In Sickness & In Health

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I cannot neglect to mention--and every day I count my blessings--that I met a very beautiful , strong, resourceful woman on my travels through Southeast Asia (recorded in this blog in 2006), and I married her. This is Perpetual Zighe Nakis, who we call Chelly--the Queen of my life--and we have been married for 16 years now. They have been the most joyous and wonderful years of my life, but they have not all been easy years. We've traveled the world and lived in 13 different homes in 3 countries. We now have two children together, we own a house, and we have merged our extended families in the USA, Kenya, and elsewhere in the world.

One of the things that I tell every newly married couple is that your marriage vows are more than a pledge, they are a promise of things to come. Rest assured, you will love and cherish one another, and you each will die in your own time. Things will be better, and at times they will be worse. You will be richer, and you will be poorer. Sickness will come, as well as health. This has certainly been the case so far for us. We have seen many of these promises fulfilled. Today's blog entry is about our relationship as it unfolded on this trip to New Orleans, how we enjoyed our time together, how we both got sick, and how we spent a lot of our time seeking out and eating good food.

Staying Together

Chelly and I stayed at a lovely hotel called The Frenchmen on Frenchmen Street. There we spent a lot of time in the hot tub and--on sunny days--chilling at the rooftop bar. It was an old, old establishment, on the historical registry, a cluster of four or five smaller buildings tied together by a fence, some staircases, long porches, and the same paint colors. Cozy and quirky, it was really a great place to stay. The kind of place I like, with character, not just some chain-hotel building made of cookie-cutter rooms and long, carpeted hallways.

With our little room as a base, we spent the week love-bonding. What does that mean? That means spending pretty much every moment of every day together, doing everything as a team, getting a lot more us-time than we ever get at home, and growing closer through that. And what did we do when we got sick of being that close to each other? Well, we had to find kind and courteous ways of asking for our own space when we needed it, without the other person feeling put out. On this trip, that meant a couple of occasions where I went back to the hotel alone to lay down, or Chelly went out for a walk in the city by herself. And it was a good release that kept us from getting irritated with each other.

We've been through a lot of big ups and big downs over the past few months. I'm not going into all of that, but there were times when we seemed in danger of losing what we have. I couldn't see that future, or allow it to happen, and so I had to make some changes in how I live, think, and act every day. The result--I think--has been a more durable relationship. We've both had to learn how to express our feelings better, and to communicate our needs. We've had to practice greater self-control, and keep a broad perspective. One key for me was learning to step out of my own bullshit, to stop looking for help from books and advisors, to be here now and be the person I know I ought to be, to feel and respond to the needs of the moment, and practice what I preach.

This all added up to one of the best trips we've had together in recent years. Sure, it wasn't always pleasant--with the crowds and the weather and the craziness all around--and we spent half the trip sick, but our connection was solid and we communicated very well. We truly enjoyed the time we had together and used it to the max.

We watched a lot of movies (especially when we were sick), and every day we went on dates together. We had breakfast dates, and lunch dates, and dinner dates. We had a date for Valentine's Day and two dates for my birthday. We ate some great food. But, it's not enough to just say we ate some great food, I'll have to tell you about it.

Going Out Together

Over the past 12 or 13 years, Chelly has become a chef, and a very good chef at that. She started with a year in the Culinary program at Seattle Central College before we moved to Thailand in 2013, also taking some odd jobs with caterers around that time. In Thailand she took cooking classes. Then, when we moved back to the States in 2014, she took a job as a cook at a retirement home. She was poached from there and went to a better job as the Dietary Manager at a different retirement home. Soon she was offered another promotion to an even better kitchen in a third retirement home. Then she went to Skagit Valley College to finish her culinary degree. Now she is the Dining Services Director at Brookdale, Stanwood, where she creates the menus, sources the food, hires and trains the staff, and runs all operations in their restaurant-style kitchen & dining facility. She also has her own catering and private chef company, Chelly's Global Kitchen. As you've probably gathered, food has become a very important part of our lives, and we place a lot of focus during our couples trips around appreciating food.

