love in the rainy season

Starting in mid-November and lasting until early April, it will rain almost every day in Zambia. It doesn’t rain the whole day – just long enough and hard enough to stop work and keep everything mucky. Life in the rainy season is usually chaotic and always messy… It actually makes me think of romance. 

The parallel is probably not obvious to anyone but me, unless they too have tried to nurture a marriage relationship in a small Zambian village. But as Valentine’s Day approaches and I think about all of the challenges that romance has in this context, the grey-green hues in the distance feel like an appropriate backdrop. 

Ten years ago, after our wedding, we returned to Africa in anticipation of continuing the Rom-Com already in progress. Our first home together was a cozy hut with a grass roof. It was perfectly romantic – like something out of an exotic, destination-honeymoon brochure. The idyllic feeling lasted a whole week, until the awkwardness of the paper-thin walls, proximity to neighbors and people knocking on our door in the middle of the night set in. We knew that the rats and snakes were watching us, and eventually learned that our neighbors were too. 

After several months of marriage, when I still wasn’t pregnant, the women of the village confronted me on it. They were appalled that I clearly was not sleeping with my husband and felt like it was their business to set me straight. Putting aside the embarrassment of telling my neighbors just how often we were having sex, I also informed them that it’s possible to have sex and not get pregnant. They weren’t buying it and chose to send me for training. “Show up at the maize shed on Friday at midnight. Bring a chicken.” This was definitely not an optional event, so I went. I returned home the next day and spilled to Jeremy the details of the raucous sex-capade, rambling nonsensical about half clothed grandmothers wielding corncobs while chickens died in the corner. Let’s just say village life has never been boring.

Dampened only slightly by the living conditions and village gossip, we invested in our romance in many ways – carrying on the habits we had developed before we were married. We played cribbage, had candle-light dinners, and talked for hours under the mosquito net.  As far as physical intimacy was concerned though, we resigned ourselves to the awkward sense of exposure and just kept going. Our love apparently has resilient DNA. 

After three long, disapproving years, we made everyone happy and produced a baby, and eventually another. That at least quelled the rumors, but it wasn’t until year seven of marriage when we re-built our house to include proper windows and multiple bedrooms and door locks that we felt like the rainy season of our love-life might actually be coming to an end. 

Nevertheless, while we enjoyed the safety of our new haven, we experienced other storms keeping us apart too. At times when malaria, diarrhea and fatigue have taken over our house, we’ve found ourselves in too much pain to be touched. In times of organizational growth, village drama and government threats, our minds were often too consumed to even think about romance. There has been more than one season when we just could not seem to catch a break. During one such time, things were so stormy that my hair was falling out and the days felt robotic. Out of sheer willpower, we made romantic gestures through heart-shaped pancakes or a sweet note on the mirror, but physical intimacy felt aloof. I looked longingly at Jeremy and asked, “When’s the last time we had sex?” Returning the gaze, he just said: “I can’t remember.” Occasionally, when it rains, it pours.

They say falling in love is easy and staying in love is hard work. Truth. Sex is not the only way to nurture or show romantic love and I’d argue that it’s not even the primary way. It is, however, a powerful unifier, and disembodied romance will usually feel incomplete. For many marriage relationships, sex truly functions as the barometer for the over-all relational climate – a theory we’ve seen proven in more marriages than our own. 

The culture around us states that sex is a man’s right and that it is also a physical necessity akin to needing water or air. Tradition dictates that a woman’s submissiveness goes as far as putting herself in harm’s way – including HIV and black eyes. A sad truth is that we’ve taken multiple women into our home and put others on busses to get them out of extreme situations. And while not every woman is fearing for her life, most have been beaten and few expect fidelity. From the vantage point of the ladies closest to us, even those who are happily married, romantic, non-transactional sex sounds like a fairy tale. 

This is the context in which our own, very public love story is playing out. The same women who taught me how to keep my husband from “wandering” have watched Jeremy honor my body for over ten years. Our closest neighbors may or may not have heard us have sex, but they’ve definitely heard us fight and then watched us make up. They’ve seen us drop hands after a cold word and grab it again after the apology. They’ve watched one of us leave to go sleep at the farm and the next morning kiss on the porch. At times, it’s been shame-inducing to be so on-display – but that vulnerability is also what makes it so productive. 

As Jeremy and I have walked through the uncomfortable exposure of our own relationship we’ve been given a platform to say yes: love making/tending/deepening is never convenient and it’s usually messy; but the green growth that comes from cultivating the soil of connection on which the rain falls is more than worth it. The challenge of love in the rainy season might be very different in our house than it is in the house next door, but we all live it. While the consequences of Malaria vs. infidelity are vastly different, there is solidarity in acknowledging that forces outside of our relationships are actively working to rob us of connection. The desire for love is part of what it means to be human and the brokenness that keeps us apart – both sexually and otherwise – is a universal foe. Our relationship has always looked foreign to our community, but the honesty of our effort to keep love alive has also made it relatable. There’s not a single man or woman around us that doesn’t want to just feel loved. 

