WASHINGTON — Melania Trump ended up picking a lively week to get out of town.

On Monday, the mysterious, glamorous, disappearance-prone first lady was leaving behind a roiling capital where her husband faces several raw battles, including one over his Supreme Court nominee, to embark on a trip to Africa. In her first big solo trip abroad, Mrs. Trump is scheduled to visit four African countries in the span of a week: Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Egypt.

She is expected to see the sights. (This first lady on safari? It’s a possibility.) She is expected to greet schoolchildren and dole out baby blankets at hospitals. She is expected to wear flats.

And through it all, Mrs. Trump will try her hand at putting a softer lens on her husband’s administration abroad, just a week after he appeared before the United Nations and rejected globalism.

Her husband’s charged language about the continent may not make that any easier. The president was widely reported as having maligned African countries and Haiti as “shitholes,” and he spoke of Nigerian immigrants as having lived in huts back home. Then there was the lengthy crusade Mr. Trump led claiming that Barack Obama was a Kenyan citizen, and not eligible for the presidency.