1998

I jerked awake, as house-shaking blows battered the shack we were in.  A machete was forced through the thin wall, at the corner by my head.  Suddenly soaked with sweat, I heard drunken voices yelling outside.  Hysterically I searched the dark bed, the floor, for my girlfriend, with whom I had fallen asleep so very happily a few hours previous.  Never before in my life had I been able to sleep soundly with my arms around a lover’s neck on the same pillow, her back sweet and close against my chest, hands entwined against her cheek.  The memory was blown away as a thick branch smashed through the window across the room.  She had heard them outside and gotten out of bed to investigate.  “BASTAAAAARDDDDSSSSS” my Francine screamed viciously, furiously as she grabbed the branch from inside and wrestled whomever was outside for control.  A large handful of flaming newspaper and trash was pushed in another broken window.  Francine yelled at me then “David! Put it out!” and I scrambled to throw our bedding upon it.

New hammering blows came at the wall next to the bed.  A machete blade again was forced in at the shack’s corner, twisted and the thin wooden wall began to crack.  Another machete, then hand and forearm came through the window next to the branch Francine held, questing for someone to hack at, but my tough Francine was a couple feet away.  Eyes burning and streaming from the smoke I threw a chair at the machete in the window and it fell to the floor with a scream from its owner.  Higher echoing screams erupted inside the shack with us from our friend Dhoro’s lovely children, as she shielded them behind her in the doorway of the second room, a large kitchen knife in her own strong hand.  “LEAVE!  Waoga nyinyi! (You cowards)!! DRUNKEN COWARDS! LEAVE MY CHILDREN!!”  Ordinarily a teacher of tremendous warmth and charm, Dhoro now roared like her revolutionary Mau Mau uncles and father.  “YOU’LL DIE INSIDE MY HOUSE! RUN COWARDS!”

Other angry voices joined outside, yelling in Swahili.  Blows were fiercely struck.  Metal clanged.  Francine fell against the wall as the branch was let go of, and started crying hard, knees against her chest.  Attackers’ and our defenders’ footfalls and yells raced off into the labyrinth of shacks.  I staggered over to her in the sudden quiet moment, swept glass away with a still smoking blanket, sat and pulled her to me, sobbing as well now as though my face would break apart.  Francine screamed GODDAMMIT GODDAMMIT, bashing her hand against the wall until I caught it and pulled her tighter.  From outside: “Francine!!?? David, Wamekuumiza?!” (They have hurt you?) our great friend and fellow teacher Ajaja yelled, pounding hugely on our door.  Dhoro dropped her kitchen knife, snatched the larger machete from the floor and ripped the door open, rushing past Ajaja’s dignified, powerful frame; past his scared, kind eyes and into the dark.  “Hapana! Mamiiiiiiii!” (No! Mommy) Her children screamed.

2007

I sighed, looking at the thin, gray light on the ceiling in our Chicago apartment, listening to the birds’ early song.  I looked at my now wife, Francine, as she slept undisturbed, fearing that thrashing in my sleep had wakened her, marveling at all that we had been through together, at the life we had together.  I badly wanted to ease in against her and try to sleep some more.  We still slept twined together just as when we were new to each other.  I still woke occasionally with nightmares from our time teaching in Kibera, Kenya and Africa’s largest shantytown.  The attack on our friend Dhoro’s home came because we had voted to expel a much loved student, Gabriel, who had stabbed a young man that lived near the school.  Once a child soldier in Southern Sudan’s SPLA army, he had made his way to Kibera and the school we taught at, and with his charm and eagerness made great progress, despite his tremendous anger.

It was a terrible, terrible decision for us to expel him, but we bent to the pressure of the needs of all of our other students, and the community which was very angry about the stabbing.  He had stayed away from school on the day of the expulsion out of fear of reprisal for the stabbing.  His friends however let him know about his expulsion and brought him a letter from us.  He came to Dhoro’s house with machetes and fire, to let us know just how terrible the decision was for him as well.

We were lucky that he hadn’t come with guns and fire as he often did in Sudan’s SPLA.  He had filled many of our nights in Kibera with stories of his soldiering.  Spellbound we would sit for hours as our empty dinner plates dried unseen in front of us, as this boy unburdened himself of stories no human eye should have every gazed on.

I knew that there was no chance of getting back to sleep.  I had gotten hungry lying in bed thinking about Gabriel and our time in Nairobi, so I very, very gently kissed Francine’s nicely muscled shoulder, slipped slowly out of bed and padded through the gentle light to our daughter Lina’s bed.  She slept on her back, a miracle of peace and fearlessness with her arms out over her head.  I resisted the deep pull to pick her up and hold her to my face.  I loved her impossibly, feeling the whole earth turn under me as I looked at her.  I sang almost soundlessly: “Honey baby bunny love, you’re the one I’m dreaming of, sent to me from up above.  You’re my cutey cutey cutey.”  I put my head down and breathed some words: “Thank you for keeping my baby and wife safe this night.  Let me be brave at school today.  Let me love each of your angels that makes it to school.”  Then I laughed just a little too loudly “and let me call the parents of each angel that does not make to school.”  With the rate of absenteeism and disconnected parent numbers at my rough school I would need great spiritual help to call everyone I should.

Smiling like a tremendous fool, wiping tears from my face with my arm, I walked to the kitchen.  As I ate I looked over the paper I would present that evening in the doctoral program Francine, Ajaja and I now attended, after teaching on the west side of Chicago all day.  The paper was the culmination of all of the teaching and program development that Ajaja, Francine and I had done in Nairobi and Chicago, and the work that Francine’s and my parents did in psychology.

I knew that moments with the beauty and enormity of the one I just had with my sleeping daughter could, and needed to happen in schools.  I knew schools could be amazing.