“What were you thinking?! You could have been kidnapped and smuggled to Russia!”

Slipping the rain parkas over our heads, the tour guide gave us a few last-minute instructions. Our four kids wiggled and giggled as they clung to their grandparents who they hadn’t seen for several years.

I am not the woman I was when I left for the field twenty-five years ago. Some of that change is due to time and experience. A lot is due to practice.

I live in a land where plants grow ample and lush, the green abutting polished skyscrapers and metal-roofed slums.