Inside the Russian Doll

In the beginning, when I was new to Africa, I was filled with awe and discovery. Writing about my experience was easy because I needed an outlet, somewhere to set pieces out and turn them into the logic of a puzzle. I was challenged to get outside myself, out my comfort zone and reach into the world, discover how to be somewhere other than what I knew.

But that was nearly ten years ago. I no longer live with an African family, eat their food, watch their television in the evening. I no longer spend my Saturdays wandering through markets for the sheer enjoyment of the experience. I am in my comfort zone, sheltered in an expat community, eating pizza, choosing my own music, never learning more than a few words of Chichewa, with Malawi all around me. Like nested Russian dolls in the surrounding shell, I am completely enclosed within another culture. We expats carry pieces of home with us. Cheese-Its. Black nail polish. Organic coffee. We hoard them, share them with members of our tribe. We stretch to see how many pieces we can fit in our Russian doll. We return to the motherland to resupply.

A few years ago, I went to visit some Congolese friends who’d emigrated to South Africa. I ate pondu with them and listened to Koffi, making jokes in French, hanging out at the Congolese internet cafe. I shared in my friends’ pride in their non-South Africanness. It was the only time in my life that I have had the privilege of an outsider’s look at someone else’s expat community. What do you chose to bring with you? What do you leave behind? How long are you away before where you are is more ‘home’ than where you have come from?

My view of my own expat community will never achieve that same level of objectivity or even introspection. In daily life, we tend to ignore the opportunities to step back and examine our interaction with the world.

Last year, the Washington Post ran an article about the world-renown violinist Joshua Bell who played in a Metro station at rush hour in ordinary clothes and behaved as any street musician might. His performances were filmed to see how many people would pause to hear his playing. Of the 1,097 people who passed him, only 27 people paused or left money in the opened case on the ground. The rest continued on with their day unmoved.

I wonder how many of us are truly capable of examining the world in which we live on a daily basis. We each live in a Russian doll of our own, embedded somewhere within the bigger world around us. You may be an expat. You may simply be an urban dweller who doesn’t leave the neighborhood much. Maybe you live in a remote area with little access to what else is out there. Wherever you are, whoever you are, we all have the chance to lift our eyes and examine the wider world outside of our self-imposed Russian doll.

10 Things You Should Know Before Coming to Africa

I recently discovered that a friend of mine who’s never been to Africa before will be moving to Malawi with the Peace Corps in a couple of months. In honor of his impending arrival, I give you The Basics: 10 Things You Should Know Before Coming to Africa.

10. There are children everywhere: in the village playing, in the city begging, in the river washing (a few of them are in school, too).

9. There are people everywhere. People live life  outside from cooking and washing to socializing and working. And if you’re over 18 and still alone in the world, they want to know why you’re not married/reproducing yet.

8. Not matter how far in the bush you are, you can always find a cold beer. And 5 guys waiting for you to buy them one too.

7. The following items are considered legitimate supplies for vehicle repair: twigs, cardboard, tree sap.

6. Toilet paper in public restrooms is about as scarce as Democrats in the current administration.

5. The phrase ‘time is money‘ has no meaning. Be prepared to spend most of your time waiting for a bus/your lunch/your bill/a meeting/change. Note: change will never come. If you overpay for something, that’s your problem. The overage will be consumed by the business.

4. Never assume anything. This includes but is not limited to ‘yes’ meaning ‘yes’, ‘no’ meaning ‘no’, ‘I understand’ meaning ‘I have processed what you said and will act upon it’, a right indicator meaning a right turn, a business being open during regular hours, or a confirmed reservation meaning your hotel room/restaurant table/plane seat will still be there when you arrive.

3. Traffic laws are optional. (What’s the difference between a drunk driver and a sober one? Only the drunk driver goes straight, the sober one goes around the potholes.)

2. Electricity is optional. It generally goes out when you’re about to cook dinner. It will take between 10 minutes and 3 days to come back on and will blow out your speakers with a power surge when it does. (What did Africans do for light before candles? They had electricity!)

and…

1. Just when you think you finally have her figured out, Africa turns around and bites you in the ass. But hell, I still wouldn’t live anywhere else — for now.

Nyumbani

It was in the matatu on the was to Ol Kalau in the Central Highlands that I first saw the Great Rift Valley. I’m not quite sure what I expected – perhaps something in the nature of the Grand Canyon, maybe just an enormous crack in the surface of the Earth. It was so green and so vast and there were peaks that rose up from within the valley. Dormant volcanoes. As we descended down the road carved into the escarpment, there were baboons on the side of the road, lazily watching the Friday afternoon traffic go past. The winding road finally spread out across the floor of the valley. As we passed Lake Naivasha, I saw zebras grazing alongside cattle and trees whose branches reached out toward each other. Although the road was only barely tarmacked, thinking back I feel myself gliding along the bottom of the valley. It’s all a euphoric haze that cannot be matched.