The bar was set very high at the beginning of the trip with the Somali food we ate at Juba in Tukwila the night before our flight. This is one of our top dining destinations in the Seattle area, and with food of that caliber in our recent memories (and bellies), it would be hard for a lot of places to measure up. Everything we ate on Monday was trash. Airport food. I don't want to talk about it. Our meal that night in New Orleans was terrible too. Underwhelming rockfish, fries out of the box, and some inedible fried brussels sprouts that they left sitting in the fryer basket and forgot to serve us, eventually bringing out a greasy plate of burnt garbage towards the end of our meal... Let's just put that behind us and move along.

Mardi Gras Tuesday started off a little better. We didn't find anywhere to sit down and eat a proper breakfast due to the crowds, but we did pick up a delicious Acai bowl with all the healthy goodies like fruits and nuts (and honey!). Then, after about 3 hours of walking, we found a place with a decent burger and fries (they forgot the cheese). Dinner that night was half Mexican food (I think Chelly got Carne Asada) and Cuban food (I know I got the Ropa Vieja and some plantains).

For Wednesday, Valentine's Day, we started with a sit down breakfast near the French Market. I remember eating shrimp & grits while Chelly munched on filled beignets.

Lunch that day was at the West African restaurant, Bennachin, and this is the first meal I have to take my time to describe. The place is a little hole-in-the-wall gem off one of the old-town French Quarter streets (Royal Street). The inside is warm, exposed brick with West African decor, and if you walk past the kitchen it leads into an open-air common courtyard shared by multiple tenants that reminded me exactly of places in Africa, especially in Mombasa's Old Town. The elderly Mama who was cooking that day comes from the Gambia, so I practiced saying hi in Wolof. The story of the place is that she and a friend from Cameroon partnered to bring the tastes of their homelands together under one roof in New Orleans.

We waited a very long time for our food. I'm fine with that, because I know the deal with African kitchens where they make everything to order rather than having pre-prepared or batch-cooked portions ready to go like many American places do. Some of the other customers were grumbling, but the food when it came out was well worth the wait. We had grilled fish and rice pilaf, cooked greens, fufu, and a tangy stew that I can't remember the name of.

What's fufu, you say? Fufu is a staple cuisine of West Africa, made from pounded starches such as cassava, plantain, or yam. It's kind of like a ball of uncooked dough that is great for soaking up the flavor of sauces. This was our first great meal in New Orleans.

I did not feel good that day and needed a break at the hotel, during which time Chelly did some walking around the town by herself. She found a nice little restaurant on Decatur and took me there for dinner. I don't recall what I ate, but I do remember having a great conversation about music with the bartender from England. Chelly had shrimp and grits and it was the best Cajun food we had on the trip. This was a nice high-end atmosphere for a Valentine's date.

I don't remember what we did for breakfast on Thursday, but I do remember taking the trolley to Canal street to see the Bob Marley movie, missing the movie because my injured-tailbone-waddle made me too slow, then taking another trolly up Canal to Broad and eating our lunch in the Whole Foods. We walked to the Broad Theater and watched the movie there, then walked from there to Congo Square and talked it over together. I've written about all that elsewhere, but what I didn't talk about was the excellent Gordita we got from the taco truck at Broad and Orleans. It was Chelly's first time tasting the cheese & meat filled masa-pocket and she was way into it.

Congo Square, the famous home of African culture in New Orleans and birthplace of so many traditions, was gated and locked at this time, so we peered through the fences and then kept walking. We walked from Congo Park down Orleans street, with a beautiful view of St. Paul's Cathedral at the end. The streetlights, the trees, the old short buildings, and the night sky made for a beautiful tableau (I'm in New Orleans, gotta use some French words, right?).

We stopped for dinner at a swanky little steakhouse near the cathedral. It was a nice dinner, but the steak was not cooked correctly and that was a bit disappointing considering the price tag. After dropping some things at the hotel, we went out looking for a party. It seems like there’s always a party on Bourbon Street, but that’s not for us, especially not this night when we both felt significantly under the weather. Instead we found the smaller party on Frenchmen St., visited some nighttime street markets, and saw an old school freestyle rapper that transported us back to the early 90s with his jazzy beats and Bronx flows.

Friday might have been the day when Chelly went looking for crawfish. She found what she wanted, a cajun restaurant with the crawfish boil and corn and potatoes in the pot. They give you two big pans, one with your food in it, and another to throw the shells in. She filled the pan with shells, but in the end was not impressed with her meal. I also remember the Sushi place, which was probably this day. By this point in the trip I was really sick and pretty out of it mentally. There was a sushi place on one of the days, though, and I had a hot drink and ate some great Sashimi. The Wasabi really helped clear my head.

