One Week Done

The rhythm of waves is more real than tick-rock. Yesterday I had to ask the couple sitting outside their RV the date to write on the envelope with my check for this campsite. But I know that today is Monday and it has been a week since I packed the car, loaded the boat, hugged my kids goodbye.

Three long days on the road, three on the water, and an easy day of rest with a 3.2 mile walk and tour of the Au Sable lighthouse. Now with a road to its front door, when the lighthouse was built it was accessible only by boat and provisioned by a lighthouse tender, a ship named the Margarete. I

n addition to flour, sugar and kerosene, supplies included a wooden cabinet with 36 inches of shelf space, books that would be their only new entertainment for 6 months when the Margarete would arrive again with supplies and a cabinet library picked up from the last lighthouse to trade for theirs. More than the other consumables, I wonder if those books were carefully rationed to last the whole half year. 

Until yesterday my paddling has been under the watchful eyes of my beloved coaches or their vouched-for cohorts. At the end of a 21-mile day to Grand Island's north beach, and in the face of a 20-knot headwind, I gave everything I had to the pace rather than have it reported to Scott Fairty that one of his students went on tow. 

I lay in the chilly 48-degree water simulating unconsciousness in the "Situations" class. My buddy Ralph, with help from Bob, lovingly dragged my limp body across his cockpit while other students figured out how to recover my boat with a flooded cockpit and front hatch. Even in my thickest long underwear beneath a drysuit, I was happy when all of my body was draped across two boats and out of the water.

Yesterday was my 1st solo paddle. I'd packed my camp, made the rounds of teary goodbyes, much to the horror of these stalwart Midwest men. Having each other, there is no way they understand how lonely a person could get for a world of long skinny boats. For days that end with car racks festooned with tow belts, spray skirts, and PFDs drying in the last long rays of the northern summer sun. 

Long Dead

I am long dead. Drowned by a lake filled to quench your thirst, feed your baby. Submerged for a warm bath to envelope your grandmother's parchment skin; irrigation for a black farmer's cotton field. You imagine that I know nothing beyond this field of purple thistle transforming into seed dust? And the mucky bottom beneath my toes? Roots that haven't moved a drop of sap, called by siren sun, in half a century hear better dead. Fewer distractions. And every drop of water whispers secrets.

These gray branches, leaf, twig, and stem long stripped away, catch stories. Stories of dams and floods; droughts and longing for the rain. The moment of birth not different than the ending. You feel it as you weave your boat between my branches, a trace across the water's face like a child's finger across her mother's. Feel the power that transcends death; the power of having reached high and wide will not be diminished long after I am another piece of driftwood washed up against that limestone shore.

Water and Coals

Water is gathered by host sister each morning from a pump down the road. It is heated in a bucket for the "shower" poured from a cup. Food is cooked on charcoal. When the fire goes out, a live coal is brought from the neighbor's house to rekindle the flame. But there is cellphone coverage and with Skype all of us, David, Eamon, and I, from our separate computers, can reach into a house on a mountain above Morogoro, Tanzania. We can hear her voice and grill her with questions for 31 cents a minute. It costs nothing extra for her to receive our calls and text messages. She promises to keep the phone fed with enough credit for an emergency phone call to us, should one be necessary.

"But don't worry. Peace Corps is super safety-conscious."

"It's so good to hear your voice, Mom." She doesn't cry, but I can hear the underlying emotion and I am ready to cry buckets. Quickly I pull David into the call. He won't cry. He can fill the time with conversation while I gather myself.

Her day begins at 6:00 am with the shower from a bucket of warm water that her host sister prepared before Geneva got up. In a separate room? In a bathtub? Standing on bare dirt? What I do know is that the water is warm and and the experience is one of the highlights of Geneva's day.

Geneva helps prepare breakfast, eats with "Mama", host Dad, sister, and "little brother". Then she sets out on the 20-minute walk down the mountain to Morogoro, and language lessons with Kando and the four other Peace Corps volunteers in her training group. "When we finish our kiswahili lessons, we tease each other that we've peed in our pants. But even the Tanzanian's talk about this weather being hot. I can handle it."

The afternoon is more language lessons and then the walk back up the mountain, a second shower, cooking and dinner with her family. More language study. She tries to stay up until 10, when host Dad goes to bed, but usually falls asleep sooner, and sleeps like a log.

