On Making Sense Of It All

Last week began with ice cream - which is a good way to begin any Herculean effort - because Grandma and Grandpa are beautiful people who redo kitchens and share homemade peanut butter ice cream like it ain’t no thang. 

Personally, this was not an ideal time of the month to be around innocent members of the human species not armed with silver bullets, but I managed to chat with our team (give or take a few members) through the sparkling cloud of a devastating sugar high.

Upon arriving home, I discovered a single blood-red eye inspecting me from my mirror – a new feature in my sizeable repertoire of bodily failures. 

The light had stopped working in my room and I was reduced to reading with my cellphone balanced on my head so the flashlight was more or less aimed at the book in my hands.  I’d initially assumed my eyes were tired of this practice, but was eventually forced to admit that there was a bigger problem.  To counteract a mild eye infection, I decided to sleep through the night on Friday instead of waking up after an hour, filling water in our myriad buckets, laying awake and seething for another two hours, and then sleeping for another five. 

You see, I had become complacent in the fact that water arrived at least once every other day.  I was aware that the Queen of Sheba was with us, but using advanced calculations (I’m tired + One night won’t make a difference x This will prove to Butters that I’m not insane), I projected that we’d be fine.

We haven’t received any water as of Wednesday morning.    

So in addition to feeling like my whole world is covered in a layer of grime, I feel overwhelmingly guilty that I couldn’t wake up for the few minutes it takes to fill water for the household.  Obviously, no one blames me, so I do it for everyone.  On the way home from a field visit, I bought mangoes and ears of corn, and now meditatively devour them in silence in the darkness of my room – this is my equivalent of slumping at a bar and slurring Another whiskey - neat.      

Work is going... along.  As it does.  One highlight was the field visit on Friday which involved speaking to a class of nursing students about the importance of mental health care and the first steps diagnosing and treating patients suspected of a concomitant mental pathology.  They were quiet, sincere, and asked intelligent questions. 

You know the difference between them and their superiors (the nurse practitioners and health care officials we spoke to a few weeks ago about psychopathology)?

They didn’t feel entitled to a meal and a monetary incentive for attending.  This session was, in effect, a learning activity.  As most seminars should be.  While I fully respect that the size and (lack of) accessibility of the Congo necessitates that professionals may require a small fee to cover travel expenses, this provision has resulted in some who choose their seminars for the possibility of a higher incentive, attend as many as possible in lieu of getting work done, take part sporadically just to ensure their name is on the sign-in sheet, and actively demand higher compensation.  For learning information that is helpful to their respective fields.

A bittersweet highlight was learning the full story of the hemorrhaging mother who had benefited from an emergency operation by our on-staff medical doctor.  She was 12.  She’d been raped and her family had refused to support her pregnancy, but she is now again ensconced in her own home – now with her healthy baby. 

The reason her story came up was due to necessity of using her picture in a report.  I had been busily editing away on a proposal document during a meeting when I looked up to see the requested picture projected on the wall.  While it was presumably of her, it was – more specifically – of her pubis. 

Now, I don’t often think this outside of prayer, but as I swung my head around to continue typing frenetically: Jesus Christ.

I’ll freely admit to being a prude, though I enjoy textbook anatomy and pathophysiology.  Knowing, however, that this clinical picture was all we cared to know of the agony and medical treatment of a 12-year-old mother made my heart twist.     

My colleagues took it in stride – all being married, if not parents of at least five children – and their discussion of the new prime minister of the Congo was barely interrupted.  I found it fitting that just after the upset of the American election, the Congo went through its own: the appointing of a near-unknown opposition leader as Prime Minister by the President who is very regretfully (really) unable to hold an election as outlined in the constitution he helped write.        

I have enough worries nearer to home, so I am largely able to ignore the half-worried, half-laughing tension of my colleagues as they accept that their apparently democratic leadership has literally no concern for their wishes. 

The Queen of Sheba’s unexpected week-long stay and my incredible laziness have resulted in a significant housekey and water shortage.  This necessitated me begging for water and succour from the housemaids downstairs who laugh at my Swahili and generally my face.  Finally deciding to spend some quality time with them (after, uh, being locked out one evening), I shared some cookies with them and one child who was up from her nap. I was let into our apartment a few minutes later when Butters showed up. 

I was not expecting the Queen of Sheba to arrive an hour later – in the darkness of our regular power cut – tugging along a small human and drawling, “She also wants ze cookies of ze muzungu.”

I goggled at her.  Well, at her shapely outline.  And then at the shorter, frillier outline standing silently next to her. 

Is this your love child?!  Did you just bring her in off the street because she wanted food?!  Am I supposed to feed her?!  Muzungu cookies?!

Luckily, Butters was eating M&Ms and reacts faster than I do – he handed her a chocolate which she took with all the veneration of handling the Holy Grail.  The housemaids outside giggled, which is when it dawned on me that this was one of our landlord's children – the Hero-Worshipper.  An hour later, the maids came up with Screamer, who was also apparently asking for muzungu cookies, though he did nothing but wobble on his little feet and belligerently drip snot at me.      

Next year, I’ll try to re-schedule this event for October 31^st.