But on Saturday, I remember going to an excellent jazz brunch where we chatted with our Jamaican waitress about her home and the Bob Marley movie, and got the best steak of the trip.

Sunday was my 42nd birthday. Being sick as we both were, it wasn't much. We spent most of the day in bed and watching movies. But even though we didn't do much on my birthday, our two trips out of the room were definitely worth it. This was the day we had the best meals of the trip, by far.

In the late morning we made a trek across town to Thaihey NOLA and had our minds blown. This was an upscale Thai place with rice-infused drinking water in copper cups and every dish looking like a piece of art. They took high-quality American ingredients and worked them into finely-produced Thai recipes. For example, there was Larb (a Laos-Thai salad featuring Thai basil and toasted rice powder) made with strips of smoked salmon lox. We also got a Massaman curry made with leg of lamb that I would want to eat every single day if I lived in this neighborhood.

In the evening we made a much shorter walk down Decatur to the Lebanon Grill for some more lamb. This time we got these exquisite lamb rib chops, tomahawk style, served with Mediterranean salad, rice, olives, and Baba Ganoush with fresh pitas that--despite their gluten content--I did take the risk and eat. Lamb is my favorite protein, so these two meals really helped make the day special.

Despite all the heavy feelings that I have mentioned in my two previous New Orleans blogs, my 42nd birthday felt somehow... content. I was sick and mourning and questioning my life, keenly analyzing all the moral rights and wrongs of modern America, but I had my lovely wife with me and we were tenderly enjoying each other's company. We were communicating well and accommodating one another with sensitivity and respect. And we were having some nice meals together, which truly is the fastest way to a man's heart.

Getting Sick Together

A week before our trip to New Orleans, I fell out of a tree and injured my tailbone. The timing was terrible, I know, but get off my back--okay?--I didn't plan it this way. I was up in Bellingham at a place called Locust Beach to meet some outdoor-parkour ninjas and climb a few trees. I should be good at that. I grew up climbing trees! I keep very fit and I have spent my whole life doing stuff like this. But these guys are on a different level. They have devoted their lives to running and swinging and leaping and flipping through the trees. They have their own special vocabulary for every little move. I fell--maybe 15 feet--during one of the 'warmup' climbs that was a low difficulty for them, but obviously too much for me to handle. Then I laid on the ground trying to stave off a seizure while they continued their Tarzan stunts.

The fall resulted in a concussion, some petit mal seizures, a bruised tailbone, and a pinched nerve. Doctor's estimate was 12 weeks to heal. They told me to give my brain some rest (no screens, not too much thinking) and give my body some rest (by laying down instead of standing, sitting, or walking). That was 1 week before the trip. Does anyone know how I can insert a face-palm emoji?

Our trip started on a Sunday, but I was in too much pain to drive the hour to Lynnwood for church, stand for the liturgy and teach my usual Sunday School class, drive an hour and a half home (there's always more traffic afterwards), then later drive south to Seattle for the hotel and the Reggae show that night. Even omitting the church trip in the morning, it was still too much. I slapped a lidocaine patch across my tailbone area and did my best to dance Reggae all night, but I was hurting.

After that was a whole day of airports and airplanes, running on about 3-4 hours of sleep. Yes, I think you can already see that I made some health mistakes on this trip. After sleeping on the first flight, I woke up with some noticeable sinus congestion and a drip down the back of my throat. It was just the beginning. We spent the rest of Lundi Gras (Fat Monday) out and about into the late night, and I felt even worse on Tuesday.

After all the hours of walking and everything else that happened on Tuesday (Mardi Gras), I was really suffering by Wednesday. I had a brutal headache all day and into the night. I realized it must have been a tension headache brought on by all the activity of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, because a half hour or so of gentle stretching and Yoga really cleared that up. By Thursday, my headache was gone and my sinuses were clearing, but I still felt sore and crabby all day. What I didn't know was that this was the onset of a herpes outbreak and I woke up on Friday with cold sores all over my lips.

