ocean view perspective

It’s been six months since we left wintery Boston and flew with the family to Arusha. We’ve had 6 months of new school, new friends, new teachers, new wildlife, new food, new mosquito nets, new language, new pets, new insects… pretty much everything new. I am sitting under coconut trees in a hammock looking out at the west Indian ocean feeling relaxed and thinking about how well the kids and Lisa have adapted to life here. It has been better than expected. Right now the 3 kids are playing with 2 Slovenian boys who speak no English – and remarkably, they seem to understand each other – or they are ok with the fact that they cannot understand each other. Either way, I love seeing the girls become more secure in themselves and able to make friends more easily. The painfully shy days are slowly disappearing. And Anderson knows just about as much Kiswahili as he does English – and he is far from shy.

We are finding our rhythm here: more friends, more laughter, more certainty about the necessities in life (food, supplies etc) - but the new experiences are still everywhere. As I was laying in bed snuggling with Ashlyn this morning I heard a mongoose scurry across the coconut palm woven roof. Minutes later the Muslim call to prayers wafted through the pre-dawn quiet. Ashlyn sat up in bed and said, Daddy! who’s crying? My description of Islam, praying 5 times a day and how Allah is another name for God sent Ashlyn back to sleep.

Perhaps the biggest lesson of all – for all ages – is that life here is not predictable and we do not have control over many things. Sometimes they have honey nut cheerios at the store, and some weeks they don’t; sometimes the police pull you over for no reason and sometimes they let you pass the roadblock; sometimes internet works well enough to make a skype video call, sometimes it takes 5 minutes to pull down the NY Times homepage, and sometimes it just doesn’t work at all. That uncertainty and unpredictability is what makes life here so interesting. We are learning to roll with the punches and not let the little things disturb us. It requires both changing our expectation and learning how to adapt to the unplanned circumstance. I believe this lesson, above everything else we experience here, will be the greatest thing we take away.