For us, as people of faith, part of communicating the gospel is demonstrating God’s good and redemptive potential for every area of life – including romance. At camps and conferences, with small groups and individuals on our couch, without a hint of mastery or pride, we have shared our own journey. Sex obviously isn’t the only thing we talk about, but given its center-stage, high-stakes role in this community, it ranks right up there on the marriage-topic list. We want people to know that great sex is always possible for God’s people as relationships are restored and as our identity as soulful beings is more deeply understood. Our hope is – through the frank disclosure of our own romance – that we might make relevant “laying down one’s life for a friend… because God first loved us.”

Jeremy and I will probably not be having an overly romantic Valentines holiday. Only a handful of people in a five-hundred-mile radius know that this is supposed to be a lovey-dovey weekend which means we’ll spend time with people and I’ll prepare for school and Jeremy will get filthy at the farm. In short, it’s still rainy season. But I have no doubt that at some point we will pause to look in each other’s eyes and express gratitude to the other for braving the struggles that are as inevitable as mud puddles in February.

how I made every woman in a 25 mile radius jealous

We had already been in Zambia for two years when we got married, and as soon as our zam-tastic wedding was over, we were anxious to get back. Being the first foreigners to ever live in the Fimpulu, everything we did was intriguing to our neighbors. They loved to watch the way I braided my hair and washed my dishes and piddled around in my garden and so when we returned to the village as newlyweds, it was no surprise that everyone was waiting to watch and see how we’d "do" marriage.

My neighbors were worried that I’d do it wrong, so they promptly pulled me aside for training. They taught me how to sweep my home and cook his food and make him ***real*** happy.

After a few months of blatant failure in the wife department, my teachers pulled me aside again and told me to step up my game. Their first threat was: “We taught you better than this. Get your act together or we’ll beat you.” Why yes they did. Greater love has no Zam-Mama than this, that she will slap the white off your face if you don’t get your crap together. And their second threat was, “Because if you don’t do it right, he will find someone who does.”

In self defense, let me say that "bad wife" is a relative concept. If you were supposed to rise before dawn to sweep the house and scrub your floors and thrice daily cook elaborate meals for your husband while you ate leftovers in the other room, and kneel before him and never look him in the eye... you might be a failure too.

I should also mention the added concern of my elders that we had been married for three whole months and I wasn’t pregnant yet, which meant, clearly, that I was either not doing my marital duty at all, or that I was doing something to hinder conception against my husbands obvious wishes - both of which are cardinal sins.

But the real disappointment, and the reason why the mamas were ready to slap me back to the cold land, was because not only was I failing at my obvious duties, but I was also letting JEREMY do them.

They watched in horror as they saw him sweeping the house at all hours of the day! They saw him stoking the fire and putting pots on it! They saw him scrubbing my underwear! Good heavens woman, have you no shame?!?! One woman asked what kind of juju I was slipping into his porridge to get him to behave like that. Theological underpinnings of the question aside, I explained to that woman and others who were genuinely concerned for our marriage that I had in fact not witched my husband, and that he was doing these things of his own volition. I tried to explained the counter-cultural concept that my husband serves me simply because he loves me.

They still told me he’d leave me within six months. I relayed that message to Jeremy who, being quite offended, retaliated by making out with me on the front porch.

Six months later, Jeremy was still sharing the work load and I still hadn’t born him a child and we were still sleeping with each other and no one else… and all the elders just sort of raised eyebrows and kept watching. Fascinating, they said.

 Two years later, Jeremy hadn’t returned me to my parents or asked for his dowry back and our circle of gawkers grew larger still. I think most women accepted that I wasn’t slipping magical herbs into his porridge, but they still weren’t entirely sure what the X factor in this relationship was. At least I was finally pregnant and giving him his first child, so I wasn’t a complete waste of womanhood.

Turns out the baby was just a whole other realm of radical for my husband. If they thought kissing on the front porch was bold, nothing could prepare them for diaper changes. The reaction to that stunt was so addictive, Jeremy took the show on the road. We had gone to town together and I had entered the market to get some vegetables during which time Jeremy changed Bronwyn’s diaper on the hood of the Land Rover. The next week, there in the market again, I walked across the dusty selling space and noticed an above average number of people staring and pointing at me. (I mean, a handful is normal, a crowd is a little curious.) Finally one of the onlookers approached and all she said was, “You’re the woman who is married to the man who changes diapers!” Umm…  yes! Yes I am! Were you wanting an autograph?

