I walked out of the airport, by myself, in the middle of a hot dark night, wearing a jersey that had taken two people a full two weeks to find. It was white. It had red pinstripes. The advertisement on the front read Standard Chartered. It had a patch high on the left breast. The patch proudly declared that the Liverpool Football Club was established in 1892. And at the very top of the patch read the Liverpool Football Club motto:
“You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
If only it were true.
To begin at the beginning.
It was early evening in Africa, in March of last year. I was coming back from the tree nursery, when I espied a particularly tall and shapely tree, some ways off the trail. Having free time and spare energy (I’m like a toddler), I decided to give it a shimmy (Side note: the verb ‘to climb’ in Swahili is the same as the word ‘to plant’. Which leads to some interesting sentences where you could be talking about planting mountains or climbing sunflowers. The only area where it is actually a problem is trees. My villagers don’t understand that I actually like to climb trees. They just think I really, really, really enjoy planting them.) The tree was one of the local varieties, which generally expand outward, rather than upward, looking like delicately crafted umbrellas. But this one was at least 60 feet tall, by far the tallest native tree in my village. Definitely worth a climb. The only problem is that there was not a reachable limb until about 12 feet up, and only a small stump to give a boost. At times like these, I’m happy that most villagers head home around sunset, which is when I like to do my walking. This way, I’m spared the outcry, embarrassment, and innumerable retellings that would have resulted if one of my villagers had seen me: suspended in the air, my arms clinging desperately to an unreasonably round branch, my feet kicking wildly for purchase, my mind idly pondering how I would explain this hospital visit.
Since this was back in March, you may reasonably surmise that I didn’t die. In fact, after a little cursing and a lot of scratching, I made it up into the tree. And it was a great one, branches criss-crossing every which way, growing upwards in a helix, looking like some ever-patient artist had made this tree his life’s work. I climbed higher, maybe higher than I should have. The view was amazing, it was nearing sunset, and I was young, free, and happy to not be dead. On an impulse, I decided to carve something into the tree. Juvenile, absolutely, but I’d spent a lifetime climbing trees without once leaving my mark. What could a few letters hurt? I pulled out my Leatherman, thought for a second, and slowly carved my initials into the old, tough wood.
Mine, and someone else’s.
Fast forward. One day, sometime later, I showed up at the house of one of my best friends, an old carpenter in the village (also an unrepentant curmudgeon. He used to drive me crazy. Now I want to be him when I grow up). I had an idea, and wanted to know if it was possible to pull off. He assured me, without a doubt, it was absolutely not possible. Got it. Went to another guy, who is also doing well for himself as a carpenter (he’s got a motorcycle AND a generator. He may have organized crime connections). Any way possible to get this done, any way at all? He is unequivocal. It ain’t happening. Okay. Good to know.
The thing is, my friends here are wonderful. But one of the things that makes my job, and those of my friends, pretty difficult, is that nobody here believes anything is possible if they have not seen it with their own two eyes. They are supremely, astoundingly capable when it comes to perfecting tasks that they have witnessed and understood. But nobody here is one day going to take some cloth and some thread and put together a Snuggie (which is probably a good thing...and therefor a bad example). Show most of my friends here one, and they’ll make you a better one. Tell them about one, and they’ll tell you it can’t be done. Or at least...most of them will.
Nziku (my best friend) and I went to the tree one Saturday afternoon. I was armed with a pruning saw, love, and 7 months of informal forestry training. I climbed the tree again, this time slightly surer of how to get it done. Nziku looked like he was watching a toddler drive a motorcycle. No matter, I got up in the tree. Now came the step of finding a branch of suitable size that was reachable. I finally found one. The only problem with this step was that the branch in question WAS my step. I began to do a rip cut, which is how I was taught. I was not taught to do a rip cut on a branch that I was standing on, but no matter. I made my bottom cut, then started at the top. The branch started to go. I freaked. The branch hit another branch, and stopped, almost completely cut, hanging by a thread. Nziku was waiting, and I was sweating bullets, pretty convinced that the moment I cut this branch I was either going to be springboarded into the air, or my left foot was about to get a lot thinner. Nziku asked me if I wanted him to get up in the tree and do it. The bastard knows me too well. 20 seconds later, the sucker was down, and your boy was shaken, but not stirred.
After I got down (always an adventure), we spent a few minutes admiring our kill, then got to work. Found one live branch and one dead branch, both small and portable. We walked home, like hunters returning successfully to the pack. At his house, we employed the pruning saw, my Leatherman, his kitchen knife, and a few matchbook-sized pieces of sandpaper. It was slow going, mostly because we had no freaking clue what we were doing. We started off cutting fat discs, boring holes in them with hot pieces of iron. Eventually we started to trust the wood, and cut three thin discs, two from the dead branch, one from the live one. Using the Leatherman, we stripped the bark. We slowly whittled out the middle. Then we spent the next three days chipping them down, sanding them, whittling some more, sanding again, always afraid that the fragile things would snap in our fingers, which by now were cut to shreds and numb. I finally got too afraid to use the knife any more, and spent one whole evening carefully, cautiously sanding by the light of the setting sun. I finally couldn’t see any more. But I didn’t need to. It was done. Or at least I had gone as far as my nerve would let me. So had Nziku. At the end of the fourth day, after all that work, we had three little trinkets to show, one light in color, two darker. The lighter one was mine, my project. The darker ones were his. The next morning I applied the first coat of varnish. We put on three coats in all. At the end of it all, they shone, ready, finished. Nothing left to do but wait.
