Sumaya

There are moments in life that you feel the air around you deflate and an otherwise happy or at least neutral moment gets crushed under the weight of reality. They happen to everyone everywhere but I sure feel like they happen a lot more frequently here. Tragedy is just easier to come by in poor countries.
Today we had one of those moments - the kind that will prick sadness inside us whenever we remember. We have been back in Tajikistan for a week now and we headed out to the village to see our Tajik family. For those who are new to this blog - we lived with a local family who knew no English for one month when we first got here. They have become like family to us and we refer to their village as "our village" when we talk about it. They have been so patient with us from the get-go with learning Tajik and learning cultural do's and don'ts. They've also been a great source of counsel when we've needed local advice about situations that have come up in the neighborhood. In our Tajik family's house there is our Tajik mom and dad. We call our mom "Khola-jon" and our dad "Muallim-jon." The kids call them "Moma" and "Bobo" which means grandma and grandpa respectively. We have 5 brothers - the oldest is Rees' age and all except the youngest have kids. The youngest is getting married this spring. There are also two sisters but they live with their husbands and mother-in-laws. The brother Rees is closest with is named Jamshed and he's been a great help with language since we got to Tajikistan, not to mention someone that Rees generally just enjoys hanging out with. His wife's name is Sanovbar and she grew up across the street and hoped she would someday marry Jamshed - isn't that cute? In this household, there are nine kids - not to mention the random nieces and nephews and other grand kids that are over on any given day. When we left for the states - we had four little nieces and nephews that were just barely a year old. We were excited to see all the kids when we arrived today. We knew they'd all grown and I really couldn't wait to see Jamshed's daughter, Sumaya. She's so much like him already - always moving, always taking in her surroundings and just a wiry little thing. I figured she'd probably seem like she'd grown the most and she'd be running around everywhere (she had barely taken her first step when we left). We walked into the gate and kissed all the kids and family and I quickly scanned the ground to see which little ones were running around. I saw the littlest boy, Yakub, and he was walking around no problem. I turned to Sanovbar - still with a smile on my face, happy to see them all again - and asked, "Where's Sumaya? Is she so big now? Is she running around?" and it was like the air froze over.  Sanovbar couldn't say anything and my other sister-in-law said "she left" and made a sign like washing her hands over her face - a sign people make at the end of a prayer and when referring to someone who died. Sanovbar just stood next to me with tears streaming down her face and everyone was frozen - there were no other words to say. All I could do was hold Sanovbar and say, "Oooooooh noooooooo" - I know, no magical, soothing words here, but what can you say when you realize someone's 1 1/2 year old just died? Apparently back in September she got sick like a cold but her mouth turned white and was covered with sores and the cold wouldn't improve. They went to the doctor who gave them a salve for her mouth that helped but told them they needed to have her blood tested. The tests came back showing abnormalities in her white blood cells consistent with leukemia. They took her to the main hospital in Dushanbe (the capital city) and they confirmed the diagnosis and offered some treatment but more or less told them that they just didn't have anything that would cure her. They told them that in America and other countries they are able to do more research and at least offer clinical trials and stuff like that but that there's really nothing much that can be done. The brothers were insistent that there must be a mistake and so they took Sumaya to multiple different doctors but all came back with the same terrible news. They took her home and Moma and Bobo slept right by her all the time. She slowly stopped being able to walk and they kept spoon feeding her water and a little bit of food but she slowly stopped taking it til one day she was just gone. That was just a month ago. There is, as expected, still a great cloud of sadness that hangs over our family and, of course, Rees and I are just now processing all of this. I worked in oncology for 7 years before coming here so I'm acquainted with worst-case-scenarios that happen to good people who are too young, or in their prime, or have just gotten a second chance at life somehow or who are newly retired after working so hard their whole lives and are ready to pursue some new dreams. It's always awful when these things happen and I have to say that you just never get accustomed to it. It's always desperately sad.
I always liked the name "Sumaya" (Soo-mai-YAH) and I remember sitting around talking to my sister-in-laws one day (before Sanovbar was even pregnant with her) and they were asking me what Tajik names I like. I told them for a girl I really like "Sumaya" and for whatever reason they really liked that I liked that name. When she was born, Sanovbar and Jamshed asked the oldest sister-in-law what she should be named and she said, "Sumaya." I definitely didn't hide my approval of that name :). Every child is precious - it's not just a cliche. Sanovbar was so excited to have a daughter and I thought I'd post some pictures of Sumaya here.

Sumaya and her mom, Sanovbar. She was a tiny, fussy, baby - you know the kind that needed to be held and bounced and all that. She was so little, though, that your arms rarely got tired.

I'm trying to get her to fall asleep in my lap so her mom can get some stuff done. This is one of the first times that Hannah came over and kissed a baby just because she wanted to - not because anyone encouraged her too.

