Mutinando (a guest post by James' mom)

 

Just after 2am on the morning of Day 5, Maya sits up a bit in her sleeping bag and informs me there is going to be an explosion. Her blue-green sweater is balled up into a pillow. It is a few inches away from her headlamp, which I put right next to her so she can grab it and run when she needs to. The moon is directly above our heads, one day past full. Pale white light pours through the thin mesh of our tent, across my child’s body. I did not bother with the rainfly. Zambia is still a few weeks away from the start of the rainy season, and I am hoping the air flow will help bring down her fever.

“The game is starting,” she says, so softly I am not sure I heard her right. I fumble for my glasses. In the moonlight, I can see her eyes are open, staring straight ahead. I lean closer in.

“What honey?”

“I think it’s going to explode,” she says in a whisper.

I put my hand on her head. She is still hot. Still burning. We are still at least a day’s walk from base camp. And with every frantic un-zip and dash outside to squat and empty out her body, Maya has become more depleted. Now, she is making no sense. My alarm, already stretched taut, ratchets up a notch. I have been calm up to now. I have been slow to reach this pitch of emotional panic. But now, here we are.

* * *

Years ago, when Stefan and I described our honeymoon in South America to my sister-in-law in lavish, affectionate detail – the winding roads, the long hikes, the close calls, the hard-won views – she said flatly, “That sounds like hell.” For us, it had been glorious. Her comment stopped me short and made me wonder what was wrong with us. Even now, it surprises me how few people share our idea of a good time.

We are drawn to physically demanding journeys. To remote beauty. And the stories we tell most as a family seem to be the ones where things go awry. A classic: the road trip from Seattle to New Hampshire when Stefan and my 1984 Ford hatchback broke down in the Black Hills National Park; we gleefully gave away everything we owned to people on the side of the road, and hitchhiked to the nearest bus station, me still clutching my wedding dress in its plastic hanging bag. Or the time, as a family of five on a paddling trip in Canada, we had to fight a stormy headwind ten miles to safety, the boats spinning in circles when we caught the wind wrong, arriving drenched and exhausted just before sunset.  

I have trouble admitting this. But sometimes, when our plans go off-kilter, I feel a little jolt of electricity running around along my spine. A small part of me that was hibernating wakes up. We have a good life. But as responsible parents and diligent workers, so many of our hours are spent with our heads down, buying bread, driving carpool, answering email, planning meetings, following routes we could navigate half-asleep. Disrupting the pattern, not knowing how it will all shake out, is my deepest and guiltiest pleasure.

From the beginning, we’ve wanted to bring our children along for the ride. We wanted tough kids who knew how to be useful. Raising them, I’ve tolerated only modest whining about quotidian challenges. The way I am put together, it seemed only logical: If one of them was tired of biking, but we were only halfway up the big hill to the house, what was there to tell them but ‘keep peddling, you’ll be fine’? If the bathrooms needed cleaning, why couldn’t a five-year-old help?  

We taught them that sometimes they had to wait for the things they wanted, and to deal with it when they didn’t get what they wanted at all. When they were small, I would sing them a song I made up called “Sometimes It’s Hard to Wait for Lunch.” We ended up singing that song a lot, because on my day off, I’d often herd them out the house with maybe half the provisions small children need – eager to be outside, too impatient to assemble the various food containers and emergency supplies while a beautiful morning got away from us. The children learned to roll with it. They gobbled up snacks the other mothers seemed to always have at the ready and went to them first for band-aids, while I made sheepish, half-hearted resolutions to do better.

Now ten, thirteen, and fifteen, our children have, for the most part, absorbed those early lessons. They are capable, independent people with plenty of grit. Maya could cook dinner for five and navigate public transportation on her own by age 11. And she’s an athlete. Tall and strong and slender. We watch in wonder at the edge of the soccer field as she revels in the game, slide-tackling her opponents with barely controlled abandon, shaking off the hard knocks, sprinting all out in the last minutes of the fourth quarter, after other kids have backed off.

But here in Zambia, Maya seems bored and listless in places I’d thought would knock her socks off. She summons muted interest in the sights and stories of this country that fascinate me or leave me gasping with delight. I am irritated by her mumbled complaints and general disinterest in this country. But mainly I am disoriented. A year ago, she would have considered herself the luckiest kid in the world to spend a year in Zambia. At thirteen, she can be a bit of a pill. I wonder if she is resentful of her parents’ African boondoggle. I figure she feels a persistent tug of loneliness, and longs for her friends in Boston. Or maybe she’s stuck – suddenly emotionally dependent on Mom and Dad at a moment when the pull towards autonomy has never been stronger.

I don’t know for sure, because she doesn’t talk to me much anymore.

