Rarely my circus; never my monkeys

Some say sarcasm is the lowest form of humour. 

I say that it is the best cover for abject stupidity, and will hold to it like a remora.  It saved my pride after listening to ten minutes of sustained gunfire from my office.

“Where’s the party?” I said happily. 

Before you judge me, I was raised in Canada and India, where bangs in the street are more likely to be firecrackers for a wedding, Diwali, or Canada Day than riots in the Central Prison.

That’s right: I’m playing the race card early in this game. 

Luckily, my coworker, under the false impression that I am funny, just laughed and explained that this is how war starts.  A few minutes later, the entire office gathered at the balcony to stare into the Prison.  I tried, but as I couldn’t even really identify it, I wandered back to my office and continued editing a project proposal for the umpteenth time.  When asked if I was scared, I said, after some honest, critical self-searching, “The fact that I may have left the tap on at home affects me more than those gunshots.”

...Very well, I murmured something about holding myself together, but I’m not sure they understand: someone with no real concept of war and displacement outside of facts, figures, and film can never, ever have a proper fear of gunshots and riots. 

After this excitement, we were bundled off into a three-day seminar (of which we’d had no prior warning) on the principles of Do No Harm that aid workers had developed and try to adhere to in areas of humanitarian crises. 

It was incredibly informative and the interaction between longtime workers and topic facilitators was interesting to see.  We covered tensions that could arise around the transfer of resources, the exacerbation of conflict over implicit ethical messages of aid and the way it is provided, and the peaceful resolution between parties based on the building up of their commonalties (shared resources, beliefs, and social infrastructure) rather than creating divisors (in the form of favouring one group over another or supplying armed groups).  The one thing I would have changed would have been a greater focus on the phenomenon of Substitution:  A government that thinks, for example, that it is UNICEF’s responsibility to educate its country’s children will not adequately support or develop its Education Ministry.  Moreover, it will lose the ability adequately train or encourage teachers for a sustainable education system, and will rely on outside aid.

The same is true for any aid agency’s work.  Humanitarian workers here have to realise that they are working towards the goal of ending their foreign funding - ending, in fact, their employment with foreign aid.  There is apparently a move towards a ‘phasing out’ of aid, and organizations presumably spend hours on the planning, execution, monitoring, and evaluation of a project to ensure that it will be sustainable within communities.

But how hard would I try if my future, the future of my family depended on my salary with the aid agency?

The closing ceremony of said seminar beat out the Olympics.  I felt half like I’d achieved a Masters degree (but not actually; sorry, Mom), and half like I was in the UN.  There were speeches from participants, facilitators, and the executive secretary, all with variations of I’d like to thank God, and God bless – Amen, after which we took the walk across the room to receive a certificate, shake important hands, and take pictures. 

It was a bit of a letdown to then go home and have my apartment manager and roommate treat me like, you know, a normal person and not like a dignitary.

The manager, who had become embroiled in a war between our apartment and the guards (who wanted a $250 unofficial ‘raise’ to do their jobs in the rain – which they really should have thought of before becoming guards), decided to seize the opportunity to ask me if I was married and to ‘take him.’

I stared at him. 

“Take me!”

To your leader?  To Canada?  To your bed?

As he had already been in my bad books for asking me to invite my Best Friend over to live in a newly vacant apartment (which I felt a responsibility to do and which Butters said was basically an engraved invitation to press his suit), I was less than pleased. 

I’d dealt with him when all he’d wanted from me was a job; I’d deal with him now when he wanted to marry me, obtain a secret salary for the guards to open the gate and check on the state of my lightbulbs (their words – not a euphemism), and forbid me to speak to the renter who handled the contract with the security company.   

“This is not the way to ask.”

Butters left me to handle all this because he doesn’t believe in traditional gender roles in the household and also because the guards don’t ask him how he’s sleeping and then forbiddingly intone that God must be protecting him, nor do single males, regardless of age or topic at hand, ask to date and/or marry him on a daily basis.

Otherwise, living with male housemate is basically acceptable.  It helps that he puts in effort to keep the kitchen clean, which is nice.  I will add, however, that Butters has a distressing penchant for the radio and aggravating hipster music that makes me want to die (and take him with me). 

I tried to take it for a while, but when you’re trying to gobble chocolate in peace and a man is moaning Frenchily about his umbrella in a corner of paradise with a flagrant disdain for tune or rhythm for over five minutes, a girl can lose her cool.  I’m fine with rap and pop in various languages, and the Queen of Sheba was a diehard fan of French and Swahili gospel music (mostly from her church in Goma, though she knows one Rwandan marriage song and sometimes forayed as far afield as gospel songs from her church in Pretoria); at any rate, I have never before envied Van Gogh for living the dream.

Why can’t he just listen to death metal like normal white people?! 

On the other hand, he seems to enjoy my shrieking of Bollywood and Disney at all hours – most especially when the power is out – and once expressed awe of fifteen minutes of singing with sound effects. 

Of course, he said it felt more like an hour, which just defies the traditional adage that time flies when you’re having fun.

(Hey, if he can assault my ears with tuneless hipster guitar strumming about hipster propaganda like paradise and umbrellas, I can return the favour.)

We differ in other ways as well – when I tried to share a wonderful experience of haggling for and suddenly receiving too many onions and tomatoes at a bargain price, Butters just looked at me like I was certifiably insane.  The fact that the vendor then tried to fit all the onions into my too-small bag in front of a growing crowd did not change his mind at all.  That the loving maman did this all to a constant refrain of "We are women; we are Congolese!" (indicating that... Congolese are used to fitting things in small bags?  Congolese women like onions?) didn't touch his heart of stone. 

Butters doesn’t make lists, gives people the price they demand, and is - in short - the white sucker person everyone takes me for when they try to sell me secondhand shoes for $20.  On the other hand, he is direct, shares books and podcasts, and reminds me that some things that people say and do here are actually abnormal for foreigners (sometimes I forget and think men following me home for apartments is normal). 

Some things even he can't help me with; today, I'm dressed like someone fresh off a chundan vallam in a very solitary attempt to celebrate India's Independence Day, and trying to find the best time to share cake when the entire country is in three days of mourning for the continuing massacres in Beni... 

Lots of Love, 

A Great Princess