Getting used to African nights.

I heard him before I opened my eyes.  Actually, it was he who awakened me from that pleasant state of just having fallen asleep.  He sounded like a helicopter in my room.  I amazed myself with how quickly I reacted.  Without even opening my eyes, I came fully awake and yanked the covers over my head.  DANG IT!  A mosquito.  I was so certain that there weren’t any when I turned out my light.  I laid there for a minute and then sighed and dragged myself out of bed, found a flashlight to guide me across the room, flipped on the light and stood looking around sleepily.  I sighed again and began the laborious process of untying my mosquito net from the ceiling and tucking it securely around my bed.  I then realized I was thirsty, so I unlocked my door and went around to my kitchen (next door) and found some water in the fridge.  By the time I got back to my room, I was already dusty.  Earlier in the evening, my sinuses decided that they just could not handle Harmattan anymore and rebelled against me, leaving me in a pile of tissues.  I turned out the light and used my flashlight to get back to my bed. I ducked under the mosquito net and lay there in the heat thinking.  All of a sudden the humor of it all struck me.  I mean, I don’t even speak French!  Here I am, in the middle of Africa all by myself, I don’t know the language, I couldn’t find my way around my neighborhood if my life depended on it, and I’m laying under a mosquito net because malaria medicine makes me dizzy.  I’m hot and dusty, and…and I don’t even speak French!  What was I thinking? I’m crazy.  I laughed aloud into the darkness.  This is so far from my life in a sea of cubicles, with Starbucks down the road and high heels on my feet.  Sometimes the contrast of it all strikes me as completely surreal – is this really my life?  Am I really this lucky that I get to do this?  To lay here, covered in dust from Sahara’s Harmattan, hiding from malaria, trying to sleep in the heat of a West African evening and knowing that tomorrow I get to wake up to the sound of African laughter and face a day of a dozen hugs and the constant clutching of little black hands?  Did I really just buy a bicycle so that I can bike over to the market and across the neighborhood to Bible College?  How did I get to be so lucky?  Again it makes me laugh, but with a heart bubbling over with thankfulness.  Thank you, God.  When you called me to Africa I never knew…I never knew I would love it as much as all this.