5 Minute Friday: Stay

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Topic: Stay
GO! 

They ask the question that always sticks in my mind during an impromptu getting to know you session, "Do you think you'll go back to Africa?" How do you answer questioning eyes when you don't know the answer? I mumble a few trite replies of uncertainty. Their questions shift and I shift in my seat uncomfortably. I miss Mama Liberia with her dry season's red dust, her drench you to the bone wet season and her pineapples dripping juice and most of all...her people. The people who showed us sorrows face and lived to laugh and grin again.

How's the body? Thank God...and so we do.

Liberia is never far from my mind. The people with their own English and stories to tell. A country born out of refugees and mired in civil war. A country that at times seemed like the washed up reject of the whole continent. The country whose history, unbeknownst to most of us, is so inextricably tied to our own. A country we left to start our own family, a nation of Hoovers now three strong.

There are moments in my mind when I wish we had stayed. Moments when having a baby in the heart of malaria country without an OB-GYN in the whole expanse of the place seems like a doable lifestyle. There are times when the I think of Olive...her baby would be just a few months younger than ours. She is an orphan too and I always felt akin to her because of that. Some things reach beyond culture. She used to slide her morning meal over to me and invite me to share. She invited me into her life to share and I was glad to be there, but couldn't stay.

I don't know if we'll touch our toes to Mama Liberia's soil again. I can't make that promise. It is the inexplicable joy and perseverance of a much forgotten people that sticks and stays in my heart and mind. Our Liberian friends are often desperate to come to America.

Strange how at times I wish that I could have stayed.

STOP!