This morning the car wouldn’t start. Today was the first time we’d scheduled three loan disbursals on one day so I knew something had to be done and quick. I called our driver and asked him to hire a taxi for the day and come to my building. That way he could focus on getting the Land Cruiser fixed and the busy workday could roll as planned.
It turned out to be a great day. I’m coming off of a couple of weeks with a lot of electricity problems at the office. This week the current has been stable. I’m putting in long days getting a lot done. I’m worn out, but it feels great. I hope this persists, at least until we have a good generator flown in.
In the afternoon I went to help inaugurate a brand new community banking group. I especially enjoyed riding there and back in the compact car that we rented. I usually see the city from Land Cruiser height. But today my eyes were opened to things from a new, lower vantage. I wanted badly to stop and take photographs of things that struck me, but that’s difficult in Congo as photographs are generally considered illegal and we had a schedule to keep. So instead I took mental snapshots of odd and beautiful things that I hadn’t seen before. Come to think of it I felt the same way when I started riding the bus in San Diego after living there for years. In that case it was a view from higher up. In each case it was an adjustment of a few feet and I saw the city with new eyes.
I try to avoid personal negativity on my blog. It’s not that I don’t have negative thoughts or even entire weeks which are harder than I ever knew a week to be. It’s just that Congo already gets enough bad press. The Congo-negativity is really strongest here in Congo. I strive to be a positive voice here (sometimes I succeed). Also, I don’t think people really want to come here to read through a stack of my problems. I haven’t been writing about the push and pull and general difficulty of working here as a new government takes power. I’m not complaining but yesterday may have been really hard and last week may have been a doozie.
But today, TODAY! I am writing to give a shout out to the director of the government’s employment office. He was concerned about a small technicality and it was holding some things up. And today he came to our office with a solution that he worked out. I wish I had “HOPE Congo” t-shirts, I’d give him one. Dude, thanks so much for that deposit in my emotional bank account!
Hortense asked me if I would attend her community bank loan disbursal today to greet the members and offer them an encouraging word. I’ve been able to work on my public speaking skills here by giving these short speeches from time to time. I speak in French and usually it’s translated to either Lingala or Kiswahili. I dream of the day when I will be able to converse freely in those languages. But the silver lining is the way I’ve grown very comfortable with impromptu multi-lingual public speaking. I even have a few lines that I throw in when I want to crack ‘em up.
There were some delays getting to the community bank and there was a standard mid-afternoon power outage. I was feeling a little tired and worn out. We had dinner with a couple of American pilots who were in town for the evening last night. Good conversation was consolation for slow restaurant service (I think we were there for four hours).
When I walked into the bank meeting, I really liked the group’s vibe. We were under a tin lean-to in a small courtyard. A woman was cooking on a small fire just behind me. Just as I was asked to stand and address them the skies opened up and pounded rain down on that tattered tin roof. I’ve got a strong voice, my translator did not. I don’t know how much they heard and I am not sure how much it matters. We shared some smiles and stayed mostly dry.
Next time it rains where you are, try to imagine what it might be like to live in a place where rain closes most business down and stops your transportation in its tracks, leaving you to hunt for quick shelter before you are soaked to the bone. It leaks through your roof or floods in through the front door.
The rain cools the jungle heat. It waters the garden and the abundance of water keeps famine at bay. It gives your children a scarce reason to smile and leap for joy as they frolic with their friends in the mud. And your community bank group is wise enough to meet under an old tin roof so that rain or shine you can get some cash into your small business and work things out.
I’ve been blessed to make some great Congolese friends in the past 14 months and I’ve gotten to know some very nice fellow expatriates. When I first arrived in Kisangani I spent a week learning from my predecessor, Peter. Then he went to Kinshasa for a week to start stepping into his new position there. Finally, he came back for a week to see how I was doing and answer my newbie questions.
We share the common experience of working as the manager of this microfinance institution in a city that is quite isolated from the rest of the world. While we haven’t experienced life here in exactly the same way, it’s been an intense and rich time for each of us respectively. Peter was here from the start and I got to pick it up one year in - but I’m the one person who can best relate to his experience here and vice versa.
Peter is taking a five-day break out here. It’s been a great time. A great friend can make a long, warm Saturday zip by almost too fast. A good friend will sit through my stumbling preaching in French in a little church and not even complain. Sunday night we had French expatriate friends Jerome and Christilla over for dinner and games. We played alternating rounds of Boggle in English and French and had more than a few laughs. They have been a ton of fun to get to know.