Jeremy’s fame rapidly spread from there. We were hard pressed to go anywhere in a 25 mile radius where we didn’t hear “Jeremy! Jeremy!” being called out by various members of his unofficial fan club. And as for me? I was just “Mrs. Jeremy,” the lucky lady connected to this beast of wonder, who would sweep and cook and change diapers and remain faithful without needing to be bewitched and was still manly enough to build things and drive a tank of a vehicle and kill things… and other such measures of manhood.

manhood - like caring for your infant while slaying cobras. no big deal.

Now jealous though they might be, it's not like any of these ladies are coming after my man. Feelings about Jeremy waver between admiration and sheer terror. He is, after all, a bit of a powerful mystery which keeps most ladies from coming too close. Any woman in the village will still insist on talking to me even if they really have a question for him.

But truly, my husband's acclaim – the stares and pointing and side comments about how lucky I am – these are treasures I store up in my heart. I adore that in a context where we work tirelessly to fit in, that for the handful of ways we actually work to stand out, we do it for love. Jealousy can be healthy if it stirs up motivation to step out and try something new. We feel not at all guilty for the ways this crazy idea of serving your spouse has caught on with a precious handful of men whose end game is happiness and have observed this as a good way to get there. The women on the receiving end know who they have to thank for that novel idea.

I had no clue, really, that I was stepping into something so rare and compelling, making every woman in a 25 mile radius jealous of me, just be simply saying "I DO." And yet, nine years later, as I reflect on the significance of this marriage, I’m thankful all the more for my maven man – the one who turns heads with his flip of pancake and stops traffic with his road side diaper changes. You’re what every woman wants, babe - especially me.

a celebration of union

It started in a Land Rover. 

The first dozen times the old beast of a machine got stuck in a mud rut, my job was to encourage and hold the wrench – it was in that mud that love’s seeds were first planted. Over time, the seeds germinated and blossomed and I said “yes” to “will you marry me” and soon we were taking our first look and exchanging vows and cutting ice-cream cake.

In five years  since, we’ve made a life overseas, establishing a home out of a mud bricks and a ministry out of grass roots. We've combined our DNA to create three lives and have had the privilege of rearing one.

We have spoken harshly and gently, encouraged and forgiven. We have held the mirror up to the other, revealing and refining our true selves. We have adventured and risked and come home to roost. Partner, spouse, friend, beloved we have called each other.

This is our marriage and it is a gift. We still kiss in Land Rovers, and thankfully get stuck a lot less.

Happy Anniversary to my loving husband, Jeremy Michael.

(not so) single mama

Last week I had a three day stint as a “single mother.” Jeremy went to Lusaka to pick up chickens and since I was busy with a Home Based Care program, I decided to stay in the village. I don’t think I realized how much of a routine Jeremy and I had established together. I watch Bronwyn while Jeremy does ABC, he watches her while I do XYZ. As harried and random as I feel most of the time, it finally occurred to me that we actually have figured a few things out. So Jeremy’s leaving for 3 full days meant that a serious wrench was thrown into my daily functioning! The first night, I called Jeremy and said, “I haven’t eaten dinner, and its getting dark, and Bronwyn’s asleep, but I haven’t closed up the house, and I don’t know how to do any of this by myself! GAH!” (Yes, I minored in melodrama at Cornell). I got better by day two, and was on my way to fabulous by day three (brazier top eggplant parm anyone?) just in time to receive Jeremy back home, give that boy a smooch and tell him how much I need him.

Jeremy, Bronwyn and Precious

I know that there are many, many actual single mothers out there who are well adjusted and have happy, healthy children. I’m sure that if I were to find myself in a single-mother situation for a longer period of time, I too would figure out how to make it work.

But being alone and without my helper made me actually think a lot about the women around me who are, in many ways, single mothers. Culturally, it is the woman’s job to care for the children and the home. All cooking, washing, feeding, bathing, sweeping, educating etc. falls on the shoulders of the hard-working women of the village. Their husbands come back from the field/friends/bars and expect supper and entertainment from a brood of already cared for children. There is little to no collaboration amongst spouses. No joint decision making. He does his jobs, she does hers. Equity is not highly valued. The foreign brought “women’s rights” movement has meant that women have the “right” to do all of the man’s jobs in addition to her own. The marriage is functional above relational. And while there are exceptions (as always), these have been my observations, which, in recent days, have become all the more poignant.

Bana Bo and Charity

Sometimes when I give women advice regarding feeding of their children, or household sanitation, or raising funds for education, I see the look in their eyes that communicates a single word: “myself?” Oh, ladies, I wish it weren’t by yourself at all.

Bana Enoch with Impundu, Enoch and Alan

I’m thankful that a simple chicken buying excursion has helped rekindle my commitment to a group of women who work so hard – who do what I do, every day, on a much larger scale, and with much less help.

BYOB (bring your own box) party

To all the mamas around the world who, for the love of their babies, try their very best in all things, I thank you.

a whole slew of "making it work" mamas

And to my partner in life, hubster and friend, I deeply respect you.

Jeremy, Bronwyn and Gift