An Invincible Summer

I know we're going to be apart for our actual one-year anniversary, DRC, but that doesn't mean anything; I'll love you just as much in India, baby.  We've had our highs and lows (not just in terms of water pressure and temperature), but we made it. 

So being with you means that the toilet seat will invariably be up – though when I said I didn’t mind living on the edge, falling into the toilet is not what I had in mind.   

So we're never alone together anymore – as I realised when hours of blasting and featuring in Bollywood and Eminem classics were interrupted by a tiny, polite cough.

So what? 

I thank God for each and every day I walk in your sunshine!  Here are some of my favourite memories of you over the past few days.

***

I wasn’t there at the time, but remember when BFG was pulled over by police for violating the law? 

Luckily, he got away – like any attorney worth his salt – by calmly defending his right to drive while under the influence of shorts.  The funniest things happen with you, DRC!

***

Remember that time I was invited to someone's house?  Like, actually invited?!  I mean, people try to invite themselves over to my place all the time, and I've visited others with members of my church, but a real, live invitation to someone's house – this is the big leagues! 

As I was waiting for her to pick me up from the nearby market, I was accosted by an older, somewhat tipsy individual. 

Initializing standard refusal sequence: 'I work with the church and love God and thus cannot meet you anywhere, at any time - no, not even for 15 minutes...'

“Hi, Madam!”

“Hello.”
“How can I help you?!”

By going away.  Quietly.  “I'm just waiting for someone.  Thank you.”

“But we are from the same family!”

...I am having trouble describing just how much I doubt this.

“Don't you know me?!?”

At this point I started panicking and wondering if he was from my church – I regularly agonise over the thought of hurting the feelings of someone I've met and forgotten.  

“My name is Blurtweetlebadingdong*!”

“...I see.”

“Do you know what that means?”

Other than that we've never met before?  “...No.” 

Which was when he proceeded to ecstatically wriggle his fingers in my face – all 12 of them. 

I stared at the vestigial appendages on his pinkies for quite some time before realising he was waiting for a response – my silence was making the situation all awkward and unbearable. 

Never again pray that they stop asking you out.  “Ah.”

And then he left. 

Good times. 

*Name changed to protect confidentiality.  Also, I have no idea what he said. 

***

I still get a kick out of the time I lost a lost a sock from our outdoor drying line, searched the construction zone next door, and finally paid the housemaids downstairs (in cookies) to retrieve it.  Those thick woollen socks are all that stand between me and hypothermia on your cold, rainy nights!

It's a good thing we're on great terms with our landlord's domestic help because they rule this building.  I thought we were the only ones in charge of the water tank on our floor, but you win again, DRC. 

Remember how I was warbling a soulful Hindi ballad and doing laundry in the outdoor sink when the 'boy' (though he is very definitely a man) climbed up the balustrade to our fourth-floor balcony and informed me that he was closing the pipes?

“Hello.”

“MAIN TENU SAMJHAAAWAN KI / NA TERE BINA LAGDAAA JI--”

“HELLO.”

Jumping mackerel, they have a siege tower!  “ACK--  Uh.  H-hi.”

“I'm closing this.”

“Uh.  You're shutting off the water?

-nod-nod-

“Uh.  Right now?”

-nod-nod-

“Uh.  But I need it.”

-nod-nod-

And then he clambered back down.  In one sense, it's great that we don't have to be home (or speak) for the building to access water.  In another, our landlord has access to the switch for the pump (which Butters uses without compunction in his I am White Man, hear me roar sort of way), their ground-floor water tank, and ours - when we likely use the least water of all floors (the only time I've seen Mr. and Mrs. Third Floor is when they're doing laundry, and since men rarely do laundry in their own houses, I'm beginning to think our landlord just hired another family to keep up with his, his wife's, their three children's, and two housemaids' never-ending stream of clothes, sheets, and shoes – maybe he'll get new tenants just to keep up with this family's laundry in a horrific sort of Russian doll scenario).  I would be angry but, as I see no way to regulate or equalise this system, I have long ago surrendered. 

So I went back to washing my clothes – chuckling at your little foibles.

***

You've introduced me to the most wonderful people, especially at work!  One – a local professional – has so many great stories about you!  You know, I keep forgetting how much you've been through – your small fiefdoms, the missionaries who tried to 'civilise' you, the colonizers who attacked with a chicotte and left you bleeding rubber and charred hands, the outsiders who machinated and assassinated, the neighbours who broke in with ideals and arms, the leaders who loved you and used you.

She tries to explain things I can't understand - or maybe that I won't understand.  Like when she says your people have no culture because of colonialism.  Like when she says that the practices that are common now are for manipulation and survival – nothing more, nothing less – and that your people lack the ingenuity and the drive to help others or each other.  Like when she blames this on colonialism while I try to explain that time is supposed to heal all wounds and three days have brought the dead to new life.  Like when she tries to convince me that your people can curse and poison and bewitch through blood and bone and magic.  Like when she tells me that Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsis who had settled in the Congo long before the genocide) are not to be trusted because they supported war efforts in Rwanda with money and sons.  And - as I remind her to love, that mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers may have been forced into a war that no one wanted – when she recounts that a soldier once held her face to bullet-riddled corpse because she should 'get used to the sight.' 

And when she talks about your people, she's talking about her own - her brothers and sisters – millions of people who believe both that it does not behoove men to enter the kitchen and that women are valued.  Who pray all the right words in harmony and believe in sorcery and potions that make invincible armies.  Who study economics and engineering and speak of typhoid and malaria as household pests.  Who are fiercely proud of their land and people and marvel at the diligence and prosperity of white hands.  Who believe in the strength and values of Africans and curse the selfish, necrotic clutches of colonialism.  Who riot in the streets for political reform and refuse to vote out of fear.  Who deplore nepotism and rely on it, cataloguing features, accents, and loyalties in split seconds because they mean the world – or worlds apart.  Who don't understand clinical Western systems of planning, organization, management, and evaluation, and strive for 'right' answers because a self-sustaining economy is unthinkable.  Who struggle to make ends meet and pass births and marriages and deaths with blinding frequency in between. 

My second mom is fond of saying that love suffers.  And it must be true – I love you, DRC, so I suffer when I see this tension.  Or maybe I have it all wrong; maybe it hurts because God loves you.  And you're held in the balance - between the warmth and light of community, Christianity, and charity, and the wildfire of tribalism and politics - the heart of Africa that holds an invincible promise of life and growth. 

Open your eyes.  The seeds are sown.  And summer is here. 

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.  -Albert Camus

February 27^th, 2016 - February 27^th, 2017

Mennonite Central Committee

Seed DRC – Cycle 1, Year 1