I expected that I’d get to work on my French here. I expected that I’d really taste the challenge of living in a foreign culture and learn to accept it, love it, move in its rhythms. I expected that I’d experience the joy of working where I felt called, among the poor. I expected that I’d make some friends from Congo. I didn’t expect that I’d make a very good friend from North Carolina.
There have been some ‘Congo challenges’ recently for a few weeks and my awareness of these tremendous blessings in my life has been partly obscured by a stressed-out fog. It’s amazing how the simple fellowship and extraordinary mutual encouragement of friendship can clear the air.
When I was nine years old and first went to summer camp they told us that food was not allowed in the cabins because it would attract bugs. I never really believed it. I thought it was to keep us from fighting over it or to keep us eating the food they were serving… and I suppose it partly was. But the fact that food attracts bugs is a truth that cannot be debated even in this so-called postmodern era.
And yet somehow I fail to remember this from time to time. When humans and bugs go to war, we may win battles with heavy arms (chemicals usually, some which probably poison us slowly as well) but ultimately the bugs will win the war. And here in the Congo we lack many of the top bug-fighting tools: there is no ‘Orkin Man’. Years ago I went to hear the famous evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould speak and he said that even if we humans bombed the earth to near oblivion, at least two cockroaches would survive. I don’t agree with the late Mr. Gould on many things, but I think he’s right here.
I live in an old Belgian high-rise building that is haunted by thousands of species of insects and families of geckos that feast to their heart’s content. Every day there’s a bug that I’ve never seen before and I appreciate this small reminder of biodiversity. I’ve learned to be wise; I don’t let the bugs bother me. (Thereby refusing to let them rob me of my sanity.) For the most part I direct my attention to avoiding or diverting or smacking the ones that can sting, bite, burn or infect me. But occasionally it is the sundry regiments of ants who prey on my forgetfulness or laziness or both. They leave me with the worst kind of defeat: the self-defeat.
Last week I had some peanuts and bananas for lunch at work. I wrapped up the handful of remaining peanuts in the plastic bag they came in (which was rare, they usually come in a paper cone made from someone’s schoolwork). I almost put them in my desk drawer and then I though, “nah, I don’t want bugs colonizing my desk”. So I tucked it into my computer bag thinking it’d be safer there. The next morning as I was rushing out the door for work I lifted my bag off the sofa and there were hundreds of ants partying underneath it. I opened the pouch to find that the peanut bag had sprung a leak and thousands of ants poured out of my bag. In a frenzy I emptied everything out (ants pouring out of my cell phone, eating the stamps in my passport) and shook everything out and got to work a little late. Ants: 1, Brian: 0.
Last night I finished my dinner and left the dirty plate on the coffee table. I decided to watch an episode of Seinfeld on DVD and when it was over I noticed that the entire plate, fork and cup were blackened, covered by a swarming feast of ants that were plotting to pick the whole thing up and take it to their lair. At this point I have no choice but to start tapping it, letting them know that the jig is up so at least half of them can vacate and I can pick it up. Otherwise they’ll all go up my arm and it’ll go from bad to worse. Ants:2, Brian:0.
There’s a former rebel movement turned political party here that uses a black ant as it’s symbol. I used to think that seemed silly. (I tend to think that a lot of politics is both silly and highly entertaining.) Now I see their point. The ants are stronger than us, they’re much more organized and vigilant than we are, and they have us far outnumbered. Now if I can just be a little smarter…
Lately every time it rains the power cuts out at the office. Lately, it rains a lot. This is the rainforest. The power company does not take responsibility for fixing their lines (unless you track them down and pay them on the side). In some places the lines are above ground and openly spliced and puddles can become deadly. In other places, the lines are buried but they look like a patchwork quilt. When the water soaks in, the lines short out and our computers go dead, work goes manual. Get out the abacus.
As the manager of a small financial institution that is looking to grow, my computer is an important tool. Unfortunately the battery is so worn out that it only lasts about 45 minutes tops. When the power goes out longer than that, so does much of my effectiveness. Even as I make it, this complaint feels absurd to me in a country where 99% of the people have never touched a computer. But days like today feel about twice as long as normal computerized workdays. I realize how big the computer is in my work and life when I am relegated to shuffling paper and meanwhile growth planning models are locked in a laptop with a dead battery. It’s frustrating when communication with coworkers in other cities costs 30 cents per minute instead of free online chat. (And there’s a good bit of stuff to touch in on from government issues to health issues to those planning models.)
I went generator shopping and found that just about nothing is available. The one available in town is without any brand name at all and I’m fairly certain it would krunk out in weeks or months rather than years. Some men are digging up the shredded cables and work is being done. Tomorrow is another day.
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