Fw: Naivety

 

 NAIVETY

Before I left for home we had a nice send-off meal for all of us
kids going to different countries, colleges, and high schools.   It's
amazing how many of my friends are out of the country this
year.   Each of the parents said a few wise words of release after
the meal was over.  My dad said a few things but the one thing that I
really remember, the idea that rang very true in my mind, was this
(paraphrased):   In your youth and naivety, you don't know how hard
certain things are and that is why you try them.   This is what
allows you to do things that maybe people with broader experience
would not even attempt.
I've found that a lot of once in a lifetime experiences are only
once in a lifetime because after the first time we decide, "Wow that
was amazing, but yikers I now know how lucky I am to have gotten to
do that and gotten THROUGH that ALIVE....that was a once in a
life-time experience.  I might not be so lucky next time."
Once I ate a big, live, beetle in the hype of a moment.   Everyone
was volunteering money and shouting, "Do it!  Do it!".   I look back
on that like, "What were you thinking, Emily?"  For the right price I
think I could do it again, but it was the energy of the first time
that pushed me into action that day.
This summer I was at Priest Lake with my family and Alex, Laura and
Nilmini joined us too!   SO fun.   Alex and I were sitting on the
beach one evening and we looked across the lake at this
mountain.   We were like, "We should climb that.  It's not THAT
tall."  Then we were like, "Alright, let's go!"  So we jump in a
canoe and paddled the 3/4 of a mile across the lake.  We tied our
canoe up and started trekking up this mountain: no trail, no
compass-just the goal of getting to the top.   We crashed through
some crazy, thick brush, and when we summited  (good word), we felt
SO invincible!   It was a lot further than I had expected. I was so
dirty, hot, sweaty, and scraped-up from the challenge.    Getting
back down is whole other story...but we made it back. :)  This is the
naivety that my dad was talking about.
Yesterday, us kids here took a "little-thought-out trip".  We
decided that we would take bikes (borrow them from our African
friends) and ride the 18 kilometers to Lai (another village out on a
river).  So we started riding around 8:30 a.m. We had water,
harmonicas, bananas...all the essentials....and I watched as this
train of white people on bikes attempted to make their way out of
Bere on the sandy trails.   The road would be hard on any bike
because the sand just sucks your tire under and it wasn't 2
kilometers down the road that we had our first accident.   After a
while, bike wrecks were like the flies on the food in Chad: not a big
deal.  We had lots of fun riding to Lai and made it there in around 2
and a half hours.  This probably could have been done in a very short
time but you have to understand that our bikes were ancient.  My tire
was doing some orbital rotation around the central spokes and I
thought it would fall off any moment.   Anlsey has literal bruises on
her butt from her seat of metal and Kristen could hardly control the
direction of her bike in the sand.   I didn't realize it but the
bridge about 100 yards from being done and Lai is on the other side
of the bridge.   So these canoes offered to take us and our bikes
across for about 50 cents.  We pile into these dug-outs that are sewn
together where the wood cracked.  Don't ask me how you sew wood.  I
spent a lot of the trip trying to figure it out myself.  But thanks
to the awesome drivers and the full-time hired-water-bailer, we made
it to the other side.   In Lai we sat down at a restaurant.   I still
don't know what I ate but it was so rubbery I felt like my teeth were
on a trampoline.   We went to the river after this and swam for a
long time.   We ran off these cliffs into this mucky muddy water
below.   Prrrrroooobbbabbbly not the cleanest thing I've ever
done.   But definitely not the most boring thing either! :)  We went
back and changed in to our clothes and headed back out.   A few more
stops and we found ourselves back in our canoes and back on the
road.   The ride home was glorious and the sun set right on the dirt
path in front of us.  24 miles on rickety bikes.  Thanks naivety.