Rain, Forest, Rain!

“You shouldn’t be so scared to die!”

I goggled at our accountant.

“We’re all going to die one day!  You can’t escape it,” she continued earnestly, mistaking my exasperated wrath for an epiphany that I wasn’t actually Peter Pan.

This was just one of the many, many times I’d been accused of being scared to go somewhere or do something when the reality is that I’m just too dumb and inexperienced to feel fear.  Instead I try to base my decisions less on the emotional roller coasters around me and more on the facts people share – assuming that they’re being honest about the information they have at their disposal.

This is a stupid assumption.

So I watched an escape from Central Prison, stayed home for a week during which protests and Ville Mort had been planned, took a boat to Goma, climbed up and down a volcano, took another boat ride during which cholera was nowhere near the biggest problem, and then heard I should pack an emergency bag in case we have to leave the country.  Throughout all this, coworkers, fellow church members, and pedestrians displayed a level of calm heretofore only known by fetuses.  While I know this means very little in a context of political and economic instability, I also find it hard to hear that I’m both being careless about my safety and that I’m terrified of death – on the same day.

I know now that war and terror can occur with the same ease as noting that “Burundian girls are cheap nowadays,” but I cannot mentally and physically prepare myself for all possible repercussions every time one of our leaders has heartburn.  So I’m thankful that some things stay consistent.

The girls downstairs still take time from God’s work of washing and cooking the entire day to come and visit us sometimes.  Our landlord now has 4 housemaids for his family of 5 - each one smaller than the last (for easier stacking and storage, I assume) - and a guy who washes his car.  For my fellow Edmontosauruses: this is the African equivalent of being the upper crust of Ft. McMurray. 

Our landlord’s elder daughter, a gap-toothed beauty who could use some lessons in politesse (including that one shouldn’t bang on the neighbours’ door after 9pm and then scream that they are impolite because they won’t let one in to sift through their belongings like a demanding beggar), once snuck in with our electrician and began her usual routine of going through our rooms.

“I’ll come here on my birthday,” she decided.

Good idea; it’ll be funnier to refuse you then.    

“Can I have this?” she asked, indicating Butter’s whole-wheat pasta again.

“…It’s not cooked.”  You gremlin.

“I have many teeth,” she lisped, displaying very little evidence for this claim.

Choking back giggles, I gave the little beast a few noodles and pushed her out the door.

Our family life is going much better; we’ve had a visit from our Area Directors (who live in Rwanda), we celebrated the birthday of one my favourite people (I’d had no idea we were gathering for Grandpa – he and his wife usually feed and love us and I’d thought Carrottop was joking in her usual deadpan way), and we went to see gorillas in the rainforest!

The morning started out well, but by the time we arrived in the park, the clouds were low and grey.  The informative briefing session outlined the founding of the park and the gorilla families and disputes.  The best part of this was that the facilitator spoke to us in English and I couldn’t always tell when he was talking about the gorillas and when he was talking about the founders and workers of the park – this is a level of dedication to animal life that I probably will never achieve.  His science, however, as he tried to assure us that a silverback mating with his daughter or sister was perfectly fine due to their diet (“The leaves protect from taboo!”) may have been slightly faulty – again, fine attention to detail, though. 

Then we waited at the lodge while the rain poured and compared the sizes of the pregnancies and hunchbacks created by our raincoats over our backpacks, cameras, phones, and snacks.  When the skies cleared, we headed off in a pickup truck with two benches in the back.  After some time sitting at the edge of my seat and gazing longingly up at the tiny park ranger standing beside me in the desperate hope that he would understand my heart’s deepest desire, I could hold back no longer.

“Um…  Can I stand too?”

I was slapped by a wet branch once, but this was nowhere near enough to dampen my euphoria. 

Upon arrival, the rain started up again; a few soggy feet into the thick forest, we were told to turn back and take shelter at a post for soldiers.  They’d built a lovely little fire, but I knew my jeans and shoes would suffer this trip – there was no point in fighting it.  Instead, I fought the entire time to tie my satchel higher up on my shoulder with cold, wet fingers so that my passport and camera would be safe.  Two minutes into our soggy walk back into the forest, I felt the knot loosen and slip so that my bag was hanging below my raincoat again.  I gave up and, thanks to our hardworking park rangers and their machetes, forged ahead.

Directly into a swamp. 

Filled with ROUSes (Reeds Of Unusual Sharpness).

The Storm

The Storm - continued

The road goes ever on and on...

And so do we

The goal was not to stay dry;
it was to get less wet

A man's gotta eat.  And eat.  And eat.

My view -
barring a few highs and lows

Emerging from the underbrush
like the privileged troopers we are -
at least half an hour after hearing
that the road was 10 minutes away

We tramped up and down these reeds (sometimes way, way down into the water), on the hunt for any stray gorillas.  Thankfully, all of us are good sports who made it through with smiles.

(I cannot tell a lie, some of us are pessimistic whiners, but I think we know our faults and try to overcome them.  Pessimistic Whiner is kind of my job title, but I was still on a high from the pickup truck.)

In the end, we did see the silverback as well as his favourite female with their little taboo-less love child.  She got a little feisty when we got too close, but was placated by the 'All Izz Well' heart-patting that I have decided to adopt every time life overwhelmes me (i.e. when I enter our kitchen every morning).  The silverback, as all men everywhere in the history of all time, seemed so single-minded in his search for the tiny nub of the root of the reeds that I don’t think he would have cared if we’d set him up with spotlights and a top hat.

…And all the while, as the members of this majestic, wide-eyed little family edged themselves deeper and deeper into the reeds away from us, I imagined how I’d feel if amateur photographers showed up unannounced to the apartment on a Saturday while I was spending some quality time with my fridge…   

…and chucked used tissues or the plastic seals of water bottles in my living room.  The tissue was first and landed a little too far under my horrified gaze; after that, I was bound and determined to track any litterbugs.  After one short break during which Grandma and Grandpa offered us chocolate like the angels they are, I gathered all the wrappers to  lick  throw away later.  I noticed one of our rangers busily digging a hole and was vaguely worried about what he planned to do in it in full view of the rest of us, but decided it was none of my business.  Then he tapped my arm and smilingly invited me to bury the slick wrappers bunched in my fist.

Because the best way to deal with long-lasting problems is to bury them and move on.  If you can’t see it, you don’t have to talk about it, and everything still looks the same.  And when death comes in a few years, no one will know why – but we’ll keep fertilizing the trees and adding fences and increasing methods and means to ensure growth. 

As long as we don’t talk about the garbage underneath.  It’s got to go somewhere.  What difference does it make?  It’s just so little…  Everyone does it…  It’s the way we’ve always done it…

I pushed the wrappers into my soggy bag and politely refused.