Of Books and Street Kids

If you read my blog you know.

I write about life in Congo, and I write about SHONA.

And that is all fine and good. After all i am living in Congo, and working with SHONA.

Except that it occurs to me that my friends usually blog about their families, and particularly their children.

I seem to blog with the same frequency and perhaps the same passion about the craftspeople I work with. It is true that our lives are intertwined. SHONA is a very personal project for me, much more than a job (Although unfortunately it pays much less than a job! At least in purely financial terms.)

And i like to imagine that someone out there finds these topics interesting.

But sometimes I need a break, in which I remember that this is not the only world out there, nor is my work here all that I am.

And so I sat down here to write a different sort of post today. A fellow blogger recently posted a review of the books she read in 2008. I thought i would steal her idea and do the same. Books are often my way of relaxing and transporting myself to another world (along with out ever growing dvd collection)

And then a fight broke out in the street below us. The street is full of street children who on a daily basis manage to be involved in a fight. But it rarely remains between the street kids. In this case I have no idea what started the fight. But i looked out the window to see a street kid take off running, chased by a teenager with a large rock in his hand. Another street kid fell to his knees wailing loudly (a common occurence) at which point an adult man picked him up, carried him to the other side of the street and began kicking and hitting him, and eventually picked him up and threw him. At that point another adult man came to argue with the first, telling him not to beat the kid. By now a whole crowd had developed with everyone shouting their opinion and the two adults fighting. The street kid remained wailing on the sidelines. Eventually the crowd calmed down, I don't know what the end result was, the crowd eventually dispersed, but I can still hear the street kid wailing as i write this.

and tomorrow there will be another similar incident, and tomorrow and tomorrow...

So as you can see, I have not written about the books that I read in 2008. The fight distracted me and my thoughts have yet to return. Indeed there is a much larger world out there, one which I sometimes desperately need to remember, but sometimes the world at my doorsteps is just too loud.

The tin shacks of GOma

This is Roy's house. As you can see it is literally surrounded by lava rock. The outside walls are made of old tin sheeting, and the inside walls are made of plastic sheeting in most places, and ripped up cardboard boxes in some places.

The lava rock has been more or less cleared from inside the house, leaving a dirt floor, with occassional rocks jutting out. There is no electricity and no water. The "jerry can" containers in the forground of this picture are used for carrying water to the house, a job done mostly by the girls in the family.

The house is divided into two rooms. The "living room" is shown in the picture above. The second room is a bedroom, the same size as the living room, where Roy and his wife sleep with eight children. They own one single mattress.

I show you these pictures not to make you feel bad for Roy. Everything is about context. Roy's family recently moved into this house. For them, it is a step in the right direction. Their last house didn't have enough tin to cover the walls or the roof, and it was in a worse location.

I show you these pictures to give you an idea of what life looks like in Goma. The average person in Goma lives in conditions similar to Roy's.

And yet there are whole neighborhoods that look like this. There are places where the skyline is full of the sloping roofs of these "McMansions".

If something burns me out in Goma, it will probably be this. It is this daily encounter with human nature. The ability of man to build a mansion next to a shack. Morever the ability of man to surround his mansion with a wall, buy a large water tank and hefty generator, and never have to deal with the reality that there are no public services in Goma.

Where does the idea of public services come from? The idea that there are some roles that government should fill, and some needs that are so basic, they must be addressed. In the US we are often afraid of "Big Government". I know that these days people are thinking heavily about Obama's big spending, and about the level of debt we will incur. And we should think carefully about such issues. I also know that the proposal to spend billions of dollars is motivated by a concern for the economy rather than a concern for public services. But everytime I hear about that money I can't help dreaming about all the railroads that could be built, bridges that could be repaired, libraries that could be stocked, parks that could be maintained and the like.

I can tell you that there is not a single park in Goma. Nor a single waste removal company, nor a single sidewalk. I would like to believe that it is in human nature to come together and try and make the place we live better, even if there is no government to do it. I would like to believe in a commitment to the public good. But I can tell you, that it is much easier to build a wall and fix up your own compound. And, when left to our own devices, I'm afraid that is what we tend to do. There are an awful lot of walls in Goma. In fact if you look carefully at that picture of the McMansions you will see the very same lava rock that covered the land outside of Roy's house. In this case, someone has taken the time to pick up all those lava rocks. They are using them to build row after row of walls.

A new year in the air

This year I celebrated the start of a new year suspended in air. I guess that explains the cheap price of my plane ticket. I got an amazingly good deal by scheduling my return flight to Africa over New Years. Apparently other people don't like to do this: To start the New Year with a group of strangers, in an airplane cabin, the most of impersonal places...a place where you can lose all touch with reality. A place, where everyone tries desparately to pretend they are somewhere else...anywhere else. Much like a doctor's waiting room.

