It's 11:30 pm at night, and we have a mice infestation.
(photos: Aubrey Fite)
By this point on the Race, very little phases me on an individual basis. I sat ripping apart garlic naan at a local Indian restaurant last week and watched a rat the size of a shoe scamper along the inside wall before disappearing under a hot food cart. I sighed.
Understandably, not everyone's standards have been so thoroughly shredded. Right now, there's a mouse in Emily's bed, and she is NOT HAVING IT. I wake up the following morning to find her gone.
"Emily left last night," Aubrey correctly reports.
"Where'd she go?" I ask, hitting my head on the metal frame above my bunk for the third time this morning. "Home?" In my mind, I picture her stalking down the dark stairs of our dorm, out the kitchen door and toward the Malaysian border, arms full of bedsheets and contempt, not looking back.
"She went into the second room."
I nod while she continues, "Yo. We need to deal with this."
The next day, we're brainstorming ways to seamlessly end the life of a mouse we have caught in a sticky trap. People are yelling. Someone tries not to cry. I had volunteered to Frank-Underwood-it, but the idea suddenly seems a whole lot less interesting now that the subject in question is in front of me.
"Rat poison? Yeah, but Jess said this rat poison is different. She says instead of causing the mouse to die and rot in the wall, it will make its body decompose."
I imagine ten dead mice laying forgotten behind the thin white walls of our dorm, their bodies exploding into orange pixels and derezzing the way the light cycles did on the Tron grid.
Mice don't derezze, I remind myself, adding the thought to the wealth of inner side-dialogue no one will relate to. I look around the room at the variety of facial expressions, all embodying a this-isn't-actually-a-HUGE-problem-but-this-is-still-very-much-a-problem-and-I-want-it-taken-care-of-NOW, and a giggle escapes.
99 days. Roughly 14 weeks. That's how long I have left before nonsense like this will not be a problem anymore. There are days when I'm glad. Then, there are days when the truth of my rapidly-disappearing reality catches up with me like a runaway shopping cart banging the back of my heels, startling me back into the present with pain and a jolt.
"D. What sound does the letter D make?" My class of fidgeting 8 year-old Burmese refugees obediently monotones, "Duuuhhhhh. Duh. Duh."
"Good," I praise, pausing to wipe the sides of my face for rivulets of sweat. It's easily a hundred degrees, and the upstairs building that we call a school has only bedroom fans to combat the stifling heat. I take my black dry-erase marker and do a quick drawing of a duh, duh-dog on the whiteboard, turning around with a flourish to gesture at it. "What is this - " I tap the board with my marker - " a picture of?"
Ameera pushes her desk away from her stomach so quickly her pencil box falls to the ground with a metallic crash. "A DONUT!" she shouts, her dark brown eyes flashing with pride.
I let my arm fall to my side as she waits, eyes wide, for my congratulatory nod.
I give it.
Later on, I pick Vasni up and toss her in the air as crowds of children push past her to return their nametags, her petite form easily lost in the rush. She wants to touch a flower wheel hanging from the ceiling. I'm tired and don't want to lift her, but she grabs hold of my hands too tightly to resist.
I throw her up and catch her, her toothy smile displaying all its brilliance. Then, we sit quietly until the room clears out, her tiny fingers tracing my tattoos. "Triangle, line..." She taps the cross. "Christian?" I smile down at her, nodding. She buries her head in my arm.
Around this time on the Race, a lot of Racers start getting quizzed on personal regrets, memories, goals and lessons learned. Mine are pretty simple.
Do not come on the World Race if you want to see the world. You can see the world thousands of ways. Come on the Race if you want to serve endangered people groups, refugees, orphans, sexual abuse victims and ex-cons. Come if you want to have an unplanned mid-life existential crisis in the middle of the African desert and find yourself in the process. Come if you want to be shattered and rebuilt with a heart bigger than you knew your chest could fit. Because the truth is this: I came on the World Race thinking I would be saving people. But I've been saved in the process, every single day, by the very people I came to pour out for.
Some days, I'm just another backpacker on the commuter bus, just another face in the crowd and another naive American obviously out of place in someone's hometown. Some days, I eat creme brûlée for breakfast and others, I don't eat anything at all. Some days, I'm the carrier, and some days I'm the one getting carried.
But some days, I'm Teacher Kayla, demonstrating what sound frequency looks like by waving my arms like the ocean. I grade English homework, keep chairs from tipping off all fours and draw shapes on the whiteboard that get mistaken for doughnuts. I'm a botanist, a scientist, a linguist, a mathematician and creative problem solver.
I am loved.
What an honour it is to love out of the abundance I've been given.