the chocolate pirates

I’m up. In the middle of the night. This happens to me on and off, especially when I hear weird noises that may or may not be gunfire. All this wakefulness has gotten me thinking about our weirdest night in Burundi. We had been here a little over a month when I woke up in the middle of the night with my mommy radar going wild. I hadn’t heard anything that I could remember, I just knew I needed to check on the kids. When I did I had the shock of my life. I could not find those babies anywhere. The crib was empty. The bed was empty. I wandered around the house calling out their names and got no response. I felt like I was stuck in some really bad black and white old school movie scene dream. I could not believe that they were just gone! I thought once or twice about whether or not I was really awake, figured out that I was, then started screaming for them instead of  calling out their names nicely. I went to the front door and as I did I noticed it was slightly ajar.

Outside, in the driveway, on the ground were both of my beautiful boys and the 60 year old night guard John. Myles had brought his entire bedroom outside, including his brother. All his blankets were on the ground and he and Night Guard John and Neo were having a picnic. A picnic that consisted entirely of one thing, my dark chocolate stash that I keep, scratch that, that I kept in the fridge. There they were, Neo on Night Guard John’s lap, all with a huge slab of chocolate in their hands. Night Guard John included. He was just polishing off a piece of my Lindt 70% and looked like a little kid with his hand caught in the candy jar.  Now, if you have been following along for while you might remember one of my many freak-outs about the price and availability of chocolate in Burundi. If not, let me fill you in. Chocolate is expensive here. Were talking it-can-be-$25-a-bar expensive AND be covered in an inch of dust from sitting on the shelf for a year. Or two. Or three.

Luckily, I discovered them before they finished off my whole stash, and because I don’t want them to grow up with some strange complex regaurding dark chocolate (a complex their mother may or my not already have) I chose not to inflict bodily harm on my biggest little for chocolate pirating. As for sailing the seas unattended at night, well… now we lock every door between them and the front door. And we lock the front door twice.

When I put them back in bed, after washing off their sticky brown fingers, I couldn’t help but feel like I had just been in a nightmare constructed especially for me. If the universe were ever going to go out and create my perfect nightmare, it would definatly include missing babies and missing chocolate.

I’m off to bed. See you in the morning… if you happen to show up in the driveway for a picnic.

Kristy