Don’t think I haven’t been paying attention. Rafiki zangu, don’t think I haven’t been watching.

I wrote the above on the Great Rift Valley some years ago now. It was my first trip out of Nairobi on my first trip to Africa. My first zebra sighting. And the beginning of what can only be described as life-altering infatuation. In short, I fell in love the way you do when you are 20 and seeing the world beyond your doorstep for the first time.

I lived with a Kenyan family and ate ugali and tried to speak Swahili on a good day. I drank Pilsner baridi (being sure to throw a few drops from my glass to the ground for the ancestors) and stayed out at Carnivore til all hours. I tracked rhinos with the rangers in Nakuru Park. I attended NGO meetings in Kibera slums. I went down River Road.

Daniel arap Moi was in power. Kenya was a post-Embassy bombing multi-party democracy. World Bank was still trying to reform the civil service. No one had cell phones yet and internet cafes were still expensive. Raila Odinga was the main opposition leader.

Watching Kenya’s elections and stability unravel over the last five weeks has been heart-breaking. Kenya was my first home in Africa and I still consider the people I lived with there to be jamaa yangu (my family). I have sat down many times to write this blog post, combed through horrifying and depressing newspaper articles, spoken with Kenyans and I knew then and now, and wondered how to begin.

If you ask me whether I saw this coming, I could tell you that tribalism was alive and well when I was living there (I could have easily written a post similar to this on Kenyans). I could tell you that crime and corruption has shaken the credibility of what should have been a model African government. I could tell you that two years ago, I learned that the US government was watching Kenya for signs of political fragility.

But none of that really matters, because I would have told you that I did not believe Kenya would be willing to let herself collapse like this. Even now, watching the country crumble, I still can’t believe it. M, an award-winning Kenyan blogger whom I admire greatly, has seen it with his own eyes and it is well worth reading his thoughtful and sage words.

As for myself, ‘euphoric’ is no longer the word that comes to mind when I think of Kenya.

Out of Africa

I spent the holidays this year visiting the charming Emerald Isle keeping up friends from Kinshasa. First we went down the coast in search of Fungi, the friendly dolphin. He was no where to be seen.

Then we went up the coast to check out the famous Cliffs of Moher. They were no where to be seen.

We braved the Shannon River for the Christmas Day Swim to raise funds for Limerick’s Marine Rescue.

Had some close calls.

And saw some stunning spots.

But mostly we hung around in pubs.

I can now say with confidence that I’ve seen the real Ireland. Slainte!

Enter: The Warm Heart of Africa

This is what I remember:

Riding up the escarpment from Nkhata Bay in the back of a pickup with 13 other people, a few sacks of maize and a stack of jerry cans; eating corn bread and chili for Christmas dinner; reciting the prologue to Shakespeare’s Henry V while waiting for a hitch; seeking shelter from a rainstorm in the Chikangawa Forest fire tower hut only to find a very surprised Malawian staring down four white girls.

It was the middle of my first full year in Africa and I’d gone to spend the holidays (and the rainy season) with a friend just beginning her Peace Corps stint in northern Malawi. Next week, I will land in Lilongwe, 1400 miles from my last residence in Kinshasa, DR Congo, to stay for awhile.

A country of nearly 13 million, Malawi is about 5% the size of my previous home though about as poor with an annual per capita income of US$160. In fact, the IMF lists Malawi as the second poorest country globally. Malawi is however a lot more stable than poor old Congo and has roads enough to make the places outside the capital more accessible than the Congolese equatorial forests. I hope to be spending much of my free time at Lake Malawi, which spans the majority of the eastern border of this landlocked country in southeastern Africa.

Stay tuned for more tales from the Warm Heart of Africa.

Keeping abreast of Congo

While I’ve been whiling my time away in the US, life is Congo chugges along through thick and thin. Bemba is still in exile in Portugal but promises to return to DRC in time for the next legislative session in mid-September.

In more positive news, six new animal species were discovered in eastern Congo on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The expedition was carrier out earlier this year by the Wildlife Conservation Society (the Bronx Zoo), Chicago’s Field Museum, the National Centre of Research and Science in Lwiro and the World Wildlife Fund. The discoveries included a bat, a rodent, a shrew, and two frogs. Potentially new plant species collected are currently being classified.

Congo’s ongoing instability, particularly in the east, has created an incredible amount of human suffering and economically stunted the country in countless ways. Despite this, the war has also inadvertently protected vast swaths of rainforest that might otherwise have been logged, farmed and destroyed under a more stable government.

Here’s to looking at the brighter side of things.

Paradise found?

Having just spent a short but entertaining stint in Costa Rica, I have to say, I’m a bit in awe of the place. Granted that even as Africa goes, Cong’s a bit the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. But Costa Rica is downright pleasant.

