Just a Spoonful

I am slightly sociopathic.  Just a little. 

This epiphany was brought to you by Butters (and the letters F and U) during an argument in which I raved that he was never on my side, didn’t love me, and never would.

“Just to be clear – I think they’re making a big deal of it,” he said – I assume in reference to the Incident Report of my wild escapade of talking to a pastor’s son one evening.  “But what’s not helping is your utter lack of remorse!” he finished at a roar in order to be heard over my triumphant ululation. 

Butters, despite being a young white male, is capable of converting oxygen into profound insight at times.  I recognize my many flaws and mistakes, but for the most part, I have an utter lack of remorse when it comes to certain actions I have deemed necessary.  Some classify this as a spirit of defiance - which seems to be all the more traitorous coming from a normally spineless pile of hair – and attempt to crush it (usually because my motto is Go big or go home).

I was once suspended either from high school (this seems doubtful) or from gym class (more likely, and also more of a reward than anything else) for hiding from softball in the bathroom with a friend.  I felt this same sensation then, as every freedom fighter since Jacob found Leah on his wedding night:  Bring it. 

If, in light of this spiritual mentorship, you assume Butters to be an egalitarian paragon of (somewhat easy) virtue who reads French novels and is currently learning Spanish as well as developing an adult ESL curriculum while being a musical prodigy in his free time… I would like you to know that he also wanders out of his room with a tissue stuffed up his nose because he refuses to take allergy medication and enjoys spending his mornings honking at the sunrise like my father before him and Canada geese before them for centuries untold. 

He once wandered into my room to ask about pubes. 

I tried to blend into my bed and hoped this conversation would go away. 

Nevertheless, he persisted. 

Eventually, Butters was convinced to change his intonation and I was forced to admit that I did not have an EPUB reader to read the book he’d recommended, which was in an EPUB format.     

E-PUB. 

In other news, Ratilla is alive and well, strictly gluten-free, and enjoys the occasional treats of peanut butter that Butters carefully spreads over metal spring mechanisms and tests repeatedly while his roommates wait on tenterhooks for the inevitable scream and visit to the nearby clinic after dark. 

I hope I get to write that Incident Report. 

Work feels just like home.  “I continue to love you,” one elderly man of God assured me one morning.  Of course, in an excited effort to speak English one day, he’d told me he was going to leave people in my bras (French for arms) for me to conduit (lead), so maybe I shouldn’t take him at his word, even when it is all in French.

But most of my colleagues are just as loving, which came to good use one day when I was accosted on the way to visit a donor.

I heard “You Indian!” (or You idiot! – either way, definitely in reference to me) just before I was yanked back by my scarf and hair.  “Nj-a-ala!” he said, motioning to his stomach. 

Prepared to deploy my usual façade of polite incomprehension, I was foiled when one of my friends paid the man 200 francs to let go of the scarf another friend had in a death grip.  I gather this was the only way forward, as he’d apparently had a knife and was tipsy.  I wasn’t so much scared for myself as I was furious that we’d paid him to continue acting this way; he provided the face for the reason my family thinks this place is hopeless.

“I told you to walk faster!” I hissed at my friends.  They burst into laughter – I had to laugh too, but the anger continued to simmer.  I’d been bothered like this before, but saying no, pretending incomprehension, or ignoring worked to discourage them.  One man, a half-naked possible schizophrenic (who’d apparently been cursed by a witch) used to follow me often when I lived in the old apartment.  He once grabbed my arm and even some side-boob action before realizing that I was quite possibly crazier than he was (after this, I also avoided him like the plague because, really).  Then there was the Lesser Ipod Theft of 2016, after which I hope I instilled into two students the importance doing justice and loving kindness for the good of their city.  The girl often sees and greets me happily – asking if I remember her – as though her efforts to rob me have created a lasting bond between us. 

I just refuse to give in to this sort of insanity that begets further insanity.  I have no problem with giving up some peace of mind and a scarf in order to indicate that I will not be easily intimidated or fooled.  Being mugged on a dark street is one thing – choosing a foreigner in broad daylight as an easy mark and irritating them until they produce riches is not a Pavlovian response I want to encourage.  

We are people, not oysters.

I’m not proud of this level of stubbornness (and neither, it must be said, is Indian culture as a whole), but I believe that love takes a level of suffering, and I do so love it here.

Even when I’m told I am to make a presentation on mental health to health care professionals in French in an hour.  Even when the car keys come flying out of the ignition on the rocky route to said presentation.  Even when my friend, who’d hated the president until very recently, sports a canary-yellow banner bearing his stoic face.

“Because the new governor of this province is from my tribe!” he said triumphantly. 

This one act that the president allowed turned him from Public Enemy No.1 to a hero.  Now money would come into this province.  Now the local tribe would be hired.  Now it was their turn to eat. 

I rejoiced with him – I did.  I laughed to hear that his wife and children danced at the governor’s inauguration all night, and I congratulated him on the future he saw changing.  But I also tried to tell him that change involving the elevation of one group over another would always fail. 

“I don’t care – now we’ll finally see the news roads in campaigned for in Bujumbura in 2006!  I tell my children every night to study and become ministers so they can steal lots of money,” he laughed. 

I even love this country when we’re on the field, and everyone from a self-help group for teen mothers to a monthly meeting of health care professionals condemns the lack of generosity of donors.  After my speech on appropriate mental health care at work, I was asked why donors weren’t paying doctors and nurses to do their jobs – that mental health would be at an all-time high if people just had money. 

I responded with the abysmal mental health statistics from the West and asked whether it would be possible for donors to give enough money to each suffering group in the Congo?  In Africa?  My organization was doing its best to support the integration of mental health in the form of medical care, trauma healing, socio-economic reintegration, mediation, and counseling, but it was up to individuals, organizations, and the state to reach consensus as to how to run the country, and money was not the answer, especially in light of the idea of franca ya munyama and the rest of the conversation last week with my Congolese coordinator.  [Synopsis:  He professed pride at the long-established hospital service and convent run by Belgians in a rural area - complete with consistent running hot water and electricity.  Then he proceeded to laugh at the idea that the Congolese doctors, nurses, priests, and nuns could support the institution themselves - even at its current level, much less the level of improvement suggested by the project I linked above.]

“Your organization is going to have a hard road,” my interlocutor muttered before turning away. 

They were right – having regular work hours was not going to help run a household of 10 hungry mouths and minds.  But there were other things that could…

Mentalities had to change.  Conversations had to change.  Common practices had to change. 

But even I felt somewhat helpless telling this roomful of weathered men (and two women) on weathered pews to take breaks, eat healthy, and have good interpersonal relationships.

But it is enough for today.