geneve

Or at least that’s how they say it there – the French pronunciation of “Geneva,” which is where I was when I began writing yesterday. The new job has already taken me overseas, here on week three of work! I spent five days in Switzerland for meetings and arrived last night in Nairobi, Kenya, for more meetings and project site visits. Next, we’ll head to Lusaka, Zambia, for a conference and some additional field visits. It’ll be about three weeks travel in all and will (and has already) given me a great introduction into the program, the global public health scene, and how our work fits in with it all. It’s exciting, but I think I’d be much less excited if it was solely meetings without the prospect of being on dusty African road with my camera in just a few days…

It was a great few days in Geneva. Well, the meetings, confessionally, were excruciatingly boring at times. Seriously, the during first full-day of meetings, which followed a 13-hour day of pre-meeting meetings, I was literally nodding off so badly that I was almost falling out of my chair. Jet-lag? Not knowing what was going on? Perhaps a blend of both, but by the end things had radically improved. And I think no one saw me dozing off…

See, by week’s end, I had made some friends, and with me and everyone, that always makes things better. One Latina New Yorker who’d lived worldwide and most recently in Africa, pre-Geneva, invited me to a concert with her and some friends. It turned out to be one of the most fantastic music events I’ve been to in probably years and was salve to my live-music starved soul. The band was local Swiss artists, but the sultry lead singer was Argentinian and sang jazz-infused Tango ballads for hours, accompanied by a band that included an awe-inspiring saxophonist who could have easily joined up with Tower of Power or the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and fit right in. I’m digressing into over-description now, but it was fabulous.

Anyway, the next day, an old Red Cross acquaintance who’s now a Geneva local took me and some others onto a spectacular tour of the region – from the local wineries which were celebrating the annual “wine tour day” on the Swiss side of Geneva, to a quaint, picturesque town nearby where the Alps towered alongside the crystal clear lake, to the top of Mount Blanc in France where the smallness of the earth below was placed radically in perspective after a 15 minute cable-car ride thousands of feet upward. It was quite a full day of relishing in the beauty of the region, and I realized as it ended that I rarely thought about work at all… ahhh….

Something the American local resident pointed out in an extended positive response to my question, “Do you like it here better than in the States?” was how much simpler life is there, how less noisy. He motioned out the car window to the countryside along the French/Swiss border and asked what we saw – only lush open space, houses in the distance, and the magnificent snow-capped Alps in the background. “What do you not see?” he asked. And it was almost instantly clear – there were no billboards, no advertisements of any kind. Nothing said “buy me” or “eat this,” only Nature whispered, “appreciate the beauty of the landscape.” I couldn’t help but think of the cluttered mountain vistas along interstate 81 as the Smoky Mountains emerge in Virginia and stretch into Tennessee. Those hillsides with tragically-cluttered views advertising the next McDonald’s, Cracker Barrel or gas station. There was none of that in Switzerland, none in the French Alps we visited, and very little in a city as cosmopolitan as Geneva. The American local described it as a completely different lifestyle, one with exponentially less noise, and where you go into a local shop and are welcomed as if you’re entering someone’s home. Some of this I could grasp from my time in Indonesia, but after being back in America “the land of options” for months, my awareness of this less-chaotic, non-consumer-driven existence had waned. It felt incredible to be abroad again, like my mind and soul could breathe deeply amid all that quiet, open space…

And then there was yesterday. A day which annually accentuates a lingering ache in my heart. It began with a 5:30 a.m. cab ride to the airport with colleagues, then progressed into a pain-staking boarding and security process through the airport. I guess my (literally) six electric chargers for my array of camera equipment and other gadgets set off some sort of alert, and when I finally slunk into the boarding area for my gate, I felt emotionally frisked and deliberately harassed. Through all of this, at every stop, my colleagues had abandoned me – moving on about their business with little notice or concern for my whereabouts or predicaments. Perhaps I’m just very blessed to have traveled so much with friends that love me and look out for me (and vice versa), or perhaps my heart was a bit tender from the subconscious thoughts of Mother’s Day, but their indifference had only added to the airport’s insults and heaped more metaphorical weight into my 40 pound pack and camera bag.

I boarded the plane silent, heavy-hearted and sleepy and made my way to my seat. As I stopped beside my aisle and heaved my bag toward the overhead, I heard a quiet, calm voice from a nearby seat say, “Do you need help?” I breathed deeply for the first time all day, as I heard the simple phrase I’d needed to hear for last several hours. “No, I think I’ve got it,” I said, without taking my eyes off the bag that was still tilted upward. With a final heave, I stuffed it in and moved to sit down, and only then did I look and see the sweet-faced, middle-aged man that answered my unspoken prayer for help. And he was sitting with a Bible opened in his lap.

My heart and soul were saturated in comfort, as I smiled, knowing that God always knows just what we need.

Here’s a view from the top of Mount Blanc, and if you need it, may it help you, too, find a little perspective today…