Graduation at the War College

I took the train to Rhode Island on Thursday morning. I've intended this travel for some time but didn't buy a plane ticket. At the last moment I decided to take the rails. Its turned out to be a better way to travel. I get to see more of the world, there aren't the inconvenient crowds and security lines (as with the airport), its easier to adjust the tickets, and it pulls me into a lovely sense of remembrance since I often traveled through Europe on trains.

P was graduating from the War College - an amazing feat given the tremendous stress he was under at the beginning of his studies. He even received an award for his leadership. This was the first time I've seen him since Eve and I drove him and his battered family the 13 hours from Virginia to Rhode Island at the end of last summer. He was so proud and so happy.

As we sat together on Thursday night, we talked about what happened last summer - and the miracle that his sons (all of them) survived. I've tried to not think to hard about the stress of last summer because it sapped so much out of me and took my ability to work for months. I worried that, by thinking too much about it, it would continue to hinder my work. Now, as we discussed the devastation and the miraculous, the memories returned in a more gentle form: validation that I hadn't imagined the difficulty, and gratitude that the improbable, best-case scenario happened.

We Skyped Crystal and the boys at home in Cameroon. It was so good to see such happy little faces. Nearly a year has passed since we've seen the boys but they remembered us and shrieked in delight. I shrieked in delight, too. I wish they were here. I long to hold them. Crystal looks tired but so much happier than I ever knew her. When I visited her in the hospital every day last July and August, she was haggard and strained. She was 9 months pregnant and full of anxiety because her little boy was in mortal danger. My heart went out to her and she, in turn, hated me.  I became a lightning rod for all of her fears and anxieties. I represented the country that had done this to her, and I was a single, female friend of her husband. She needed me: needed the food I brought, the childcare I provided, the transportation to the doctors' office, the moral support sitting in the room with her, but she hated me for it. I've never been the recipient of such incredible vitriol and I'm sure she didn't understand it herself. So it was that she has called me in the months since and, in her broken English, told me she loves me and that I am her family. It's only my Pavlovian reaction that I flinch when she speaks to me.

 I spent hours in the kitchen with the Cameroonian women, cooking Chicken DG and frying plantains. I timed the first batch of plantains and, when I learned they needed 15-17 minutes to turn brown and soft, I set a timer (rather than continuously tending to them). Explaining this to his Gabonese friend later, P said, "Elizabeth cooked the plantains using the scientific method and, although you cannot believe it, they were cooked perfectly."

Until my culinary skills were on display, my friends believed I was not marriage-material. Now that I appear to have rudimentary skills in house-wifery, they've decided to find me a good Cameroonian husband. "You will stay with his mother first," they said. "She will teach you how to take care of him."

At the Naval base, I felt at home among the sailors and marines receiving their diplomas. I craved to be a part of this world again - not in an academic sense, but in an operational sense. Operations analysis is the only thing I've really had a natural talent for and I long to take it into places in the world where there are no solutions: to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and the Sudan. Is it arrogance that tells me I can see things no one else has spotted? No. I've experienced it too many times for it to be coincidence. I may not be a physics genius, but this is my ability.The men and women accepting their diplomas yesterday have dipped a toe in the analytical world I inhabit - and hope to bring skills back to their operational jobs. But they are as able to conduct analysis as I am able to conduct a war. I can support in ways they don't know to ask for. This is why I train, why I run harder than I like and lift heavier weights. Some day, there will be a need, and I will be physically and mentally ready.

It was good to be around Eve again. Yesterday we made a run into downtown Newport with bags of clothing and shoes to donate to the Salvation Army since P cannot bring everything back with him to Cameroon. There was no donation site, so we found a local church with a soup kitchen and made the donation there. Then we stopped for lunch at a downtown cafe where we drank coffees and ate caprese sandwiches and talked about the work we still want to do in Cameroon and the rest of Africa. I feel frustrated and disappointed we haven't been able to make the business work. But I also have the sense that it will happen in its own time and in its own way. After all, if we'd been busy with work in Africa, we wouldn't have been there when P and his family needed us.

Last night, P was exhausted. He tried to stay awake with us, to talk. I asked what he'd do first when he returns to Cameroon this weekend. He will take his eldest son to the village he comes from. He told us his father is the village Chief and that he is next-in-line to inherit this role. We looked at the area 80 miles East from Yaounde: a heavily forested area with men and women living by subsistence farming. We talked about development work. What will he do for his people when he becomes Chief? How would he conduct economic development? I began to give my ideas about NGOs and non-profit work, about the people in my life who would want to volunteer Then P asked us to start an NGO. "Who better to do this?" he said. It gives me pause.

I'm on the train again. This time headed to Connecticut. I changed my ticket yesterday after a call from San. Her father-in-law died on Thursday night. Could I come? Yes. I don't know why these things are so difficult right now. I choose to believe there is a reason.