"The Reward"-- Original Personal Essay

I wrote this about our mission trip to Africa in 2007. The mission work itself was fantastic. However, getting there was... an experience. :)
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There we were, eight crazy white people playing Yahtzee outside the Muslim prayer room in Nairobi Airport. The dingy blue carpet made me even more nauseous than I already felt. The few loudspeakers scattered through the building played the theme songs of shows like The Loveboat and Little House on the Prairie. It seemed as though we had materialized into some weird real-life episode of The Twilight Zone, and we'd be trapped there for the next eleven stinkin' hours. No real food. No chairs. Just eight crazy wazumgus--as the natives called us--and a forklift worth of suitcases.

We had already been in transit for two days. Our first layover remained in the States-- Memphis, Tennessee. Eleven hours would be plenty of time to stretch our legs, see a few sights, and get a taste of some Southern cooking.

Or, at least, it would have been plenty of time, if our ride hadn't gotten pneumonia and bailed on us. Instead of walking through the gates of Graceland, we walked through Memphis Airport.

Eleven hours is a long time. We sat at a little cafe in the airport for almost six hours, until they finally kicked us out to make room for people who were still buying food. By the time we boarded the next plane, I could practically feel my brain running out my ears out of sheer boredom. My brother Matthew and his best friend Dale, however, managed to stay occupied almost the entire stay in the airport. The moving sidewalks became their new best friends. Matthew, never having seen one before, was mesmerized at the idea of an escalator without steps. They spent at least two hours simply letting one sidewalk carry them down the airport corridor, then riding the other belt back. I'm convinced they would have done so the entire layover if some mean airport official hadn't forced them to stop.

Eleven hours is a long time to spend in an airport. Eleven hours is even longer on an airplane.

You must understand that I loathe and despise airplanes with every fiber of my being. The wretched contraptions smell like a combination of plastic, sweat, and recycled air. My ears pop and my head goes fuzzy, and sometimes they make me nauseous. I hate airplanes.

The plane to Amsterdam, our next layover, outdid most I'd seen. A small television hung on the back of each seat, and although the gross airplane smell was subtly present, it wasn't attacking my nostrils. I ended up watching movies and playing Bejeweled until I fell into a unresponsive state: completely aware of all around me, but not completely awake. I became so dead dog tired that I thought I'd never be able to move again.

Only when I awoke did I realize I had ever fallen asleep. In front of me was the new bane of my existence: airplane food.
It was supposed to be breakfast. I peeled off the plastic seal to find off-color eggs and something that vaguely resembled some type of meat. Next to the "meal" sat orange juice in a container that looked something like a Jello cup. I nibbled on the eggs; they tasted like rubber. I neglected to try the meat.

Twenty-four hour food count: lunch at the Blue Note Cafe in Memphis and a bite of airplane eggs. Nothing to drink. Naturally, I got dehydrated.

You know how dehydration is. Once your system gets dehydrated, it convinces itself it doesn't want anything more to eat or drink. When we reached Amsterdam, Mom practically had to shove the European Burger King food down my throat. After that, I felt a little better, but a few chicken nuggets couldn't possibly hold me over for the next twelve hours.
Fresh air finally reached my lungs outside the airport in Amsterdam. It matched the picture of Europe I'd formulated in my mind: cold, gray, and wet. Despite the weather, Amsterdam bustled with activity. We dared to embark on the boat tour around the canals of the city, taking in its quirky beauty. Unfortunately, this, our shortest layover, soon came to an end.

The next flight was to be the last long one: a connection from Amsterdam to Nairobi, Kenya. I hadn't eaten a real meal since Burger King, so I scrounged up a bag of Ritz crackers and devoured them. My tastebuds loved them; my stomach, however, was not so pleased. I felt my throat closing up and knew what was coming. My delicious crackers ended up in an airsick bag.
After a thousand forevers, we arrived at Nairobi Airport, our first steps on African soil. The heat and humidity hit me like an ocean wave. Some backstage technicality forced us to retrieve all of our baggage before the connecting flight to Arusha. That's how we arrived at the icky blue carpet outside the Muslim prayer room.

I promise you, hell looks exactly like Nairobi Airport.

There are no restaurants in Nairobi Airport. That means no food. Twelve hours without real food when you're already dehydrated is not a good thing.

The best we could find was a tourist shop specializing in overpriced necessities, particularly four-dollar water. I chugged the entire bottle without even thinking. I had never tasted anything so deliciously pure and fresh.

My stomach, not used to having water inside it at this point, refused to put up with this wonderful intruder for long. Before long, I was spewing it all over the already gross carpet. To make matters even worse (if that's possible), an African man saw me barfing and almost immediately began dragging me away.

"Come, come, I take you to doctor now. Come." I thought he was going to wrench my arm out of my socket trying to pull me along. I looked to my mom. Seeing that she was following, I let the man take me to the doctor.

