B009G3EPMQ EBOK by Anthony Flacco, Jessica Buchanan, Erik Landemalm Page A

should have realized it wouldn’t be so easy to discourage him. He’s gentle and his manner is calm, but he’s a force to be reckoned with. This is a man who spends his life dealing with terribly difficult situations that sometimes also involve difficult people, some of whom have few qualms about killing opponents and no particular reason to do anything he asks, except for the strength of his personality and determination. Without realizing it, I put myself up against that particular form of strength, the same one that had caused his parents to start referring to him as “the little diplomat” back when he was five years old.
    I learned he could argue a strong point without raising his voice. He could quietly reason his way through any objection I raised. He was determined to give us the chance to see if we were genuinely right for one another. And he wasn’t at all like guys who refuse to take a hint. Instead he introduced me to another part of himself that I didn’t even know I was hoping to see. He began to lay out his feelings. He revealed them freely in spite of hismasculine persona, and so much of what he expressed rang all the right notes. Before long, his combination of a poetic sense of romance and dogged persistence won me over. If I had known him better at that point I would have expected nothing else.
    This began a period of a year and a half of dating, and we became inseparable whenever Erik wasn’t out in the field somewhere. A few months after we met he was transferred to the city of Hargeisa, capital of the unrecognized State of Somaliland in northern Somalia, and we were reduced to spending only five or six days a month together. On most weekends he would fly down to Kenya to be with me, since his job paid better than mine. We struggled with all the usual joys and frustrations of a long-distance relationship and found the absence only increased our desire to be together. Christmas came, and we traveled back to the United States so my family could meet Erik, and his first trip to my home country spanned the gamut from New York City and Philadelphia, which we toured together first, to a trip to the heartland of Ohio to meet the folks.
    Here was where the cultural differences between our homes really came to the fore. Erik had never seen giant roadside billboards advertising faith in Jesus. We both got nervous about whether he would fit in with my straitlaced family. “No talking about religion,” I warned. “Also, nothing about politics.”
    “Right.” He smiled. We arrived at my family home, introduced everyone all around, then spent a lovely evening at dinner where the conversation was lively and pleasant. I could see my family coming around to my view of him, and I was overjoyed by that. After dinner we retired to the living room, where I lay on the sofa and took a little nap to sleep off some jet lag while the others kept on talking. I lay down with my head on my mom’s lap and drifted off, just as I had done when I was a little girl. It was beautiful.
    I woke up to hear him debating religion with my mom. What? It should have been a disaster—he was inviting bursts ofexasperation, storms of outrage, indignation! But again I failed to realize how much time he spends with people who don’t agree with whatever he is trying to tell them. Somehow, he was able to have the “forbidden” conversations with my folks and endear himself to them in the same moment. By the time we left I knew my family understood why I was in love with this man.
    In October 2008, he asked me to marry him and I accepted. We were married on the beach in Kenya on March 28, 2009, and I finished up my obligation to complete the spring and summer term at the Rosslyn Academy. On August 15 I moved from Nairobi, Kenya, to Hargeisa, a distance of almost nine hundred miles, to join Erik full-time and truly begin our married life together.
    We’d made it past the many obstacles to a successful relationship that can sprout up