* * *

We arrived late at the base camp, and the Day 1 hike felt hot and long to the children, who were unaccustomed to heavy packs. But I had studied miombo woodlands briefly in graduate school and was captivated by this intact ecosystem in the midst of springtime transformation. My eye was drawn to the single, tiny, bright flowers poking through the ground. I held long, curled, rigid seed husks in my hands and stuffed them into my pack. I touched waxy, delicate new leaves coming up from the ground. Even the most monotonous parts of the hike felt to me like a gift. Like freedom.

That first night in the bush, Maya was the only kid who did not hit the gastrointestinal wall. First James, our 15-year-old bottomless pit, took a pass on desert. Stefan and I looked at each other, four eyebrows raised. Something was coming. That night in our tent, feeling not quite right, Stefan stepped out for some fresh air, and woke up on the ground, scrapes along his arms where he had fallen as he passed out. An hour later, James came wondering out of the kids’ tent, retching. Around midnight, Drew threw up in his sleeping bag, somehow managing to fall right back to sleep until morning, as the smell soured around them.

We spent the next day cleaning and drying sleeping bags and camping mattresses, sipping water, grousing at one another, and feeling generally miserable. The pancake mix I had prepared for that morning – two cups of flour, one tablespoon of baking powder, one cup of powdered milk, quarter teaspoon of nutmeg and cinnamon – stayed in the Day 2 bag, untouched. Maya steered clear of food, fearful of getting sick, while I battled my own churning stomach and prepared to let go of a journey I had meticulously planned for months.  Our Zambian guide Victor, stoic, undeterred, shared a new plan: if we hiked extra the next day we could stay on track. But none of us was particularly optimistic the trip could be salvaged.

I like to think I would never put my family in danger or push my children to continue a journey that would make them miserable. Sometimes I worry that is not the case, but I hope that it is. I think it is. Sometimes I know I push the envelope. But by the end of Day 2, I was prepared to give up. It seemed my whole idea for the trip had been misguided. We went to bed sulking, speaking to one another in grunts, if at all.

Then somehow, as Day 3 dawned, blue and golden, we woke feeling rested and a little bit hungry. Everyone seemed in good spirits. I made some oatmeal, the guides were busy readying themselves for the journey, and it didn’t even seem like there was a decision to be made. After all, we had already paid. So off we tromped, deeper in the bush, at a good clip to make up for lost time.  

* * *

For most of Day 3, there was no trail that I could see, though somehow Victor always seemed to know where we were headed. We travelled through kilometers of burned bush, then a lush, green, fig tree jungle, with long, languorous roots that snaked down to a narrow creek bed. We told stories and sang everything from freedom songs to Billie Eilish to Hamilton. Around the ten kilometer mark we came to a stretch of gentle rapids and wide, mossy rocks. We flung down our packs, stripped down to our skivvies, and plunged in, swimming through deep waters to a shallow, fast flow over rocks that hit our backs and cleaned the sweat and dirt from our hands and faces. 

We ate some peanut butter sandwiches and kept walking. For once, I was ready with sour gummy bears and chocolate caramels for the moments when a kid’s energy waned. We scrambled down an escarpment, slipping on dry leaves and dirt, grabbing on to supple young trees to keep from sliding out of control. On flat ground again, we walked alongside a waterfall, easily the most beautiful we had seen in our lives, the volume tremendous even at the end of the dry season. 

Ten minutes later, we arrived at an open area Victor had selected for our campsite. Nineteen kilometers had seemed a long way when we were heading off that morning, but turned out to be quite manageable, even for ten-year-old Drew. I looked around, a little disappointed that the only visible source of water was a murky, stagnant pond with tiny tadpoles skittering within. I figured the nicer camp site we had originally been aiming for must have been too far to reach in one day. This was no doubt Victor’s back-up plan. Trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice, I asked him if there was any other water nearby.

He looked at me quizzically.

“Come,” he said. “I will show you.”

We gathered behind Victor and followed – first scrambling down a rock face that was short but sheer. He led us deeper in, toward a cluster of boulders, and showed us how to crouch down low and crab walk under and between the rocks. Clambering through a last gap in the boulders, we emerged into a clearing to stand on a smooth, massive rock and look out onto the wild-open, untrammeled Luangwo Valley far below. To our left, a second, stunning falls that gave James vertigo. Far below, we could pick out the path of the Mutinando River by tracing the green meanders amidst the browns and reds. Victor looked around for a moment with satisfaction and turned back to address us.

“So now you see,” he said. A solemn fellow, and a man of few words, at least with Western guests, Victor allowed himself a half-smile when he saw the looks on our faces. He motioned with his head toward an opening in the rocks.