The room was tiny, not much bigger than an office cubicle. Peeling paint colored the walls a sickly orange that made me want to throw up again. Mom and I sat down on two lumpy chairs in front of a dusty desk, at which sat a short, squatty African woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties. She peered at us over her glasses.

"What's wrong with her? Why ah you here?" she asked. I felt like the defendent in a court case. Mom tried to explain that I wasn't contagiously ill, only dehydrated. "Well, give her some WATER then!" the lady said in a how-stupid-can-you-Americans-be kind of voice. She ended up giving us two white pills in a little yellow envelope, without giving us the slightest clue what effect they were to have on me. Needless to say, I never took them.

After at least five hours of sleep, the time came for us to board the final plane to Tanzania. Having consumed another bottle of water (much more slowly than before), I felt considerably better. My brother, on the other hand, was apparently dehydrated as well, and began throwing up in front of the big African man who was to take our tickets. Naturally, my mind started racing. How did I know they would even let us on the plane? It would be completely plausible for them to think we were carrying some horrible American disease and keep us in Nairobi Airport forever!

The man just took our tickets and ushered us onto the plane without saying a word. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The last flight, though the shortest, debatably surpassed the others in discomfort. Never before had so many people crammed themselves onto one plane. The lack of overhead bins forced all of our carry-on bags beneath our feet. When the time for snacks came, the flight attendants served us Coke with an expiration date of two years ago.

At long last, we touched down at Kilimanjaro Airport. I would have fallen to my knees and kissed the ground if I'd thought I would have the energy to get back up again. After waiting a good hour for our bags, we walked to the curb to find... no one. Mr. Gee, a local missionary, should have been there to pick us up and take us to the hotel. In my mind, he had naturally forgotten us. After all, the trip so far had crashed and burned. Why shouldn't the rest of it be the same way?

Within the hour, however, refuge arrived in the form of a white sixteen-passenger van. We eagerly climbed in and rested our exhausted bodies on the cushioned seats. I realized with little surprise that there were no seat belts. Lovely.

"Twelve hours?" Mr. Gee exclaimed as we pulled away from the airport. "It only takes about five hours driving to get to Nairobi. I coulda driven all the way out there and gotten you here faster."

Sure. Now you tell us.

Halfway to the hotel, Matthew rapped my leg. I had been close to sleep, and wanted to strangle my brother for having awakened me.

"What is it?" I groaned.

"Sissy, look out the window!" His voice rang with excitement. He would never leave me alone until I saw what he wanted me to see, so I humored him and looked.

And there were stars. Millions of them. They pinpricked the night like an ethereal game of Connect-the-Dots. The Milky Way laced across the heavens, tying the view together like a ribbon. The landscape beneath looked like a dark, shapely shadow against the midnight blue of the sky. I couldn't imagine anything more beautiful.

Suddenly the boredom, the miserable flights, and the dehydration all seemed overwhelmingly worth the reward.

"Isn't it pretty, Sissy?"

I put my arm around my little brother's shoulder.

"Yeah, Buddy. It is."

"Forgotten"- An Original Flash Fiction

"I apologize for the long letter... I didn't have time to write a short one." -Thomas Jefferson
I wrote this a while back and thought I'd share. I took a Creative Writing class (probably my favorite class EVER) and we learned about flash fiction-- a story in 99 words or less. This is one of my favorite forms to write, because it's a challenge. As the quote above suggests, it's massively harder to write something very short than it is to write something very long. Anyways, here it is. I call it "Forgotten." Criticism welcome. :)
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The man stood waiting for the train. He hated the gray London weather.
A flicker of light flitted into his line of vision. He looked up at the overcast sky. How did sunlight peak through on a day like this? All at once memories rocketed into his mind. Memories of a place where the sun always shone. Memories of flying. Memories of magic.
Childish nonsense, he thought. It's only a piece of dust. He brushed the bright speck out of his sight.
Tinkerbell fluttered away, mourning the loss of her best friend.

Hey there. :)

This is where I come to be me. On my other blog, Christ Crossed My Heart, I write Christian articles, and as such I didn't want to add stuff about my life there. I feel like that's more of an evangelistic tool and I don't want to mess up that vibe. This is where you get to see the real me, the me that's not quite so formal and tells you about her crazy life. :)

What you should know about me:
-I'm a New Testament Christian and I follow my Savior, Jesus Christ. That's my life. So there will definitely be spiritual thoughts here too, but the ones that were just cool thoughts, and not full-length blog posts.
-I love my family and friends. They're kind of freaks. But I love them more than I can even tell you. And they make for great stories. :) <3
-I love to write. I write about anything and everything. That's part of why I started this blog... I just want to write more. :)
-I'm addicted to books. I'll probably write about books a lot too.
-I'm also addicted to music. Occasionally there will be song lyrics. Songs tend to be able to say what's going on with me much better than I ever could (which is why I'm addicted to music).
-I'm a geek. I will "geek out" over things. You'll either find it obnoxious or endearing. I hope you'll find it endearing. :)
Enjoy my lovelies! Thanks for checkin' in.
~Miss Lissa :) <3