Or perhaps it is the ungrounded nature of the whole endevor. How can you say you started the new year in the air... Somewhere between Amsterdam and Nairobi? They didn't even tell us where we were when the clock struck twelve. They did announce the arrival of the new year over the intercom. There was a polite round of applause in the airplane much like the half-hearted clapping at the end of the movie. In a movie theater the applause always seems a little strange. It is like at a real theater, but there is no one on the stage, the screen's gone black...who are we applauding? But at a loss for what else to do, we applaud. And so, the passengers on our flight politely applauded, as darkness passed by the miniature windows, and we strained to look down and determine where exactly we were beginning this new year.

I kind of liked it. Well, let me clarify, I hate flying. On a flight I live in perpetual tension, waiting for the bump that signals the beginning of the end. I can't sleep, I can't read, my movie screen is invariably broken. And if they haven't fixed their movie screens, imagine the other parts of this plane that they haven't fixed! The beginning of the end...

So somehow, I enjoyed my flight over new years. Perhaps it was because it was towards the end of my journey, hope was beginning to dawn again. But there seemed something poetic about it. Talk about perspective. Perhaps this year I can start the new year with a correct view of the world. One in which I am very small, and the world seems to function perfectly fine without me. One in which you fly into the morning and the world is spread before you, covered in gentle pinks and blue. One in which the world looks peaceful.

And then you land. You know that thud when the wheels hit ground, and the sudden squeal of brakes and whooshing of flaps? That is always my favorite part of the flight. Even though it is probably more dangerous than all that time when we are soundlessly flying through the night and I was holding my breath. This is the time when the brakes might fail, when some obstacle might be on our runway, when we might find ourselves landing in the wrong place or swerving off the carefully prepared runway. But I love to hear all that noise, the groundedness of it. In the end, what freaks me out on airplanes is the surreal nature of it all. It just isn't normal. The plane is too quiet, we seem to be flying through space with no effort at all. This just isn't possible. Life is loud, and unwieldy, and I never make any progress at all that isn't full of bumps and jolts and chances to swerve off course.

So it was a nice way to start the New Year, with the gentle quiet of perspective, and the world spread out below me. But as for me, I've landed now. And I can definitely hear the squealing of brakes, the whooshing of flaps and all the chaos that this world entails. But still it is good to be on the ground.

Christmas

I sit in New England with the snow whirling around the house and Christmas carols playing in the background. And Congo seems so far away.

I have returned to the US to spend the holidays with my parents here in CT. And I am thankful to be able to do that. Especially since shortly after I arrived my grandfather passed away. It is meaningful to be here with my parents during this time. And I have always been less than enthusiastic about Christmas spent in 80 degree whether. It is just not the same. And although fake Christmas trees and cheap christmas decorations are on display in all the shops in Goma, and toy sellers display their wares hopefully on the streets. sometimes it feels like all the wrong parts of this holiday have become the most popular in Congo. But to be honest, at least in Congo Christmas is largely a holiday for children and church. For adults, the important holiday is New Year. Feasts are held on New Years, rather than Christmas, and New Years is the holiday when all the adutlts buy new clothing and even exchange gifts.

Still, I like Christmas. Inspite of the over-commercialization and the hustle of buying presents. I haven't been here on Christmas for the past few years. And I must say that I was shocked yesterday, at the jam-packed parking lots in one store after another. This in an economy that is suffering?

But what I like about Christmas is the candle lit churches and the music sung by choirs. The times when snow seems to blanket the world and for a moment everything is quiet. I like it when all the stores finally close and people go home. And I like tradition, whatever it might be, for the chance it gives us to count back over the years and remember them. To remember that we are a people who gain strength not only from looking toward the future, but from remembering the past.

So christmas strikes me as a little strange this year. Because less than a month ago I was in Congo. My husband is there now, many of my friends are there. And yet I can barely imagine the 80 degree weather and the sounds of the streets. They seem like perhaps a life I only dreamed. And I am aware of how many of you must feel, our friends and family here in the US, when we are so far away, in a world that is hard to imagine.

In my parents house we have a real Christmas tree this year, and next to it a manger scene. And to be honest, the manger scene looks a bit out of place. There is no glittery snow and no flashing lights. The little people aren't even bundled up in winter clothing. The manger scene is truly a world so far away. A people I can hardly imagine. Perhaps a world much more like Congo, than like the one here, in the US. And I guess that is why I like Christmas. Not for all the Christmas lists and gifts, and feasts; but for the rare moment when all of that stops. And we are asked to remember a different world. A world so unlike our own.