To be fair to my wife, Courtenay, it was scorching that day. And as we trudged along, filthy and exhausted (our typical condition), surrounded by rebels waging a guerrilla war in one of the hottest places on earth, Ogaden Desert in Ethiopia, we realized we had run out of water.
“Don’t be a wimp,” Courtenay hissed. “Do something.”
“Like what?” I croaked.
She stopped walking and her forehead creased, which is always a bad sign, like a horse’s ears going back.
“I don’t know!” she screamed. “But get me some [expletive] water!”
Getting chewed out by your wife, in front of several hundred dumbstruck, armed men, while on assignment, covering a war, isn’t something you typically read about in the International pages of The New York Times.
Or what about knifing through the Congolese rain forest on the back of a motorcycle, enveloped by giant trees bending over the path, smelling all the decaying leaves and rich, loamy soil, and then suddenly emerging into a sun-flooded grove full of thousands of white butterflies, wrapping the tree trunks, flickering in the air like falling snow, sticking to the shirtless backs of the men working in the grove, who were essentially wearing lab coats of delicate white insects?
These moments, among the brightest memories of my decade-plus as The Times’s correspondent in East Africa (which came to an end this week), never made it into a news story. Neither did the broader experience of plunging into this world with my spouse, Courtenay Morris, a lawyer who spent years as a Times videographer. All that happens between couples anywhere else happened out here: the quiet moments of tenderness, the rivalry, the partnership, the sharing of beauty, and yes, also the hatred — so many days Courtenay may have still loved me, but she definitely didn’t like me.