am told by Luis who comes out to greet me. I roll my eyes and sigh deep and get back on the bike. Everyone in town stares as two white girls putt through town. 

We have an hour to kill and I am already poised on the back of this bike so I yell for her to keep going. We stop at a local restaurant. Abruptly. The back tire doesn’t make it over the curb and stalls. I laugh out loud. I get off, making sure I clear the exhaust pipe. They have named those burns here Mozambican Tattoos. I had one once. It was bad. I thought for sure it would scar. I was 10. I prayed hard and begged Jesus to please not let me have an ugly scare on my leg for life. I don’t. We eat and talk. Process our day. Goats bleat in the background...