Routine Water

Much gets routinized here.  In the month I have been here in Lunsar, I wake up around 5:30 as the roosters just over the fence outside my window give their throaty serenade to the sun gods.  Contrary to my normal waking reflex, I am able to be awake here for several seconds, or sometimes longer,  before making the conscious decision to open my eyes.  It is like deciding when to press the "record" button.  I have come to enjoy this form of waking and don't attempt to control what I think about there in my bed, in the dark, with my eyes closed.  I often have the images of my children conjoined with the images of the children I have met and cared for here.  I take quick survey of my body- no fever, no headache, no joint aches.  Relief.  It is with gratitude that I slowly open my eyes, put on my glasses, and reach for the day.

I brush my teeth with bottled water, cup and splash tap water onto my bearding face, wash my hands and put in my contacts, left always before right.  I gather my black shorts and KC Royals t-shirt from the balustrade of my front patio, put them on, lace up my old sneakers and stretch.  I grab a small flashlight my colleague from Sebastopol, Mary, gave me and enter the morning darkness that is just being infiltrated by the slow blush of the morning sun.  And I run.  In a zagging loop around the perimeter of our lodging compound.  Past the garden Thomas has put in since I have been here.  The rows of squash with their core yellow bugles announcing the largesse to come.  Past the heaping rows of soya beans.  Past the stalky teenage growth of pepper plants.  I used to throw the flashlight over all of them to see if the goats got into them overnight.  Now, with the goats gone, I illumine them to mark their growth and the passage of time.  A few days ago Thomas showed me the well they dug in the middle of the field.  A man stood at the bottom of a 30 foot reinforced well filling buckets of moist soil.  Two men at the top used a pulley to hoist up bucket after bucket.  All done by hand down to the water table to bring water in the dry season up to the fields.  Later in the morning a farmer walks with a watering can up and down every row like a priest carrying an aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on his congregation.

I continue my run past the generator shed that rumbles and hums.  I pass the garbage pile and the magpies fly off.  I cross the wooden plank across the dry ditch and start another lap.  Sometimes if the  guards at the gate are awake, I leave the compound and run on the iron ore lorry route next to a large rice paddy field.  But not all that often.  I don't mind running in circles, really.  I process what I am doing here by speeding up my heart rate, pulling it into my lungs, locomote, and pour it out in sweat and exhalation.  Take it in, strip it down, and be sure to let it out.  Time after time.  Near the end of my run I turn off the flashlight.  The sky fills with a soft, iridescent  light that starts at the periphery of the horizon.  And without knowing exactly when, the night has been relieved by the understated dawn.

I take off my running gear and hang them back on the balustrade in the same place I removed them from earlier.  Sweat.  Cold water swallowing.  Morning ablutions.  Continued sweat.  And when the post shower sweat has slowed and my body has cooled, I get dressed and head down for hot Nescafe and white bread with butter and bananas for breakfast.  Every day.  Routine.  Blessed routine.

I was on track this morning to start the day like every preceding day since I have been here.  I woke, kept my eyes closed, and didn't hear the roosters.  I kept my eyes closed.  And then I heard the wind pick up velocity and write about it in the trees.  Leaves shook, trees leaned.  And then leaned back. I imagined.  I opened my eyes, got up, and went to  the door.  Ink black.  Rustling of leaves and the sense of movement in the dark.  The world in dark is a foreign world of sensation.  Not having to work today until the afternoon, I slept in.  So the light came sooner than usual.  I went through my routine and laced up my sneakers.  As I stepped outside, Sharkira was not there to greet me.  The air smelled of suspended moisture and mineral dampness.  Something outside of the morning routine was being plotted.  I began my run and before I even reached Thomas's vegetable fields, the rain began to fall.  Drop after warm drop it fell onto the ground in front of me.  And onto me.  RAIN!!! In the middle of dry season, an unexpected early morning rain.  The red, dusty road was tempered and lay now like a sheet of old red velvet cake.  Rivulets of pink and brown ran downhill like a mixture of pink and chocolate milk.  The rain came down in individual drops and never coalesced into sheets.  It fell straight down and didn't slant.  Nobody else was outside as I ran and ran under it.  In it.  With it.  I thought of Father Garcia Viejo and the unopened missalettes in the darkened pews of San Juan de Dios.  I thought of how kindness and faith can dilute even the most evil of assailants.  Routines are routines and meant to be broken.  For the sake of new, better routines.  The squash bugle flowers filled with water, lap after lap.  Soon the bees would come to drink from them, yellow on yellow.  The whole earth was being baptized anew.  For the first time, I knew Ebola was truly receding. And a new routine written in water awaits me.