A Different Tomorrow

The four of us, back in the Other World a week before our move

An agricultural poster on the wall of the jet way promised, “Tomorrow will look nothing like today.”

If it hadn’t been for two heavy backpacks slung one across each shoulder and if I hadn’t had a three-year-old by the hand to help her keep pace with the pack of travelers surrounding us, I would have been tempted to take a picture of the understatement I had just read.

Although the poster was all about agriculture, I couldn’t help but think it was pertaining to me. “Today” I was in America. Tomorrow I would be in Africa. “Today” I was in A/C, surrounded by people who understood me and my culture. Tomorrow I would be a minority. “Today” I could find Wal-Mart independently and purchase nearly anything I needed. Tomorrow I would need to be led around like a child to find the most basic of items.

The poster was right.

Our overnight, 11-hour flight was as uneventful as any mother of a five and three-year-old could wish. For a month or more I had been collecting fun things like Tricky Dogs, a Magnetic Doll House, books, stickers, and other quiet toys, so, to the children, the flight was one big party. They love flying; but they don’t love sleeping on flights, even overnight ones. I gently tossed the suggestion to Sophia that now might be a nice time to take a nap (it was well past normal bedtime), but she looked at me in surprise and said, “Well, I need to draw.” There are downsides to having too many fun things in the backpack.

Eventually tiredness won and both children slept for roughly four hours until we landed in Accra, Ghana. And in Accra, it was morning, ending the children’s night in an abrupt burst of sunlight when window shades were opened and their parents shuffled them out to a waiting shuttle.

At the entrance of the airport, we were screened for fevers by the Ebola Team, then asked for our Yellow Fever immunization cards, a mandatory vaccine. I was pleased we had them at the ready. I was even more pleased that the lady at the Lancaster travel clinic told us that Ghana now recognizes the Yellow Fever vaccination as lifetime protection. “The manufacturer has always said it was, but there were a few countries who didn’t recognize that. In June of 2014, Ghana officially began to honor the Yellow Fever vaccine as having lifetime protection.” She smiled, happy to be the bearer of glad news. John and I tucked our Yellow Fever cards back in my purse, thanked the helpful travel nurse, and saved ourselves both the pokes and the cash.

Unfortunately, Ghana must have forgotten to tell its airport personnel about the vaccines’ new status. “But this one is old,” the woman protested when she read the date of my Yellow Fever vaccination.

John and I informed her by turns that her country now recognizes the Yellow Fever vaccine to be lifetime protection. “It changed in June 2014,” I said, pleased to remember the date. This was momentous. She should know about it.

She was unfazed. “You come. You come.”

We had no choice but to follow the woman back the way we came, past the lines at the Ebola screening, and into the airport’s health clinic located near the arrivals’ entrance. They were ready for people like us. The lady behind the counter charged us $10 for the vaccines and motioned for us to come to the curtained off cubicle behind the counter where we were vaccinated immediately, thus protecting us for two lifetimes, according to the travel nurse. I was glad the children’s were current; it would have been too bad to start their life in their new country of residence with dreaded shots.

All of our luggage arrived intact and Brother Ross was waiting for us. We drove past street sellers with water sachets in trays on their heads or phone cards dangling from outstretched hands. We drove down a freeway, newly finished, and turned onto a bumpy dirt road that hadn’t seen a grader in years. The red dust filtered into the pickup and dusted the dash. Tyler leaned out the window and waved at anybody that would look his direction; Sophia uncontrollably bounced off the seat on a particularly bad bump and resorted to snuggling against me for protection. We drove through a gate of a city house Ross’ family had kindly prepared for us. We were home.

The airport poster was right. Today looks nothing like yesterday.

Our house is a beautiful one nestled on the outskirts of the city. It has a large courtyard with two mango trees, six orange trees, a palm nut tree and a coconut tree. The oranges were just harvested last week and produced enough for the former resident (another American) to can 30 quarts of juice, all squeezed by hand. 

The courtyard also has a dog named Sassy which is our reluctant inheritance. She is nervous around us and scuttles away when we open the door or crawls on her tummy towards us when we call her, tail safely tucked between her legs. “Other than an apparent case of schizophrenia, she seems to be a nice dog,” John said, relieved that our daughter didn’t need to be terrified of her new pet. It is hard to be scared of something that only runs away from you.

The house itself is large, suitable for hosting guests that pass through Accra. Aside from sporadic electricity and perpetual dirt (the children’s knees and feet were black from playing on floors that had been cleaned the evening before), living here isn’t going to be much of a change from our lifestyle in the States.

If we lived in a neighborhood where our house, a rented one, was nicer than its neighbors, I would feel guilty for living this comfortably in Africa where many people still live in mud huts with thatched roofs. But this is the city and in the city mud and thatch are scorned. Our house with its tiled floors, indoor plumbing, and ceiling fans in every room is not uncommon.

But living in a pretty house with electricity doesn’t ward off feelings of being far, far away from That Other World where everything is familiar. We need to do grocery shopping and have no idea where to go -or worse, what to purchase. Our internet service is fed via little prepaid cards that also need to be purchased. But where?  There is a market close enough to walk to, someone said, but I have no idea what direction to go. And how far is it? Should I plan to buy everything I can fit in a market bag, including heavy things like oil and sugar, or is it far enough to walk that I’ll be better off buying smaller things that weigh less, like tomatoes and lettuce?

And how do you make friends in the city? In the villages, where John and I have lived before, we were continually surrounded with friends, whether we wanted to be or not. But the city has enclosed compound walls surrounding the houses. Our neighbors are creatures we know are there only by the wash slung onto our razor wire or the cry of a child.

Uncertainty isn’t relegated to the adult world. Sophia walks around the house with her fuzzy blanket from America wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She feels insecure, too, hugging the familiarity of the blanket she has slept with for years to ward off the strangeness of the new world we brought her to. It is all in the learning curve, I know that. I had anticipated the children feeling homesick.

But I didn’t anticipate myself being overcome with wave of homesickness on the first day I arrived. I had made this move to Africa before, after all, and thought I knew what to expect. Yet when night fell on a city where we know next to nobody, can’t find our way around, and haven’t a clue where anything is, I felt lonely. Sad, even. Jet lag caught up at midnight and in spite of having little sleep the night before, I was awake for over an hour, listening to the night noises of a city. I didn’t have a blanket to wrap myself in like Sophia, nor did I want one in the heat. The only familiarity I wanted was home. But home might as well have been a million miles away. I prayed, as I often do, inviting God to pervade my little world and eventually I fell asleep.

Morning came. The sun cast cheerful beams into our windows and the electricity had kindly stayed on. The final dose of encouragement I needed came when I checked our email for the first time since we left home. Stephanie J. Leinbach is in the hospital with her young daughter who is undergoing surgery for epilepsy and expressed what I knew to be true. Her words, written at an apparent low point, stirred me to faith again and my lagging spirits were bolstered.

She said, "I can't rely on my feelings. I'm learning that my feelings leap to conclusions based on the here and the now. Feelings are useless at getting me through hard stuff; it takes faith. And faith looks back at God's faithfulness and forward at His promises, and that gives me the grace to live in the here and now, despite my feelings. 

"I cannot despair. I cannot fear. I cannot flush drugs (meant to control her daughter's epilepsy but also alter behavior) down the toilet.  Even if I feel like it.

"I must hang onto God's promises and trust that he is in control. He's already written this story. Now I need to live it with grace."

The tomorrow may be different but the God of tomorrow is the same.