That is it; pretty much all of the information available for the $6.67 of Skype credit in my account when the call began. When the credit expired, Geneva's phone was dropped and Eamon, David and I were left to exchange a few more words. But I've recharged my account with $25 and look forward to a deeper peek into her life on a hillside above an African village I would never otherwise have known anything about.

Island Mysteries

When you aren't sure where she is, it helps to know your own location. The water was coke bottle green and visibility just beyond the tips of my fingers. I could clearly see clear bubbles of turbulence off my hands as I stroked through the water. Catching a breath, there was the blue sky and an intricate pattern of snowy clouds. Studying the pattern, I could orient myself with each stroke and keep the rhythm of arms and the forward momentum. Still I stopped regularly to sight on the island, to find Elizabeth's bare back in front of me and Pat's bobbing head behind.

Our destination was a pinnacle of rocks. Distant from the Lake Buchanan shore, there was no scale to provide any sense of how far. Perhaps if we had had more sense we wouldn't have set out. But "We can always turn back" was my optimistic assessment. I, who have made a hundred crossings, should have remembered how disorienting it can be in the middle, without a clear sense of how far there is to go in either direction. When, finally, I asked Pat if she thought we should turn back, Elizabeth was well ahead, and the island seemed tantalizingly close. But it was still a long pull before we finally pulled ourselves onto a bikini-bottom sized granite sand beach.

There is magic in an island. Even though you could throw a stone into the water in any direction, there is the mystery of water moving through the cracks, granite stone crumbling in your hands. On this particular island also the artifacts of earlier visitors and a peak into the minds of people I will never know.

This Morning Has Been Coming for Years

Six years ago, I didn't see it coming.

"Sweetie, I think you should study Spanish. We live in Texas."

"Mom, I am going to study French."

A couple of years later Geneva shared that she was studying French because she wanted to get into the Peace Corps. Lots of African countries are former French colonies and French language skills would increase the probability of being placed on that continent.

But Peace Corps was just one of several ambitions.

"I'll to grow up and be head of the CIA. Then they will have to show me the alien bodies."

"I'll grow up and marry a dumb Republican. He'll watch the kids and I can go out at night and be a super hero."

"I'll grow up and marry a man that my dad will hate."

When Geneva headed off to college at Juniata, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, she arrived just in time for the last freshman orientation before the fall semester began. Her orientation group was mostly international students. She joined the French Club and trekked with them to Quebec for fall break. She showed up every day for language practice with a French exchange student from Lille.

It was November 5, 2008 that the Peace Corps ambition crystallized into an intention. The presidential election had just been called for Obama the night before. Geneva had been giddy with joy. I could barely hear our brief conversation over the whoops of celebration at the Juniata student democrats party. The next morning I called again and, in a brief conversation with a more sober Geneva, she said, "Mom, I've made up my mind. I am going to apply for Peace Corp. I want to serve this president."

Her course was set and this morning she is in an airplane on her way to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa.

She is Off!

For weeks Geneva has been saying "Mom, you aren't going to cry when I leave, are you?" Yesterday we were standing outside of the airport terminal and the tears were falling from her cheeks past a long, flowing skirt and converse knock-off tennis shoes, onto the curb.

In a backpack over one shoulder and a rolly bag she had the necessities for 2 years beyond western civilization: a headlamp, four sports bras and 2 pair of quick-dry underwear. She carried an itouch, a digital camera and a Mac laptop so dated that its being stolen wouldn't be a great loss. A dozen lithium triple A batteries. A radio that could receive AM, FM and shortwave signals from the energy of a hand crank and the added features of a built in flashlight and siren.

All of sixty pounds included four books: a physics and calculus text, Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brien and Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. "Right now I need reading that is unambiguous; heroes that have no doubts about what they are doing".

For weeks Geneva has refused to talk about any plans for me to come visit. "Mom, I just need to get there. I don't even want to think beyond that." As she hugged me tight and long, she said "I'll see you in seven months?" Peace Corps volunteers aren't allowed visitors for the first 3 months of training and the first 3 months of service.

"Don't worry, darling. I'll be in Dar Es Salaam when you arrive in three days, standing on the tarmac singing 'It's the first day of Peace Corp and the parents are watching.'"