This weekend the guys of Team TAE left our village to go do manly man things, like wrestle lions and grow chest hair, and that meant that the women of my team got to have a weekend to ourselves, which turned out to be a much-needed change of pace.
Almost as soon as the guys drove off on piki pikis, the girls started talking about girl stuff, like honeymoons and Redeeming Love and the thrill of wearing dresses again some day when our skin isn’t caked in red African dirt, so much so that it looks like we all got really cheap spray tans.
We recently met a Peace Corps Volunteer named Najima who lives in the village we’re working in, and she just so happened to be traveling to Kisamu for the weekend to meet some other Volunteers. Kisamu was exactly where we wanted to go for our girl’s weekend and Najima kindly and enthusiastically invited us to join her. So on Friday afternoon we all made the one-hour trip to Kisamu, a bustling port city along the gorgeous Lake Victoria.
On Friday night, the girls of Team TAE got to take showers (!!!) and put on some makeup and some of us (me) spent way too long trying on combinations of everyone’s clothes until we were finally ready to go out to a nice dinner. We ordered pizza and fries and Cokes and milkshakes and continued talking about girl stuff, which is really no different than stuff we talk about normally but I guess we had more liberty about it when we knew no boys were around to overhear the secrets of womanhood.
Throughout the weekend there was one word that kept getting used: sisters.
I’ve never really been one of those people who calls my best friends “sisters” because I’ve always thought it to be a little middle school-ish, I suppose. While my girl friends might be exceptionally close friends, “sister” is a title and a role I’ve pretty much reserved just for my actual, biological sister.
But the more the word was said, the more someone called me “sister”, the more I began to realize that these women – Chaney, Chelsea, and Emily S. – really have become my sisters.
(girls night out in El Salvador)
I realized that in the past seven months, things have happened in us and between us that has, in one way or another, brought the women of Team TAE into some kind of mishmash sisterhood of four women who are traveling the world together, trying to love Jesus and love people.
Sometimes we get on each other’s nerves. Sometimes we say or do things that seriously offend each other, which means there have been a lot of honest and difficult conversations. Sometimes all I want to do is get away from these women and there have been moments where I’ve honestly thought that if I hadn’t been put on a team with them, I might not be friends with them.
(Albania)
But regardless – these are the women who’ve been primarily responsible for holding me accountable this year. These are the women who call me out and don’t let me get away with living in a less than Christ-like way.
These are the women who are there for one another when one of us gets an emotional email from home or when someone else needs to talk about wounds from some boy who mistreated her. These are the women who listen closely and gently when someone is working through a big revelation about life or God or body image. These are the women who cry on each others’ shoulders, dance together like no one is watching, snuggle together in tiny beds, trade clothing around and give honest fashion advice like, “You really should throw that nasty t-shirt away, it’s covered in poop stains.”
(Italy)
These are the women who, when we found out our squad was running a 5k, trained together every day for a month. We motivated one another and told each other to get up and run when it was easier to lay around and read. On the day of the 5k, these are the women who wouldn’t let each other stop running and when it came time for the last of us to cross the finish line, we all crossed together even when one of us was yelling, “I’m chaffing SO BADLY!”
(photo from Emily Molloy)
These are the women who know my story better than most. These are the women with whom I’ve made some of the best, most epic memories, some of which you wouldn’t believe if I told you.
These are the women whose lives and stories are forever sewn into my own. My story can’t be told without them now.
So yeah, I guess they really are my sisters. And I love them so dang much.