“There is a cave. You can swim.” He gave us a quick nod and turned to go.

“Victor,” I said, stopping him. “When you come to this place, do you see many other people?”

“No one,” he said, “No one but the ones I have brought”

He disappeared the way we had come, leaving us to explore on our own.  

The sun was still hot, and we were grateful to strip down again, keeping our sandals on to navigate the slick rocks. We picked our way into the cave Victor had pointed out, and waded into blue waters, in over our heads after a few steps. Around the corner, deeper in the cave, there was another, smaller waterfall. Sunlight entered through a small opening in the rock, high above our heads. At the midpoint of the falls, sunlight met spray to form an impossible rainbow, in the cave, in the air, above us. We could not hear each other over the roar of the water. After a moment, we got up the nerve to stand directly under the water, our backs pummeled by its force, slipping and laughing, gasping for breath. 

Each of us spent the next bit of time in our own way. James took photos of members of our family sunning on the rocks, wearing lovely multi-colored strips of Kenyan fabric called kikoys, scheming for a new entrepreneurial endeavor. Drew retreated into a book and some time alone with tired feet soaking in the river. Stefan and I went with the guides on an bonus scramble, down the rocks, to a third, even more spectacular section of Mutinando Falls. 

And Maya, who at this point had not eaten anything but an orange, a few pasta elbows, and a handful of Swedish Fish since we’d left the base camp, started to feel unwell.

* * *

As night fell, we built a fire on a rock overlooking the valley and cooked spiced red lentils and chapatis over it. I was annoyed more than worried when Maya refused her chapati. They had come out black from where we’d rolled them out with water bottles on the bottom of a pot. She could be so picky. The rest of us stuffed chocolate and peanut butter into smushed bananas and roasted them in their skins. Watched the moon rise fat and full and yellow over the valley. 

On Day 4, before dawn, Stefan and I clambered out of our tent for the sun rise. We attempted to capture Mutinondo with words and drawings in our journals, aware from past experience that we would pine for it in the days and years and decades to come.

Amidst such beauty, it was hard to pay much attention to Maya skulking around. We caught mumbled complaints. It was hot. Her stomach hurt. But we heard a similar litany many days in Lusaka. And in any event, we were 40km from base camp. She knew there was no alternative but to gut it out.

To placate her, I pulled everything out of her pack and distributed it between the rest of us, including some for our guides. We were in high spirits, and even the boys didn’t mind. Packing done, after one last swim in the waterfall cave, which Maya watched from the sidelines, we set off. 

Every few hundred meters, Maya stopped in her tracks to lay down under a tree for a while. If there was no shade, Drew and I would hold a kikoy over her to make some. As we walked, part of me wanted to tell her to just suck it up and keep going. That if she had just eaten more last night she’d have a lot more energy right now. But that part of me lost ground as the day wore on.

Poor kid, I thought. This can’t be fun.

She started lurching into the woods every hour or so, clutching the toilet roll. Each time, our guides and the boys discretely looked the other way.

* * *

We are out of the tent for the fifth time tonight. Maya is sitting with her bare bottom on the rocks, feet pointing towards the river, her underwear around her ankles, chest heaving after another bout of nausea. Modesty had mattered to her on the trail. But she gave up trying to make it into the bushes not long after we arrived at camp. Each of her trips out of the tent is marked by its own pool of liquid on the wide, flat rock, reflecting obscenely in the moonlight. With my headlamp, I peer into the pools. I can see that what is coming out of my child has gone from clear to green to red. And there is so much of it. Each pool looks voluminous. Enough to drown in.  

When we return to the tent, I hand Maya the bottle that contains a packet of Oral Rehydration Solution, mixed with water. The packet was a gift from Victor’s pack. Maya takes a sip. It is a tiny sip. More like a taste. So much smaller than I want it to be. She screws up her face.

“It’s disgusting!” she moans, accusingly.

She begs me with her eyes to stop. Why am I always so hard on her? Why do I always expect so much more from her than other parents expect from their kids? Don’t I see how she is suffering? Isn’t it bad enough already? Do I have to make it worse?

She refuses a second swallow, and I let her off the hook. Help her get her feet back in the sleeping bag, and lay beside her, praying. Not again. Not again. Please God, let her sleep.

She bolts up again. It hasn’t even been thirty minutes. Headlight on. I help her with the zipper. She wriggles out, again. Squats, again. Her body shaking. The new pool is bigger than ten sips. Twenty sips. Again, she sits on the rock. Again, I help her back into the tent.

“Alright LG. Big gulp now. I want to see you really drink this.”

She groans and looks at me, tears in her eyes. And all of a sudden, she is fierce.

