If you were crossing a high-swinging bridge and trying to aim for the other side, if you were trying to have beautiful eyes, to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face, and you were sometimes succeeding and sometimes not, missing your husband like crazy while trying to be upbeat and content as a good example for your kids, what would be an extremely encouraging event for you? Do you know?
Because I think that having a good friend, a friend that you have known and loved for years and years, come to visit you with her two little ones would be just the ticket.

Everyone in our family lights up when friends visit us. We come alive. And these friends are so dear to our hearts. Christy and her kids are here! Chinua went to help take care of his friend Ian when Ian was in quarantine after he had a bone marrow transplant, and now Ian’s wife, Christy—who is a long time friend of ours, from even before we knew Ian—and their kids, Asha and Fiona, have come to keep us company and make us laugh. I’m a very blessed girl.
We have six more days or something until Chinua gets back. I’m not sure because Chinua doesn’t know exactly when he will be on the bus to Pai, so we’ll continue to estimate on the long side.

The other night I was on the street, talking to someone I know about when Chinua would be coming back, and I kept saying, “In a week or more, hopefully,” as though there was a question about whether he was coming home or not. And I couldn’t stop saying it, giving the person the wrong idea entirely.

It’s like the time Chinua was singing his beautiful song “Ouagadougu” that he wrote for me, and he introduced it by saying, “One time my wife went to Africa and she was pregnant when she came back,” and I could feel everyone’s eyebrows shooting back into their hairlines, and they were all thinking, “floozy,” and I turned bright red. “You have to be careful how you say that,” I told Chinua afterward. “Let them know I was also pregnant before I went away.”

And from then on, he was careful. I have to learn the same lesson. Everyone, Chinua is definitely coming back! I’m just not sure what day because we’re no good with itineraries and we don’t want to do the airplane math because the international date line confuses us!