Above Land Through Clouds On Land

Our arrival to Maun, Botswana January 21, 2023.

ABOUT 27 DAYS AGO after spending a week in Gaborone, Botswana attending a week-long English Teaching Assistant (ETA) orientation with my cohort ETAs at the U.S. Embassy in Botswana, my daughter and I travelled to Maun. Aboard Air Botswana, we flew through the clouds thousands of kilometers above land and water, where eventually the belly of our aircraft descended upon the village we'd soon call home for 10 months.

Through the turbulence which felt like the abrupt Six Flags Viper rollercoaster twists and turns and watching my daughter cry where both of her eyes formed two long tear trails that looked like trenches leading to a single point on her chin, I was soothed into a mental and emotional space that allowed me to reflect about the new lives we'd both soon live. Watching the clouds took me back to a childhood memory, where the summers were long and fruitful, and a good part of day was spent outside observing nature or making mischief with neighborhood kids.

I was about 10 years of age at the time. The day's sun brought upon my laying body anchored to prickly soft grass, roasting heat. Clouds gracefully swift by as if they had begged me to watch them arrive and leave, knowing that I'd never be able to touch them, and pretending that one day I could. They were something to ponder over, however. Milky, cotton-candy brushstrokes of white and opal in patches, complimenting a deep suckling blue sky. The sky was my future. But I was also grounded. The earth, plants and soil held me up and gave me a sense of position, and just enough placement to mesmerize the clouds as if they were made for me, as if they were trying to tell me something I could barely hear but heard every echo of their truth deeply within my very being.

My memory faded when the pilot's intercomy-piloty voice told us in Setswana and then in English that we'd be landing soon. It is not that I had never flown on an airplane and flew through clouds before but this time, it was different. My body was paused, and my mind was solemnly conscious that we were embarking on intentional change and were very close to welcoming our new home. As we descended, I remembered the 10 year old me who wanted to be a cloud, clearly knowing that I could never be. Instead, I settled with the idea that I'd be a friend to them.

Although, I was encased within a large metal bird-like metal configuration, the adult me imagined that I could feel them. They felt like a whipped-cream wispy wind, chalky and thin, feather-like, and misty. I imagined that if I could hold a cloud, I'd barely be able to keep them in my hands but that I'd know of their inherent mystery. A mystery beyond what materials clouds are made of and how they function in the temporal, but their inherent and essential truth.

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MOST OF MY LIFE I have observed a cloud's understory, as most of us do. They are a marvelous site to observe when we look up and further ahead, watching them be and do as they are. Before we landed in that moment of solitary, open-spirited reflection and pause flying through a saturation of clouds with glimpses of the land below us and signs of human presence, I sensed our lives in Maun would be the same.

Futures are mostly if not all unknown, though perhaps at times predictable given certain information provided. The opportunity before us might yield an envisioned future, but it has not yet been acquired and there is much to come to know through experiences not yet lived. Although, conceptually the past, present and future can stand as their own domains, I cannot entirely believe they are in an absolute sense, untethered.

The lives we will live in Maun will be accompanied with an inability to see clearly ahead of us-- the untethered part of the past, present and future boomerang globous, but our present lives in reach of our future is the place where we are awakened, are doing, and thinking as we live. We will stretch our bodies outward in fast motions, abrupt breaks and passive sailing like rollercoasters, with the reliance upon the people we have become prior to our arrival, and the reliance and belief of the people we will become.

Our 9pm arrival at Maun International Airport made the journey real. We travelled for about 2 days to southern Africa from Chicago, in a tiresome, jet-lag sluggish through immigration, finding our luggage, and that life before our eyes was entirely new.

Life before our eyes IS entirely new.

“I think that any time of great pain is a time of transformation, a fertile time to plant new seeds.” – Debbie Ford