At this point, Chelly was sick too. We laid low all day, mostly sleeping in the hotel, and only leaving a couple of times to get food. We watched Dune part 1 on my laptop, and that was about it for the day. Saturday was similar. With cold sores now spread up into my nose and along the roof of my mouth, I was in serious discomfort and pain. I only left the room once that day, to get brunch, but I slept the rest of the day and we watched Shazam! on my laptop (the movies on TV had too many ads). Sunday was much the same.

Not much to talk about, and as I type this I'm thinking, "Why would I write about all that?", but that's what happened and it was fine. It is what it is. We got sick and we laid around and ate food and watched movies. At least we did it together. The mistake I made was not canceling the trip after my tailbone injury. Then, once we set out on the trip, I just went too hard trying to keep up with my wife's (and my own) expectations about how our trip should go. I mean, Reggae parties and big parades and walking all day through the French Quarter, that's what we were there for, right? I guess we both went too hard, because Chelly got sick too. It might have been something we caught from someone in that giant crowd of strangers. The lesson, I suppose, is to slow down and pay more attention to our bodies, to lower our expectations of excitement and novel experiences, and to generally be better at practicing preventative health.

Pole Pole Ndio Muendo

Haraka haraka haina baraka, pole pole ndio muendo. This is a Swahili proverb meaning, "Hurry, hurry has no blessings; slowly, slowly, that's the way to go." This little story happened on Mardi Gras, when every restaurant was packed to the brim with gawkers and out-of-towners like us. We spoke to people who'd waited 90 minutes or two hours just to get a table! We ourselves didn't sit down to eat until 1 o'clock that day because we couldn't find a place to get into. So, that's just how the day went. Now we found ourselves out at night lining up for a little place on a side street offering Cuban and Mexican food.

Ahead of us in line were several other couples and groups, who were each led to their tables in turn after a significant wait. When the couple ahead of us got to the front of the line, they were told, "We don't have any tables left inside, but we can sit you outside and you can still order food and drinks and everything." There were three little tables out in the street, each with two seats, but the couple said no and walked away into the night. Then the host offered us the outside table and we said yes. We were seated at the table nearest the door, but I looked around and thought, no, I like that one over there better, and we moved to a table outside the dining room window.

As we sipped our water and browsed the menus, we saw the table on the other side of the window from us empty out. Now there was an open table right there inside the dining room--I could see it--and no one standing in line. So, I asked the waiter if we could move inside and take it. He said yes and helped us carry our glasses and menus inside.

A bit later, after our food came, as we were enjoying some Ropa Vieja and plantains, I saw the couple who was ahead of us earlier--in line--return. This time they accepted the table outside, and they sat down right outside our window, at the table we had vacated. It was so interesting to watch, how their impatience to get a good table inside had led them to wander around for a half hour and then return, just to sit at the same outside table they hadn't wanted in the first place. But, if--on the other hand--they had just accepted the outside table originally, they'd be sitting where we were right now at a table inside.

High in my herbal meditation, I felt this series of events was significant--cosmically--and so I wrote it down in my notes. I felt there was a moral to the story that could be applied to many areas of life, especially to relationships. We got a good table by accepting where we were and what was in front of us, by saying yes, and being patient, then taking our time and enjoying what we had. I think relationships can be the same way. I see a lot of people impatiently looking for the perfect person and expecting them to always be perfect and make everything for them perfect, always. Then, when they don't find that or get that thing they're looking for right away, they cut and run and go look somewhere else. In the end, they've spent their whole life lonely, looking for something that will never be. Instead--as I often counsel the newly-married couples--you need to enjoy where you are at and who you are with. Be patient. Ride it out. You will grow together and make changes for the better. Things will get smoother as you both mature. You will enjoy the good times together and learn from the bad times how to be better. Commit to the relationship and stick around, that's how you learn to create that perfection together.

The moral of the story is to be patient. A durable relationship is all about being patient. Chelly and I, we're not perfect, but we're learning, and we're doing it together.

Au Revoir

On Monday the 19th, we got up early and headed to the airport. We were both feeling much better after a couple of days' rest, and my lips were starting to heal. Being that'd we'd been on foot in the French Quarter all week, we saw more of the city on our drive to the airport than we'd seen all trip. We had a nice talk with our driver and learned a bit more about the life of New Orleans locals. It was a beautiful day to fly out and we were happy to be headed home to see our boys.

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