Most of the people reading this blog (assuming, I suppose, that people are reading this blog) know me pretty well, but not everybody. I don’t go all that deeply into my personal life...well, that’s not true. I talk about my personal life pretty much unceasingly. What I don’t talk about as much is being apart from my family and my girlfriend. I assume you can figure that it is pretty damn painful being away (with some wonderful intermittent breaks) from all of them for two years. And it is, as much (if not more so) for them as for me. I just don’t feel the need to write about it in this space, because some days it is awful, most days it isn’t, and I don’t have much more to say that is interesting. Yet, if she’ll permit me, I think it might be the right time to say a word or two about my lady.
Two years is a funny amount of time. It goes by quicker than you might expect, yet it holds more than you might believe. We’ve spent these last two years apart. It’s odd what you miss...or maybe it’s exactly what you expect. Kissing somebody goodnight, waking up to someone’s tousled hair, playing frisbee, brushing teeth together while dancing. Hell, just being with someone so you can watch something happen, together. I’ve seen so many beautiful sunsets while I’ve been here, but the ones I remember most were when I was with Kelsey, or my family. I don’t know what I’ve done to be so unbelievably, over-the-top, shoot-the-moon lucky...but this has worked. And it hasn’t just worked, it’s gotten better. From 7,000 miles away, Kelsey is as much a part of my life here as she was when I lived in America, and I know the same is true for her. That doesn’t happen every day. That doesn’t happen by accident. There’s no way I can possibly pay back the debt I owe to the lady who let me go, and who will one day (I hope) take me back. But I’m prepared to spend a lifetime trying. Here’s how I started:
It was early evening in Africa. I had just waited a half an hour that felt like a year for the love of my life to put her gorgeous locks in a (admittedly beautiful) braid. During that time, the cautiously carved object sitting in my left breast pocket felt like it might burn a hole through my shirt. But no, shirt intact, braid in place, we set out. Ever since hearing that I had defaced an ancient tree with our initials, my lady had wanted to see the proof of my romantic vandalism. We got to the tree. It really was impressive, towering over everything around it, catching the sun beautifully at the end of the day. I showed her around it, pointing to the spot high above where I’d carved our letters, explaining that unless she possessed some serious ups (or Go-Go-Gadget arms), there was no way she was making it up that tree. After the brief tour of the tree, I offhandedly showed her the fallen limb, lying beside it. At this point my pulse was doing a cool triple time, and a dull roaring in my ears had started to make hearing difficult. Thank god I had rehearsed this moment with the cat. I explained that, as fate would have it, I was actually the one who had cut the branch down. Why? “To make something.” What? “This.” I reached into my left breast pocket.
11 days later, I had just escorted my fiancee as far as the airport security would allow. I had just said goodbye, for the last time, to the lady who had stood by me from afar as I attempted a journey that I could never have done alone. We’ve had to say goodbye far too many times, and this one was not any easier for being the last. There were tears, and hugs, and metal detectors, and at the end of the night your boy was walking slowly back to his cab, wearing his Liverpool jersey, wishing he was somewhere else. The irony, of course, is that contrary to what Liverpool fans may sing, you WILL walk alone. And right now, I am.
Except...I’m not.
If you’re not forgotten, you’re not alone, and I of all people should have figured that out by now. I just had the greatest two weeks of my life. I got engaged to the most beautiful, funniest, kindest woman I’ve ever met. And once she was done crying, I climbed that tree one last time, to take a picture of those initials (a note to would-be proposers: don’t attempt climbing a tree till your heart has calmed. The only thing that kept me from post-proposal cardiac arrest was Kelsey saying, “my fiance is in a tree!” Which was the first time I’d ever been called “fiance”). We popped champagne to celebrate our engagement (thanks, Peace Corps friends). We visited my homestay village and I watched her make ugali. We swam in the ocean and looked at paradise, and talked with two other couples, one married 20 years, one married 10, and us, a year away. We went out one last night for dinner, and ate with our hands, and were messy, and loved it. And if a few heartbreaking goodbyes are the price of the happiness we have when we’re together, then we’ll never find a better bargain.
So this was my love letter to my fiancee. It turns out you can make a wooden ring in Africa, with a Leatherman, if you’re careful, and determined, and have the right sort of friends (thank you, Nziku). You can also make it the right size, if your fiancee’s friends and your own sister are delightfully sneaky people (thank you Jenn and Chrissy and Vicky). You can even get parental blessing, both yours (thanks Mom and Dad) and hers (thank you Carol and Bob), because the modern world is a pretty connected place, after all. It’s all possible, no matter what my villagers said. The ring, the relationship, the time apart. All of it can be dealt with, in its time, in its way. And at the end of the day, if there are still a few lonely nights left, a few dusty miles to be walked without my best friend, then I’ll deal with that too. Because I’m engaged to the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, and that isn’t something that goes away when she’s out of the room, or at work, or on the other side of the world. I have her, and my family, and all the dozens of you who wished us well and sent your little bits of happiness our way. Believe it kid.
You’ll Never Walk Alone.
