BrianJBecker.com

I’m about 27000 feet above Congo’s Equatorial Rainforest in a svelte United Nations CRJ-200.  Below, it’s a lush forest of variegated green.  From up here today though, the whole thing is a sea of deep blue.  It is a million shades of blue above in this sky.  Every form of cloud is making its appearance.  The sun-baked cumulus tries to steal my heart, but I save my eye for the demure swaths of white foam.

It’s been three months since I came back from my home leave and where I am, three uninterrupted months starts to feel a little long.  It’s a feeling that creeps up on you and sits on your shoulders before you hear it coming.  It’s not because I’m lacking for tremendous company.  Kisangani is just an isolated city.  It’s hard to explain.  Getting up here today feels good.  Maybe I can find a pilot who will take me up and fly me in circles over this place from time to time.  Today the sky seems a fine remedy. 

These last two weeks my digestive system has been in rebellion.  It’s brought me to my knees and tested my mettle.  I’m thankful for a few prior experiences with good old food poisoning stateside that have taught me the rhythms of these things –otherwise I might’ve thought it was truly dire.  I’ve been reading the crafty Mma Ramotswe, No.1 Ladies’ Detective books by Alexander McCall Smith lately and she’s got me thinking like a good detective. 

I eat the same things Chase does and the water at home is all boiled and filtered.  Some of the days that I got sick I didn’t eat anything from outside the house.  Everything was peeled or poached.  Finally, I started to get a hunch on some bottled water at the office.  It seemed to be a constant over these weeks and something that only I’d been consuming.  I swilled a good bit of what was left yesterday to put the theory to test.  Sure enough, last night I went to sleep feeling like a pot of rot. 

Now any responsible citizen of the planet sees bottled water for the $2.99 crime it is.  Safe drinking water from the tap seems like it should be a basic human right.  When I was a kid, anyone who drank bottled water was 100% world class snob.  Now people in the rich countries drink it for convenience, for the taste, for the pretty bottle, whatever.  Here I buy it when I haven’t managed my personal water treatment plant (boiling and filtering) well.  It’s supposed to fill the gap and keep me from getting sick.  Now it appears that the stuff is making me sick!

Raised in a family that kept consumer reports on hand, I lay in bed feeling miserable and thinking of how little recourse I have.  There’s no association of drinking water standards and measures, no better business bureau, nobody at that company who would care to hear my complaint, no newspaper or investigative reporter to attack the case.  All I have is an empty bottle and a sore gut.  Time to boil some water.