Some of the more fascinating bits were

• Traffic lights! Everywhere!
• Kids riding bikes and skateboards (as opposed to playing with balls constructed from old plastic bags)
• Bee-yew-ti-ful roads
• Potable water right out of the tap
• Notable absence of pushy hawkers
• Ice in beer - this one I’m not such a fan of

Even apart from novelties such as traffic lights, the country’s tourism industry is booming with 51% of the country forested, up from only 25% a few decades back. There’s a strong national health care system in place (ranked one step above the US’s on the World Health Organization’s global list), funded partially due to the absence of a national military.

Which is not to say that the thing don’t happen slowly or ineffectively. It takes about 2 years to have a phone line installed in your house, the electricity blips on and off regularly, and the government just released 3 Colombians who were arrested for plotting the assassination of the Minister of Justice as a warning against prosecuting drug runners. Bribes are still somewhat of a necessity when dealing with bureaucracy. But all in all, it’s not a bad place to set your hat.

I’m now back on U.S soil and enjoying the northern hemisphere summer. Here’s a small clue as to what I’ve been up to:

Tutaonana

In a funny twist of fate, this week marks both the fourth anniversary of the first time I came to Congo as well as my departure from Congo.

For the time being, I’m headed back to the land of sushi, bagels and friends who’ve known me since before I could go down the block by myself forget about leave the continent all together. I’ll be back on this side of the world again before too long, though not in Kinshasa. No doubt I’ll find myself back in Congo again at some point.

So I’ll sign off for now with tutaonana (Swahili for see you again).

Break outs and break downs

When you live in a place like Congo, much of your energy becomes focused on when you will next get out. So as the date of your departure approaches –whether your trip is professional, personal or your last hurrah- you become increasingly excited about the possibilities that await you at the other end of your long haul flight: the chance to walk freely in the streets, cinema, laundry power that doesn’t cost $40, fresh milk.

So it’s really quite disappointing to get to the airport and discover that the catering truck has accidentally smashed into the Air France plane, creating enough damage that your overnight flight to gay Paris cannot actually leave.

It’s not even worth wondering what the catering truck was doing on the runway, since the meals for your flight have been on board since the plane left Paris. Instead of waking up in the morning to fresh cafe au lait and flaky croissants, you’ll find yourself with another grey morning in Kinshasa wondering when you might be able to escape.

Water thieves and kookaburras

There is a forest smell so familiar, even my undiscerning nose can pick it up anywhere: the gum tree. The eucalypts are a genus of trees indigenous to Australia and have a distinctive pleasantly pungent odour. One of my earliest memories is walking with my mother though the Dandenongs, a eucalyptus forest outside her hometown, Melbourne when I was just a bit more than two. The air was so noticeably different inside the forest that the entire place seemed enchanted. The slate-coloured peeling bark of the trees whispered of hidden intoxicating layers.

There is something about being in the woods that feels different from each other place you have been in the woods, no matter where in the world you are. The soil crumbles differently and the leaves overhead have deliberate shape. And yet, to be in the forest on another continent, and have the familiar prickling on the insides of my lungs, is to know that the gum tree is not far.

It’s this precise sense of familiarity that makes one feel that the foreign can become home. The place we call home defines us and shapes our identity, creates what is ‘same’ and what is ‘other’. As a traveler, home becomes the place where one can belong. Mark Jenkins writes:

“To be rendered homeless—whether by hurricane, poverty, or choice—is to be deprived of not simply physical shelter but emotional refuge. Home is where we return to, where we stop and rest and think, where we piece together the new pictures in our minds and try to make sense of our planet. Without home, we are unmoored.”

So to find a piece of home in a foreign land is to find a piece of driftwood to hold onto, a starting point to begin the making of ‘other’ into ‘same’ for the traveler. And there is the struggle of whether ‘other’ can integrate or whether ‘same’ is an absolute.

Gum trees were introduced to the South African Cape in the late 19th century as a fast growing tree, capable of providing a large volume of timber and firewood in a relatively short time period. Today the tree is under fire with conservationists who note the tree’s reputation as a water thief, taking more than its share and denying indigenous plants the chance to thrive. An invasive species. A colonialist prying resources from the natives’ hands.

The tree is not nearly as vilified in Uganda whose lush green mountains have enough rainfall to make the Amazon jealous. When I exclaim ‘gum tree!’ while driving through the western part of the country, my Ugandan companion breaks into song:

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he

“We sang it in school. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what a kookaburra was.” The agents of the great British Empire forgot the bird in Australia when they carried the kookaburra’s home across the Indian Ocean.

Some of us bring home with us to wherever we travel, I thought as I wrote ‘DRC’ as my country of residence on my US entry form upon arriving back in America for the holidays. For others, home is a place that once existed somewhere across an ocean and can only be visited by a faint whiff in a foreign forest.