African Moon

Have you ever had one of those nights when everything just feels right?  A night where you are wanting for nothing, but simply feel at peace with yourself and with the world around you? Tonight is like that for me.

All was quiet at Neema House this evening. The babies were fed. They had drunk their evening bottle and we had spent the last half hour singing hymns and rocking them. Baby Anna fell asleep on me, her two middle fingers in her mouth, content. She knows I love her.

It was dark when I left and the moon was a golden sliver in the African sky. This moon is the same one that I have spent hours looking at out my bedroom window at home. I have often sat up late writing, pressed against the window, that silver disk hanging above me in an endless sea of stars.

It seems strange to think that I can sit in my comfortable bedroom in New Zealand and see the same thing as people worlds apart from me, literally and culturally, will see. The sky is constant, revolving in unceasing circles, a reminder that no matter where or who we are, we all live and love under the same sky.

It makes me sad that little Malikia will never see how much the sky looks like blue velvet on a clear evening; how the stars can make you feel both ancient and eternally young at the same time. How much you miss if you don’t have eyes. And how much more you miss if you have eyes, but never really learn to see the beauty in the things around you.

I have a heart full of feelings tonight, but no real words to describe them. Perhaps that’s the best way.

xoxo,

-Hannah