FIVE HOURS EAST

At Night (Presently in Nigeria)

Brenda Hartman-Souder

At night I steal into their rooms, my bare feet silent on the cool cement floor. The threadbare cotton curtains dance from a breeze that loves louvered windows. The kids prefer their curtains partly open at night; the outside security bulbs bathe the room in warm light if there’s electricity or a cool, metallic sheen if we resort to the fluorescent back-up system. Security is a big deal here.

All day long, it seems, they bicker, tease, and drive each other to little acts of antagonism poking perfect jabs jabs that up the ante, prolong the provocation. Greg knows just how to "accidentally" bump Val with his backpack; she’s skilled at reminding him of his lowly eight-year-old status while she, at 12, participates in middle school privileges like intramural sports and sleepovers.

At night, however, they snuggle in their beds and take comfort in their common lot—here with their parents in Nigeria. Mark and I kiss them goodnight and as we leave their rooms, Greg begins his routine, strikingly similar to the Waltons, a show he’s never seen.

"Good night, Val."

"Night, Greg."

"Good night, Dad"

"Good night, (I) love you son."

"Night, Mom"

"Goodnight sweetheart."

During the day they’re anything but still, but underneath gauzy mosquito nets, they sleep and dream, steadily breathing, motionless now among tousled sheets, innocent.

Watching them at night, I can barely breathe. It’s here as I briefly stand guard that my love for them most swiftly and powerfully rises and swirls through me and I know how easily I would be taken down if anything happens to them.

I sleep much less well than my children. My mind veers down the same road many nights—the path of possible disasters that could destroy our quiet, yet fragile household peace—armed robbery, road death, illness, and political or ethno-religious upheaval. Nigeria feels dangerous in a way that still jars me after four years. There’s a sense that no one is looking out for the citizens.

Few state governments regularly repairs all roads, or enforce decent speed, or keep clunker cars off the highway. How many times do we need to hear that brakes failed or a wheel came off to spin a vehicle into oncoming traffic?

Comprehensive health care is unknown here; preventive health checkups are rare, and people tend to self-treat or listen to and buy medicine from the local pharmacist, whose advice is free, but whose misdiagnosis often wastes precious time on killer diseases like malaria and typhoid. Drugs are unregulated; labs produce erroneous results.

And a string of conflicts, killings, and terror that rotates through towns, mutating to new hot spots, then coming back to haunt places where unrest, distrust, rage, and hopelessness already lurk are proving challenging for the government to end.

Our kids hear and know of the risks; we could scarcely keep such realities from them. But school, friends, play, and the tasks of growing consume them as those things should. And at night, they easily surrender to exhaustion well-earned when minds and bodies play hard. And Nigeria, their home for now, suits them.

It’s me who prowls the house, harboring obsessions, asking questions. Will our agreeing to come and work here make any sense if one of them perishes? Isn’t living here just craziness anyway? Can I continue to endure the risk? How can I protect them? Would the spirit of God call us here and then allow disaster? There are no answers, I think.

Parents all over the world must ask these kind of questions over and over. Parents without money to take a sick child to the clinic. Parents on the move to to balance successful careers and the demands of raising children. Parents languishing in refugee camps. Parents facing bullets, real ones in ghettoes or bullets of unemployment, loss of health insurance or illness. Parents whose substantial salaries afford the best schools and neighborhoods. Parents exhausted from the strain of working multiple jobs just to buy the peanut butter and second-hand clothes. To be a parent is to experience fathomless depths of both love and fear.

My fears did not begin in Nigeria; they burned brightly in relatively safe and sleepy Syracuse, New York. In 2004, while living there in a cozy bungalow on a neat little street , where I also stole into my children’s rooms at night. I wrote:

When I became a parent, life became more vivid. The joys became more pronounced as did (awareness) of dangers. . . . I see terror lurking at every turn. A run into the street as a car accelerates. An illness without a cure. The broken heart from being teased, rejected. Inability to soothe oneself, modulate strong emotions. A biological turn into mania or depression. I look at my two children at night as they are sleeping, and I am breathless, suspended with disbelief at the gifts I have been given, speechless with the terror of losing one of them in some way, any way.

As a parent, I can only plead with God and try to infuse my heart with the knowledge that life everywhere carries no promises, all things end, cycles are continuous, today is precious, somehow we survive and emerge, most of the time, from disaster or tragedy. That the Spirit led us here against conventional wisdom, but holds us here too. That I am loved but not entitled to any special promises or privileges, that we mitigate the risks as best we can for the benefits—relationships, flexible and challenging work, shared parenting, lots of family time—that bless us daily, that Nigeria mostly suits me too.

And I continue to watch them, awake or asleep, and marvel at their lives, their energy, their love, their trust, the fullness of life upon them now despite what tomorrow or even this night holds.

—Brenda Hartman-Souder, Jos, Nigeria, serves as co-representative of Mennonite Central Committee Nigeria and, along with spouse Mark, as parent of Valerie and Greg.