Scars tell stories, war stories, humorous stories, embarrassing stories, sad stories, angry stories, and so on. Scars create memories. These memories we share with one another as we are sitting in a circle telling of them we ran through the door, burned ourselves with plastic, punched through glass, or trip and just fell. We have fun with those stories and try to compare our greatest war time memory. These stories, these scars are memories we take with us for the rest of our lives. When we get old, skin stretched and wrinkly those memories we will still have and still share. So, I want to share my most recent Sudan memory that I will probably carry with me for the rest of my life. First of all, I just want to say… I tried! I tried to be careful to those who warned me (i.e. Tiffany) I TRIED! But, you know me it is a difficult task for me to last a year without being clumsy. Since I have been in Sudan I have already had the clumsy streak and those who know me well know it always starts with breaking and ruining objects and soon leads up to breaking body parts or skin. I first started with breaking a coffee cup, with coffee in it, breaking a door handle (I fixed it though) and now I have broken skin. Yesterday was your typical day I was teaching and it was going great. I gave my kids something to work on quickly as I proceeded to go for a bathroom break (the nearest bathroom is my house-1 minute and ½ walk). I was hurrying along and went to leave my house, locked my door and started to hasten back to school when BAMMM!!! I ran into the window! More like the corner window frame. I knew something bad had happened so I ran inside to look at the mirror. I was greeted with streaks of crimson covering my face and making a polka dot pattern on the floor. I sighed, uh oh! So I grabbed a tissue and stuck it to my head, cleaned the floor, headed back to school to tell my students what to do and proceeded to the clinic. At the clinic I was so lucky to have an audience of friendly on lookers as our nurse started to clean my wound and smile at me the whole time. Then the nurse, Ben, and the lab tech, Ceewa, told me that in order to put plaster on my wound we would have to shave a small spot at the front of my head. I jerked my eyes up at him and said, “No Way’! “We are NOT shaving my head, is there another option?” He said no, because it could get infected. I insisted we were not shaving my head unless it did get infected and then he could take pictures too. So, now I have an awesome story to tell, when people ask me why I have a band aid in the middle of my hairline and something to laugh at. Mom, thanks for insisting on me packing those butterfly band aids and for packing extra band aids for me. You know your daughter well. This is one of my lifetime memories from Sudan and now the Sudanese people know how clumsy their American khawaja is.
