Online from Nasir!

This week held one big surprise: INTERNET!! The original plan was for us to have Internet from the day we landed in Nasir, but as things rarely go according to plan here, our Internet was delayed by a few weeks.

In retrospect, it is a good thing that we didn’t have the ability to communicate with y’all at first, because those initial days in Nasir were incredibly difficult and I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have sent out a “rescue me” plea or booked my own flight out of here.

Arriving in Nasir was quite emotional–we’ve been planning for and working toward this for a couple of years now.  Quickly, however, that joy faded as we were confronted with reality and as disappointments and frustrations mounted.  It seemed in those first days that everything natural, spiritual, and emotional came against us.  It was hard from the start–sleeping on our pushed-together trunks that first night because we couldn’t find the parts for our bed, feeling barraged by scorpions, monster spiders, and bats, not knowing how to operate the kerosene stove and having multiple meals either undercooked or burned, and feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed by the ginormity of the job in front of us.

Each morning, I felt like an aimless wanderer without any sense of routine and normalcy.  Each afternoon, I felt like I had failed to accomplish anything noteworthy aside from laundry or cooking.  Each evening, I felt like I was being chased into bed, under the safety of the mosquito net by the bats that come at dusk and feast in our house all night.  In short, I was miserable those first couple of weeks.  I cried multiple times a day, and every time a plane or UN helicopter flew over, I seriously thought about just sprinting to the airstrip and BEGGING to be taken out with them.

And then my birthday came (October 13), and our team surprised me with soy tacos, homemade tortillas, Mexican rice, and frijoles charros.  And then we watched a couple of episodes of The Office.  And it felt normal and I began to feel like it might just be okay.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have developed routine, which as it turns out, is mostly what I need to be mentally and emotionally healthy.  We have started learning the language, and that has enabled us to get into the community to meet people.  We have had some great break-throughs with community development work.  We have found a great little Ethiopian restaurant in town that serves pretty delicious meat and protects our privacy.  And we’ve even found places to buy garlic, onions, limes, oranges, pumpkins, bread, fruit juice, and sodas.  GLORY!

Yes, it was a very rough start.  But each day it feels a little more like home.

And because posts are better with pictures, here’s a shot of Blaise and I on Monday, right after we got Internet!