Before I went to the USA for my home leave I had detailed plans for items to buy in the land of (more than) plenty. I knew that shopping would be time consuming and fairly overwhelming if I didn’t have a well vetted list. I’d end up coming back with an electric toothbrush or a lava lamp or something else that has no right coming back to Congo in my suitcase.
For the most part, it went well. I had some of the standard returned expatriate paralysis standing in the middle of an acre of Target Store. I enjoyed meeting some of the kind and quirky working-poor at Wal-Mart in Lancaster, PA. (I had a hard time convincing them that I really don’t know my way around the various and sundry departments under that roof and then they gave me tours.) Mostly I wanted to invite some of those guys over and hear the stories they’d have to tell. Maybe it’s because shopping here in Kisangani is always such a small-time, small-town barter game with a joke and a smile.
Between the online shopping and the driving to the store shopping I ended up with two decks of Uno Cards. I brought both back to Congo, figuring that you can’t really ever have too much Uno. Last weekend John and Dieu came over to hang out after church and we broke out one of the decks. We had a blast playing and I saw the true silver lining to having two decks. They took one home and taught it to their friends and family.
Yesterday when I swung by their house they were all sitting out front and they jumped in the car to go play some Uno at my apartment. We played for several hours and I didn’t win a single round. I said Uno! once. In one week they’ve all become world-class Uno champs. It’s a good thing I don’t mind losing.
I drank a small refreshing glass of cold milk just now. It occurs to me that the process by which that milk arrived in my glass was a fairly elaborate one. We don’t have fresh milk in Kisangani. Not in the supermarket, not in roadside stands. In fact, I’ve never seen a milk cow and cows of all sorts are rare. Most everyone drinks powdered milk if they are drinking milk at all.
So my glass of milk starts in the basement of the building where the man hired to fill my water cans and carry them back up to the apartment might even wait for some time for the water to flow from the spigot. Eventually it fills and he carries jugs up the stairs two at a time. I pull a water can out of the room where I store water; carry it to the kitchen. I pour it into a stock pot and get it up to a rolling boil (about 45 minutes on the electric burner). I let it cool some and then I filter it (usually overnight). In the morning I draw some of that precious sterile filtered water and mix it with milk powder (I don’t know if that comes from a cow or not). I put an ice cube in it to melt and simulate that fresh-from-the-fridge taste (ice cubes are a real luxury). Then I kick my feet up on the coffee table and tip it back. Mid-glass, my mind wanders and I write this blog.
Among the books I’m reading: “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. It’s about industrial and organic farming and food production and so I’m thinking more than ever about everything that influences consumption, food anthropology in the USA and here.
Thanks to Fred, a fellow blogger in Congo, who featured some Congo blogs on Global Voices last month - including mine!
Click here to check it out
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