Loving the Players

The landlord’s housemaids are gradually becoming more loving.  And thus more terrifying.  I try to creep up the four flights of stairs to our apartment without breathing, but am inevitably caught by my name screamed in varying tones of ecstasy, depending on what I’m wearing, if my hair is down, or if I’m carrying groceries.

The most recent order of business is English (though I’ve also been graciously offered the chance to do primary school maths and technology homework); one day the youngest maid asked me in careful English what my name was.

First of all, they have never really understood my name (like half the population here) and offer me vague semblances to which I deign to respond because the alternative is to... talk to them.  Furthermore, I generally dislike my name, but in French, it is unutterably worse – the harsh ‘r’ forever sounds as if people are angry with me. 

“[Kerrrrrmit]!”

“I didn’t do it, I swear!  Please don’t write an Incident Report!”

In light of this, my name with the rolled ‘r’ of a North American accent was cause for unutterable hilarity.  The follow-up was learning Irene and Charlene ‘in English’ – which apparently means sounding like you’re on your first spring break in Mexico with your new best friends Tequila and Mimosa. 

I have no idea when or why I became our apartment’s mascot – I am clearly the eldest, most dignified, and overall best of our herd.  Okay, so Butters was recently part of a star-studded concert (I use this term loosely – it was almost two hours late, the instruments and mics were in various states of flagrant civil disobedience, and one of the acts was a withering sermon), but I still think I’m better, so this behaviour is completely inexplicable and horrible.  Made more so by the fact that the landlord’s stunning children run out to hug me sometimes and my uterus takes the opportunity to murmur All this could be yours if you just give up your right to freedom, privacy, and laughing/sneezing too hard.

There must be a helpline for this sort of monthly physical and psychological abuse.  1-800-UTRS-R-US?  UTRI-WHY?

In reality, our landlord’s wife resembles a hovercraft, and shows no sign of stopping (I wouldn’t either, if I could make such beautiful babies), so I’m sure I could snatch the smallest and check him as a carry-on in my flight home in a few months. 

Homebound plans are further complicated by the fact that Joseph has recently bought a gas stove, which I think is sort of a marriage proposal in Africa.  Luckily, I am able to do a zig-zag manoeuvre with my emotions and actions that keeps him constantly guessing as to whether I want to propose or roast him on his new stove, so we’re safe for now.  And kept safer by the fact that the downstairs housemaids keep track of our  prison visits  relationship with a microscope. 

“You’re coming downstairs with your honey,” one observed one night, as the two others and the landlord’s eldest daughter watched and listened in unswerving fascination. 

“Your honey’s name is [Joseph],” the narrator  continued. 

My honey has a head with two ears on it.

He thinks it’s cute that they love me, which proves the extent of his madness; he’s never come home to find the eldest maid in war paint. 

I tried to keep my voice and face neutral in order to keep her from a berserker rage.  “So.  Where have you been.”

The maid smiled coyly.  “The market.”

With enough face powder to render a beautiful, dimpled brown face grey and fill out naturally thin eyebrows into Arabic swears on her forehead?  A likely story.  I knew this day would come from the minute they imitated my walk with much hip-swaying.  I am torn between letting her explore her individuality and giving her the talk about the birds and the bees and how hard it must be to eject a 6-lb human from your body after 9 months of not being able to sleep on your tummy.  It’s a good thing I held off on the lecture – I did see her at the market another day (when she ran screaming my name for five minutes to catch up with me as the other vendors looked on in joy – until this time, they had only been able to shriek Mzungu, MZUNGU! Every time I walked by for the past two years).

Other apartment-dwellers nearby have also taken up this rallying cry around me – one girl, who believes herself to have secured a place in the deepest corner of my heart due to my refusal to do her English homework one day, recently asked me to take her back to my place.  Due to the vagaries of French, I have no idea if she meant to Canada, India, or our apartment.  The answer would be the same for all three, but I’d like to evaluate the severity of her mental illness before voicing it. 

Speaking of mental illness, my team has adapted remarkably well to mine!  It was recently my birthday – 29 years young, as my mother somewhat pityingly reminded me – and, like every year, I wanted to bury it completely from existence.  Don’t get me wrong; I shared cake with my coworkers and friends (ostensibly for Christmas), I have no problem with my age, and I actively demand that my close friends and family adore me as is my due, but a generic hbd on Facebook is soul-crushing, and near-strangers accosting me and pretending they care is even more personally soul-crushing.  Luckily, my team stumbled upon the best way to get around all of these irrational phobias – hijack the welcome dinner of our country coordinator, celebrate on a day that is not actually my birthday, and sedate me with enough peanut butter to choke a squirrel.  Unfortunately, I initially thought Carrottop was just having a seizure in the kitchen before dinner.  

My eyes travelled from her face, which appeared to be caving in on itself, to the hands held protectively in front of her slim form, to the glazed eyes determinedly staring at the freezer door in front of her nose.

She’s in labour and doesn’t want to tell anyone.  Her appendix burst... three days ago and she didn’t tell anyone.  Her 3-sizes too big introvert heart is suffering from too many people but she won’t tell anyone.

Just before screaming for BFG to come and control his wayward Ironman wife, I glanced at the top of the fridge, where there was a cake.  It was at this point that I was ordered out of the kitchen before I spoiled the surprise of the peanut butter icing. 

This was like closing the barn door after the glue had been shipped worldwide, but I am nothing if not obedient, especially in the face of imminent peanut butter.

The second party was a little more anonymous in that barely anyone knew me, much less that it was actually my birthday.  However, in true Congolese fashion, the Christmas lunch was turned into a state-level event complete with formal speeches about the joy of life, being together, and descendents (this last came from Joseph as I proceeded to choke slightly and he blissfully ignored me with the ease of five months of practice).  I was fairly sure Joseph’s choir leadership team had chosen the local Indian restaurant out of respect for their dearly beloved coach’s ‘white’ girlfriend, so I had a minor panic attack at the thought of all of them trying and hating all the spicy food.  I needn’t have worried – they all ordered fries and baked fish or chicken.  Everything went swimmingly until I realised I was also expected to address the assembly.

A cross-cultural relationship with an extrovert is just the thing for a shy immigrant with an inability to express herself even in the languages in which she is fluent, I thought, as I sat at the head of a long table listening to 20 people pound it and chant my name while Joseph quietly begged me to make a ‘speak’ - for him.   God, how did I come to be in this colossal mistake.    

I muttered something about being happy to be there, refused to kiss the table of essentially friendly strangers, was mobbed for pictures, and hurried home to discuss these events with Butters, who put into the words the feeling of overwhelming dismay when faced with this country being... this country; he’d coined it during his concert, when a pastor gave a 45-minute sermon disparaging the young population of this vast, conflict-ridden country with a 16-year-and-still-going-strong presidential term, astronomical corruption and unemployment, a parasitic state, and crippling humanitarian aid for not financially supporting ‘heroes’ in fine arts.   

My entire birthday week was this eventful – one day, I walked to work with the zipper of my skirt down.  It was a pleated black skirt with an overlapping button, and I was wearing a long black tunic tucked in – it would have been hard to notice that the zipper was down unless my butt was being fairly thoroughly examined, but I appreciated the kind young man’s PSA just the same. 

The other event was a dear friend’s sudden miscarriage, which hit me harder than I would have expected.  I’d laughed with her, danced at her wedding this year, and blessed her substantial baby bump - never knowing that I’d also cry at the loss of her precious little boy.

This is it – the good and the bad, the low zippers and the high cakes, the newness of each sunrise and the waning of each year, the speeches and the things better left unsaid; here’s to another year of life.