The one where a baby fly was living in my leg

Yesterday I had the unique experience of digging a fly larva carcass out of my leg. Yep. Apparently, there are flies in West Africa who lay eggs in dirt and damp cloth and when these eggs become larva they dig their way into human skin, which they use as a free Air BnB. Once they grow up, the maggot will burst right out of the skin and into the world. I don’t recommend Googling videos of this (like I did), but if you want proof outside of my own story, you can read this article or even better, this lady’s “Open Letter to the Mango Fly Larva Living in my Left Buttock.”

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I know a few people on camp who’ve had these and I was able to get helpful advice on how to extract it. Basically, suffocate it with a bandage and Neosporin and then extract its body with tweezers the next day. The internet also mentioned that you could put raw meat on top of the area and the larva may crawl out. This sounds like a fun experiment for next time. The poor lady who wrote to her butt-larva, actually had to have hers surgically removed, so they can, on occasion, become a bigger problem than tweezers can solve.

Aside from the larvae incident, as we enter into May, I’m feeling a lot of gratitude. It’s amazing the perspective a year of time brings. It's a quiet gift that, without reflection, could go unnoticed. But another school year living in Nigeria has brought so many blurry edges into focus. It has brought acceptance of some things and a sort of non-closure to other things here that will never make sense.

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Last year, I watched people who were repatriating to America cry and I wondered what was wrong with them. This year I understand…. You don't enjoy living in Nigeria the way you enjoy ice cream. You enjoy living in Nigeria the way you enjoy the smell of gasoline. The fumes are likely toxic for your health, not everyone understands it, and even knowing all this you still like it. The noise, chaos and unpredictability grow on you in a weird way. And even better, you begin to appreciate the kindness of the people here (excluding airport customs personnel we won’t talk about them), the creativity of the art and fashion and the amazing abilities of the many craftsmen and women.

This time last year, I was unsure if moving to Africa was worth all the sweat, stress and tears. Unsure if we could live here for 2 more years. But this school year brought reassurance. I was given an unexpected job which I’m so grateful for. While I had always worked previously, I hadn’t done pediatric occupational therapy in over a decade. Getting back into it at the International School of Lagos has felt like reconnecting with a part of myself I’d almost forgotten existed. More importantly, this year brought fun. Our family has taken some of the most epic trips of our lives, we’ve met new friends, said goodbye to friends (this is the reality of expat life) and I’ve even become consistent with a few hobbies, like Pilates class.

That's not to say Nigeria's challenges have disappeared. Just this week I tried to send my driver to school to deliver donuts to Ray’s class for his 8th birthday. I told all the class parents and the teacher that I would be supplying the class snack for the day. But our company car broke down on the way to school and my driver had to deal with that. So, I asked a neighbor’s driver to go purchase and deliver the donuts.

My neighbor decided she would also like a few donuts of various flavors for herself, so in addition to my order, she asked the driver for a separate order of various flavored donuts to be delivered to her house after the school drop off. Despite explicit instructions, something got lost in translation. What was supposed to be 20 plain glazed donuts delivered to the school was actually 6 glazed donuts and 6 donuts of various flavors and a bag of donut holes.

The donuts dropped off at school were not even enough for each kid in Ray’s class! I have no idea how the teacher managed to give these out, but Ray got a glazed donut and was happy, thus the biggest crisis was averted. My neighbor and I had a good venting session about how this all went awry, but then life went on.

They say there’s four stages of culture shock: 1. The Honeymoon Stage, 2. The Negotiation Stage 3. The Adjustment Stage and 4. The Acceptance Stage. I think when you get to the point of digging a fly larva out of your own leg on a casual Sunday and aren’t phased by it, it's safe to say you've successfully reached “The Acceptance Stage.”

What's interesting to me about the four stages of culture shock is how alike they are to the five stages of grief: 1. Denial 2. Bargaining 3. Anger 4. Depression 5. Acceptance. You would think losing a loved one would be an entirely different process than moving to a foreign country as they are vastly different events. But both have similarities, which makes me wonder if all these stages are really just part of the hard work of being human. Yes, we will experience them in big ways during drastic changes or tragic loss, but perhaps we experience these things in small ways regularly.

I think the end goal of all the stages whether it be grief, culture shock or traversing the challenges of Monday, isn't so much getting through them, but to bear them gracefully, carrying grace for both ourselves, and each other.

Grace, after all, is the real win.

His book, To Bless this Space Between us, John O Donohue defines grace like this:

“Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. There are no limits to it; it has no compartments, corners or breakage in its flow…. Where before gravity and deadness had prevailed, there is now a sense of animation and lightness. Where there was grief, a new sense of presence comes alive. In the wall of blindness, a window of vision opens.”

Nigerian Education Moment:

Palm wine is an alcoholic drink often drunk in West Africa at Wedding celebrations. Some of our camp friends were kind enough to bring it to a camp hang out for everyone to try. Although after tasting it, I’m suspicious they did it more for entertainment value than kindness.

Just so you know, palm wine smells exactly like hair-perm chemicals, and it tastes like a combination of half lemonade and half nail polish remover. This article states it has many health claims, including curing erectile function disorder! But my camp friend says we should take Nigerian medical claims lightly as her stewardess told her that her high blood pressure was a result of my friend’s cold AC running in the house, per the stewardess’s doctor.

Camp News:

• Good news! The bridge that they closed and then quickly re-opened, is now completely safe (according to the Nigerian Government.) The bad news is that there is a different bridge which now needs repairs. The work is planned to start May 6th (tomorrow) and last until September 23. We are all praying it doesn’t lead to utter grid lock like the previous bridge closure, but I’ve already started hoarding food, just in case. I recently read an article that asked a really good question: “At the heart of this development lies a broader question that has dogged Lagosians for decades: Can Africa’s largest megacity modernise its ageing infrastructure without paralyzing its economic arteries?”

• Last weekend we had a camp-wide field day and Songkran. Songkran is the Thai New Year and it's probably one of the most fun celebrations I’ve ever experienced. They load up water guns and have a giant water fight with each other. Of course, this was a big hit on camp with the kids and grownups alike. Our Thai camp neighbors also gifted our camp with a whole roasted pig! My favorite part of Songkran was that my Thai neighbor, Vicky, who you may remember from my Nigerian food adventure, let me borrow a traditional Thai outfit. This was so much fun to wear.

  

• We also had an Easter egg hunt the weekend before last, so what I’m telling you is that your girl (who was volun-told to be Children’s Coordinator last year) has been busy! It was all worth it because the kids had a blast.

• Rose family specific news: In exactly 26 days we are heading to a family resort in Southern France and then we’ll go to America for the Summer. We’re looking forward to all of it, especially Starbucks, Chick fil a, McDonalds, Tex-Mex and shopping at HEB.

The Next Day in the Life post:

• The guest post would be from my friend Holly, who hasn’t agreed to this at all, but might if this option wins! Her family basically had the worst trip leaving the country to move back to America as their flight out was canceled at 2 AM and they were stranded at the Lagos airport with 2 kids, 2 cats plus baggage. Chaos ensued.

• The other options are pretty self-explanatory. You have 3 days to vote!