Finally starting to fall asleep.

She's just turned one and is still a tiny girl but she's active and makes us all work to get smiles. Holding her made Rees start to want another baby girl.

Emmett holds her every chance he gets. I have another picture where her head is lower than her feet while he's holding her and you can tell she remembers how this guy operates and is unsure.

Traveling by grace

Just try to wake these two up. This is what jet-lag looks like for us :)

I've heard "grace" defined as "unmerited favor." I'm not going to go into any theological discourse on grace and traveling but we feel so fortunate to have experienced great grace during our travels back to Tajikistan. To those of you who prayed, THANK YOU. I don't know why some travels go so smoothly and some don't but this long journey went really well and we are thankful to be back.
It is amazing how much stuff we travel with when we come here from the U.S. We've been to Germany and Thailand (and Rees has been to Turkey) since living here but we are never worried about "overages" in our luggage and we don't pack our carry-ons too ridiculously full when we return from those places. Coming back from the states is another story. There are just so many things that are so nice to have here - spices, crafts, big containers of medicine (this is so American but we love the huge bottles of Ibuprofen, TUMS and the like that you can get at Costco - you just can't find quantities like this anywhere else), decent clothes for the kids (Target clothes look like designer digs compared to what we can usually find here), games and on and on. We are at a stage where homeschool curriculum is going to be taking up more and more room too. This time around it composed about 70lbs of our checked-in luggage weight. I'm hoping that that will become less as tablets and Kindles and such are owned by more people.
With the help of my sister, her new hubby (just aside - we are so happy to welcome Josh into the family!), my brother and my mom, we got all our 7 bags checked in and then took off with our carry-ons full of rocks through security. We made it to our gate while the plane was boarding and the kids sat happily with their Leap Pads while we flew to Las Vegas (weird place for an international connection, huh?). We had plenty of time while in Las Vegas to let the kids run off some steam - they never get tired of those people mover things - and then got on our flight for Frankfurt. About 4 hours into the flight I was thinking, "ugh, this is when I start feeling like this will never end!" but Rees, me and the kids ended up sleeping off and on for 3-4 hours and the rest of the flight just zipped by. We got to Frankfurt and were greeted by Rees' cousin Luci and her husband Uli. They helped us find our shuttle to the hotel and get ourselves and our bags all situated. We ended up being able to keep our luggage in a luggage locker instead of hauling up to our room and Luci & Uli kept us awake (thank you!) and helped us find an inexpensive deli close by. Rees made it til about 6pm and then conked out and the kids and I made it til 7. Hannah woke up at about 11:30 and was wide awake so we gave her a snack and sat her down with her DVD player and Jake and the Neverland Pirates (a favorite in our house these days). Emmett slept til 2:30am and then he needed a snack and such. He was able to fall back asleep by 5 and Hannah by 6 and we all slept until 9 or 10 - not too bad for jet lag. The hotel (which had been completely booked for a few nights) was able to get us a late check out so we took the kids for a swim and got showered and ate breakfast at a leisurely pace and then headed back to the airport (without any surprise charges at the hotel - always a bonus!). We were delighted to find that the Somon Air counter was already open and there was no line. We were dreading having to pay for our 80kg of extra weight in our luggage but were thrilled when the lady checking us in announced that we were over by 11kg and only charged us for that - amazing. We had time to eat lunch and get to the plane (which took off on time - 3 out of 3 planes left on time) which was only about 1/3 full. We had room to stretch out and snooze which is always appreciated. It turns out that there was a huge ice storm in Frankfurt the following day so good thing our plane left on Saturday. We had the most uneventful time getting through passport control in Dushanbe and found that all of our luggage had safely made it. Some of the local workers at the airport even helped us get our bags checked out (an interesting process we've only run in to in the Dushanbe airport) and we were out of the airport within 30 minutes of landing - a record for sure! Our friend picked us up in another friends car and we were somehow able to fit all our bags in and got back to our town, KT, by 5:30am. The kids were thrilled to see the toys and books they had left behind. Hannah had visitors through the day and got right to work making her mud pies with some of the other little girls. They were so excited they couldn't sleep and ended up falling asleep for the night at 4pm (they slept straight through til 4am). We're still in the midst of jet-lag (so you'll have to forgive anything in this post that makes no sense) but have already enjoyed seeing some friends and getting unpacked. To top it all off, we've had really good electricity so far - only a few couple hour cuts. Oh, and though we had some grumpy moments - we were able to not bite each other's heads off - also appreciated :)

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So now it's on to winterizing our place, looking for a house to move into, getting into homeschooling, Rees getting up to speed on the new business all the while trying to be sure to rest. We'll keep you updated on how that's going.