The Beginning

Heat. Heat in waves of invisible steam, heat reflected from the tarmac, heat from the unrelenting sun. The shock I felt was worsened by the full day’s dose of “cold treatment” I had just received. The dose started when I boarded the plane at Entebbe airport around 10.00 p.m. on 10th August, and ended 24 hours later when I exited Terminal 5 at O’Hare airport in Chicago on 11th August at 2.00 p.m. That is a full day of air-conditioning, which translates into sweaters and blankets and socks. And cracked nostrils. So I was happy to be leaving that behind me.

While I sat at the terminal lounge waiting for Debbie and Justin to come pick me up, I kept looking out through the glass windows at the shining sun, and I imagined myself soaking in some refreshing sunshine. When they arrived, I was excited. For a while it didn’t feel like I was anywhere far from home. Theirs were faces I had seen only in East Africa.

And then we were out in the sun.

Imagine a giant steam bath. You are at the center of it, and it extends to your eye’s end. The steam comes in invisible waves, like deceptive breezes. That’s what I felt stepping out into the open. For a while, I couldn’t decide which one I would rather not have – air conditioning, or the sun. The matter was quickly resolved by the observation that I couldn’t possibly throw off my clothes in the open, and it wouldn’t be much good doing so anyways. By this point I was pretty confident I was nowhere near East Africa.

The next day in Bourbonnais, snuggling in a blanket in Deb and Justin’s living room, I tried to rearrange my understandings of heat. I found the heat here rather confusing. The temperature suggested middle-of-the-dry-season heat in Uganda, with the grass drying, leaves covered in dust and playing lazy, and the breeze generally cooler. But as I sat on the couch, looking out through the front porch, the vibrant green reminded me of mild weather with pleasant humidity after a night rain in Mukono. It was exactly the kind of sight that suggested a nice morning to be out in a soft flared skirt flirting with the wind. The sun would smile mildly at you and intend for you to have a good day. Not this sun. A step outside the door equaled invasion of the sun’s privacy, and you got your due punishment for the misdemeanor.

So I stayed indoors. Debbie and Justin had worked night shifts and were sleeping in. The silence was welcome, but how so different. The AC was blowing, the fridge whirring, three clocks ticking – one for Chicago, one for Uganda, one for Nigeria. No sounds came from outside. It was so still I wondered if people inhabited the neighboring homes, some barely thirty yards away.

I thought of the sounds of silence back in Uganda: bird songs drifting with the wind, leaves rustling as they swayed, people talking in the periphery, the neighbor’s dog barking, children crying and laughing and shrieking. That silence was more stilling to my soul. But now my mind kept wondering what had gone wrong. The silence I was experiencing was an auditory equivalent of walking down a street, and suddenly finding I am the only one walking but everybody else is rooted to the spot, yet seemingly perfectly at peace.

Later in the evening, the sun safely out of sight, I ventured outside the house. It was mostly still, but not quiet. Besides the running or a dozen ACs, there were a few birds calling in the trees and about a million cicadas playing lets-see-who-sings-loudest. My heart was warmed. Behind the house the land sloped to a gentle stream lined with trees upstream and overgrown grass downstream. Right across was a state park. The sights and sounds were so refreshing I decided to go down to the stream first thing the next morning.

It turned out to be a cloudy, moderately windy morning – cool enough for me to wear a sweater. As I stood by the stream, I was impressed by the vibrancy of life which can hide right outside an insulated house on a summer morning. When I was walking out of the house, two gray ducks quacked as they flew from their water perches and landed at a bridge a short distance downstream. The cicadas reminded me of an ancient African rain forest. And oh, the rustling leaves!

I was thinking of psalms that praise God’s creation when a duck came to view under the tree just in front of me. It was brown-gray, with stripes of white straddling a swath of blue near the tail on either side. Now it swam away upstream, its beak going down every now and then. It stopped, and seemed to be eyeing me. I worried it might fly away, but it stayed, ruffling its feathers to better display the blue and white designs. Ah – beautiful things.