“No! I am not doing this anymore. Can’t you see? This stuff is making it worse.” I look at her in wonder and exhaustion. My girl is thirteen. This push-back, these new boundaries and elbows, this distance, all right on schedule. Except that for one more night, I need her to stay my little girl, my LG, and do exactly as I say.

“Hon, I know it feels that way,” I say, trying to rub her back. She shrugs me off. “But I swear to you, it is working. It is helping. And you are drinking it. I want you to sit up. Now.” She stiffens.

“No! This is my body. I know what is good for it, and what is not. And I know this stuff is not helping. I will not do this any more. I am done!”

All the time Maya and I have or will ever know condenses into this moment. I see her whole life. Now. I see my whole life and what it would become if I were to fail my child tonight. All that is or will be is with us, inside the tent. Right now.

Or, maybe I am overreacting? Maybe she is not all that sick. Maybe if I let her stop drinking the ORS, it won’t matter all that much. Maybe I’m thinking too much about my across-the-street neighbor whose 7^th grader died of the flu when he got dehydrated and letting their story run rip shod through my psyche.

Still, an intuition in me that I cannot shake recognizes that what Maya and I do now, in this moment, the words I use, the milliliters of fluid she puts into her body this very hour could be the difference between my child eating Saturday morning pancakes and having her first kiss and playing soccer in college, and my child ceasing to be. 

The night wears on and I am bribing her – $10 a sip. When that fails, I am begging. At one point, although I worry about scaring her, I tell my child that if she refuses to drink the ORS she may die. Bizarrely, that seems not to have the slightest impact on her. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I tell her that if she drinks the whole bottle of ORS I will take her to a Broadway musical. She looks me in the eye to see whether I’m serious. She can tell that I am.

“Hand it over,” she says, and takes a huge swallow. And a little part of me is suddenly laughing. Because thirteen-year-olds are the nuttiest.

Just before first light, I crouch beside my sleeping husband, who has spent the night crammed into the kids’ tent with the boys. I wake him, looking for a shorthand that can bring him from the groggy, half-awake place where he is to the heart-pounding place of panic where I am. He takes it all in, holds me for a moment, and then swings into motion like the good father that he is. He confers with Victor, and the two of them hatch a plan to send Michael, our second guide, to hike the last 15km out, find a vehicle, and drive it the long-way round to a road 2.5 km away that is almost never used, but that we think we can reach with Maya. Stefan and the boys pack up. Victor doesn’t tell us, but he builds a stretcher for our daughter, just in case.

* * *

The sun comes up on Day 5. Maya is still sick every hour. But she is also still sipping, now with a sliver of determination. She agrees to eat a spoonful of peanut butter. She is summoning strength, readying herself for a final push. Just 2.5km to go.

She leans on her Dad or me for every step. She finishes the ORS. And by the time we arrive at the road, although it is almost completely overgrown, although we'll have two hours of waiting before the vehicle will arrive, another hour’s drive to reach base camp, and another hour or more to reach the nearest rural outpost with a drip and antibiotics, I am ratcheting down, notch by notch. I think, I am pretty sure, Maya is going to be ok.

* * *

In the days that follow, Stefan and I second-guess our judgment in general, and our parenting choices, as well as myriad individual decisions: Going forward on Day 3. Failing to adequately monitor Maya’s food intake. Drinking from the river. Not traveling with our own ORS or antibiotics. Watching helplessly as Michael took the time to first cook and then eat his n’shima breakfast before heading off for help on Day 5, rather than paying him whatever he asked for to skip the meal. Coming to Zambia in the first place. What kind of unfit, idiot parents are we?

By the time we reach Lusaka after eight hours of white-knuckle driving on the Great North Road, James is also unwell. Ultimately he, Drew, and Stefan all test positive for typhoid. I am concerned about all of them – especially James. His fever spikes to 104. He passes out sometimes on the journey from bed to bathroom. I am up with him in the night, as I had been with Maya.

But the medical advice we find in Lusaka is sound. We have a diagnosis. A plan. A small pharmacy of drugs at our disposal to put his system right. There are difficult moments, but not like the early hours of Day 5 at Mutinando.

By all accounts, I should be feeling guilt, uncertainty, worry, and exhaustion. But I don't. Or if I do, they are dwarfed in me by something I can’t find proper words for. Euphoria maybe? Thanksgiving? Joy? Whatever it is, it flows through me like a waterfall. This thing is too much for me to contain. I am full to overflowing.

Our beloved child, whom we might have lost, is alive. Her presence next to me, her body, her breathing, are the most beautiful things. They are here with me, now. They are all my heart can take in. I go to sleep with a sense of well-being. I wake up to joy. And I cannot keep from singing.

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah