Conrad's Ex-Girlfriend

Sssssshhhhhhh.....he's sleeping

2007-05-05T03:05:00.000-07:00

There is a fifteen pound tortoise asleep in my room. Can’t say I’ve ever had this problem before. In Congo, I never had much in the way of animal problems because there was not much in the way of animals. I hated to be the one to break it to my nephew that I didn’t see many animals in Congo – unless they were being carried back from a hunt cut in two, and even then I wondered how they managed to kill it since they’re so few large animals left (needless to say, I kept this last nugget of information to myself). This is not to say that Burundi is crawling with wildlife. It just happens that the hotel I’m staying in has a tortoise that walks around, always seemingly with a resolute sense of purpose. This is the second time he’s waltzed across my porch and into my room. Earlier today he was lounging in my doorway, perhaps trying to escape some French kids who picked him up moments earlier. Unfortunately for him they spotted him, retrieved him, dropped him, then lost interest. He wandered off into the hotel grounds. As I sat on my computer in my little living area an hour later, he walked by, circled a chair, then went into my bedroom. He’s been sleeping in a corner ever since. I was actually a little concerned that he was dead, since he’s been there for a few hours. Maybe the drop from the French kids took him out, I theorized. So I snuck up behind him, kneeled to the ground, and listened for signs of life. In the silence, his sleeping tortoise breaths sounds like an old man.

He stayed there until I was ready for bed. At which point I went to the hotel bar and had a staff member help me escort him outside. When I work up the next morning, he was sleeping on my porch. I guess he likes me.

One more week....

2007-04-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

It's amazing the difference between going to a foreign country when you know you will be staying for a year and when you know it's just a temporary sejour. For instance, Burundi is six weeks. Five of them are behind me. On the one hand, I can marvel at the nicer sides of Burundi (friendly people, good roads, charming restaurants, the war is pretty much over, etc) while also letting small things go (intermittant hot water, the "do i have malaria or is it just a headache" game, working long hours.) On the other hand, I completely avoid anything that might invest me socially or otherwise in Burundi. After all, I've had one foot out the door since I arrived. I've been dancing once and been to one party, but I can count the times I've "gone out" on one hand. Heck, I can make a peace sign with those times. I'm ready to head back to a life that might have some social interactions beyond work.

I saw a very good friend from Kindu this weekend, and it made me both nostalgic for my Congo days and stressed at the reminder of them. Life under the microscope was not a healthy thing for me, and, at the risk of sounding like I don't like Congo, it is a country that can really suck you dry. My friend had an incident where a crowd of one hundred guys wielding machetes showed up at her house screaming that they were going to kill her (someone her organization employed killed himself, and his passenger, when he ran his motorcycle into an on-coming car). They blamed her. They were ready for any excuse to raise hell, steal some motorbikes, and loot. I make a lot of excuses for the Congo - it's complex. It's fifty years of being run into the ground. It's colonization. Etc. But I can find no reason to ever justify the fact that these guys were pretty much ready to kill her. It made me want to launch a friggin intervention and convince her to leave.

As for me, I'll be changing countries once again, this time to England. I had decided I wanted to be an American, live in America, get back to my American roots, etc, but fate had something else in the cards and I moving to London in June. Thank goodness a cool job came up because after working at a temp agency I had pretty much decided I would rather be doing emergency work in Congo, Sudan or Somalia than sending faxes and binding human resource manuals for $12/hour. You think I'm kidding, but I'm quite serious. I was in the final round of interviews to do intense emergency work in various areas of the world, and I might just have taken it. But instead I got something great in London. Fish and chips sounds loads better than beans and rice. Plus, the dating scene in London might be a tad better than rural African hotspots. Just a hypothesis.

Tragedies

2007-04-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

Watching the gruesome news of the Virginia Tech shootings when I got back from the field last week and returned to Burundi’s capital of Bujumbura, I cried. But it is not something I brought up to anyone here. Why? The number of people who have died in Burundi since 1993 is 5,000 times the number who perished at VT. While this in no way lessens the tragedy of the shootings, it made me uncomfortable with broaching the subject.

In America and many other parts of the world, we assume that we will be safe. We are shocked when violence tears things apart. This is also why terrorism is so effective against us – it shatters our sense of security. I know the lovely and interesting Burundians I’ve been working with would have been sympathetic if I brought up the Virginia Tech tragedy, but I shy away from any subject that touches on the deep tragedies that they themselves have faced. If we as Americans gave as much news coverage to parents in Burundi, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Israel, and Palestine, showed pictures of the brothers and sisters who perished, the children who died, the grandparents...maybe there is too much tragedy in the world to show it all with the same intensity. It’s natural to be hit hardest by tragedies close to home – the perplexing grief of something senseless and random. But while not as random, the violence that has occurred or is occurring in each of these countries is just as senseless, and parents mourn with the same depth of grief, if not with the same shock.

But, as with much of my time in Congo, the thing that strikes me most here in Burundi is that I can barely imagine a war. Yes, I see soldiers. Yes, I they have guns. But people carry on with their lives, children smile at my camera, and old women shake my hand. And I leave it at that, because the truth is that I don't want to imagine the suffering. I'm selfish like that.

I know, it’s almost as hard as “Where’s Waldo?” But if you stare long enough you might be able to pick me out of the group.

Diary from the field

2007-04-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

April 10 – Today we traveled through Kirundo Province. Burundi is seriously beautiful. I often wonder if people who live in these rural areas, most of whom will not have opportunities to see different places, think they live in a beautiful place. To which one might ask me if people who live in secure counries, who do not know what it’s like to have a civil war tear apart your life, think about how they live in a peaceful place. After a working in two different “collines” (this is an administrative demarcation, French for “hills,” that encompasses around 1,000 households), we spent the night in a medium-sized town.

April 11 – This morning I resisted the urge to snooze my cellphone’s alarm. The main roads are lovely pavement, but trekking on the side roads is the usual bouncy ride that I got used to while living in Congo. Our Landcruiser did its best impression of a mechanical bull. Still, even these roads were a piece of cake in comparison to the winding trails and sketchy bridges in Katanga Province (Congo). After conducting interviews in a colline near the Rwandan border, we stopped at an NGO’s office who works in the area. This happens to be the NGO I worked with in Congo and Niger, so it felt very familiar. Turns out one of the employees in that office, though she’s on vacation, is also an acquaintance from grad school. Small, small world. We eventually found a decent hotel, and by decent we mean minimum standards of clean rooms and sheets. I lucked out that the running water was working and took a shower. The shock the cold water caused me to gasp. Never been a big fan of cold showers. The water stopped running halfway through, and I dragged the bucket of water from the corner to finish the shower the old-fashioned way. My colleagues in the meantime had located a restaurant where we could eat and work. They had already placed the order for our meal. Our hotel said the electricity was only intermittent, so they had sought out a place with a generator. When we got there it was past six in the evening, and the light was quickly fading. We asked them to start the generator to plug in or laptops. My colleague, speaking in Kirundi, is obviously not happy with the response. I see two men slink towards the gate and leave. Turns out they left to get fuel for the generator. Yes, this was the first of many bad signs. The second was that the generator turned out to be broken. The third was when the cook showed up at 8pm to start cooking our meal. Having used flashlights and our laptop batteries until this point (which were now out of juice), I had the driver drop me off at the hotel. The rest of the team stuck it out for the food, which came at 10pm. I ate a Go Lean crunch bar that I had brought from the states and collapsed into bed. My phone rang a half-hour later. My mom and I had a broken conversation distorted by the bad reception, bad phone card, or a little of both.

April 12 – More field travel and interviews. I listen to my ipod as my colleagues have animated discussions in Kirundi. My general tiredness is probably not helped by my strategy of deliberate dehydration (no drinking means no peeing, no peeing means not having to find a place to pee in a remote village where children stick to me like glue). Will chug some water tonight.

April 13 – Woke up to the pouring rain. It is the rainy season in Burundi, afterall. As we eat breakfast in our hotel (a bit expensive at $10/night, my colleagues think – should be $8) fog creeps into the room through the open door. It reminds me of a Halloween Haunted House. After more interviews, we head back to Bujumbura. We go over the interview information at the office. I get back to my hotel in the evening. Pizza and gin and tonics follow (two things I never, ever tire of).

Photos from Burundi

2007-04-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

Congo, I love ya, but I'm happy to be on this side of Lake Tanganika for now. Happy and with bad wind-blown hair.

Rollin, rollin, rollin....many hills. Great for scenery, not-so-great for farming. But that doesnt stop people.

This is Bujumbra - small town as far as capitals go, situated between hills and lake Tanganika.

It's a Wild World

2007-04-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

In Burundi, I’ve been given CD-ROM program on how to deal with insecure situations – something that, surprisingly, I never once did while working in Congo. I suppose that detail somehow fell through the cracks. I actually enjoyed testing my common sense and base knowledge of radio communication, though the program itself was pretty cheesy. Like an American after-school special on drugs.

I’m given situations like the following:

The carjackers drive you 30 minutes off the main road. Diego managed to grab his backpack. Now you and Diego on your own in an unknown location. What do you do next?

The scenario sounds pretty serious, until a box appears with a cartoon of two men, in a jungle setting that looks like a children’s book. I half expected Dora the Explorer to run by with the carjackers. Simple! We ask our talking map where to go.

However, we have a liter of water, two chocolate energy bars, a Swiss Army knife in the backpack. Our next task is to figure out where North is using a stick.

Crap – as though I know how to use the shadow of a stick to find North. What, did I stumble into the Girlscout’s version of humanitarian assistance? (once we manage to get back to safety we can plan critical assistance while calculating the global volume of income from Thin Mints this year).

All I can say is that Diego is darn lucky to have me, because I end up saving us. My choice to not follow the path, shown in a photograph, was only based on the instinct that the security program was trying to trick me. Then it congratulates me for noticing a pair of sticks making an “X” at the beginning of the trail, indicating the presence of a mine. Um…..right….that’s precisely why I didn’t go down it.

Overall, I actually enjoyed the course, which reminded me that security is basically common sense, and that even cartoons with vehicles exploding when they hit a mines make sure to have ethnically diverse characters.

Ironically, my security risks have been of another kind. My shower head, as I learned quite quickly, drops out of its holder when the water is turned off, and the first time this happened I narrowly missed getting whacked in the head. Also, some men came to install internet at the hotel and ended up working on the tile roof above my porch. As I sat underneath it. A small chunk of clay tile fell to the concrete floor and smashed. I gingerly picked up my laptop and went inside.

Yesterday we drove outside of Bujumbura, accompanied by armed guards. Diego was nowhere in sight.

Bujumbura

2007-04-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

After 38 hours of flying and visiting airports in the USA, Europe, and Africa, I arrived in Burundi on Tuesday. Locating Burundi on a map is not easy. Even the least geographically challenged will find themselves squinting at the maze of borders and lakes. There are lakes in Africa that could swallow Burundi whole. Yet this tiny country, much like it twin to the north, Rwanda, manages to have a magnitude of problems disproportionate to its size.

War, for starters. Since 1993 300,000 people have died because of the conflict that’s been haunting this country off and on since the 1960s. It’s usually painted as an ethnic conflict, one marked by fear, mistrust, repression, killings and reprisals, but of course the reasons move well beyond the simplicity of “ancient tribal hatreds.” The majority Hutu have been dominated by successive Tutsi governments since independence, governments always afraid of losing their power to the majority Hutu population. In 1972 a failed coup attempt by Hutus crystallized the atmosphere of mutual mistrust. 200,000 Burundians – many of them education Hutus – were massacred. Since then there have been a few more coups and attempted ones, with opposition to the increasingly consolidated Tutsi government power becoming outright violent in 1993. Atrocities have been committed on all sides, with no actions escaping retalitations. Fast-forward to the present, after more than a decade of attempts by the international community to mediate peace between rebels and the government, and you’ll find a country that is putting conflict behind it only to face a mire of other problems inherently tied with its violent past – extreme poverty.

Still, better to be poor and at peace than poor and at war. Because in this neck of the woods, war is against civilians. I don’t think it should even be called “war,” which calls to mind armies facing off. It’s groups exercising their frustration, their greed, and their disregard for human life and dignity by turning against innocent people. Stealing from them, oppressing them, raping them, and killing them.

Burundi is currently the poorest country is the world. If you look at average income, or lack thereof, this is it. Of course, it’s hard to trust statistics. As far as I’m concerned any country within the poorest ten, if not twenty or thirty, are pretty much interchangeable in terms of poverty. A man in rural Chad isn’t jumping for joy that his country beat Burundi in terms of absolute poverty. He’s very very poor, a Burundian’s very very poor, and the likelihood of either of them accessing basic healthcare or paying their child’s school fees is minimal.

And yet these thoughts are in the way back of my mind as I sit in Bujumbura. War, hopelessness, the mess that is Africa - I never feel this. Alright, except for the mess part. But I mean that in an endearing way. Most of the time. Or at least some of the time.

I was very ambivalent about coming back to Central Africa, indeed within spitting distance of Congo, my former home-away-from-home. Maybe I was too stressed to think about it – I’d just flown to London on a day’s notice to interview for a job there, and within five days of returning booked a flight and left for Burundi. Such hurried logistics do not exactly lend themselves to introspection. Driving through Bujumbura from the airport, even my jetlag could not dim the friendly familiarity of the bustling streets and certainly not the beauty of the rolling hillsides framing the capital. Africa, I missed you.

Africa's tractor beam got me again

2007-03-22T20:10:00.000-07:00

We can all breathe a sigh of relief because I am finally going to have something interesting to write about. Apparently I am at my best when I am anti-social and in a conflict-affected third world country. If Hemmingway only knew the creativity this brings on, he would have opted to move to one. So....drumroll please...I am going to Burundi in two days. I just decided that, hey, I really need to get on the ball about posting more to this blog. If it takes a 38-hour plane journey passing through Amersterdam, Frankfurt, Addis Ababa, and Entebbe (raise your hand if you even heard of that last one), then I do what must be done. Because that's the kind of person I am.

Stop giggling. I'd be lying if I didn't get completely panicked about my Burundi gig, which is a six week job. I've got an eensy, weensy bit of post traumatic stress disorder. Just a dash, really, enough to make me an interesting date ("so, there I was, knowing that shots had been fired and that they were getting closer to us...man, whatever that table ordered looks great! Think those are crab cakes?"). Also enough to make me weary of leaving the comforts of home. But, if it boils down to productive work in conflict-recovering country the size of Maryland or sending faxes in Marlyland, what choice does a girl really have?

Random Thoughts

2007-03-04T22:26:00.000-08:00

I know. A terrible blogger I am for not posting. I've been jotting down random thoughts, because I'm now officially a writer (or officially gainfully unemployed, or officially a temp, it's all about spin), and writers do clever things like jot down random thoughts. That's why we look intellectual and carry note pads. My current job-hunting forays are apparently not lost on the British. I'm 2 for 2 with applications and interviews. You know you're hardcore when a hiring manager asks you, "how would you deal with a kidnapping threat to your staff?" He had such a lovely British accent. It was very tempting to say, "What, you guys aren't packing heat in the field?" That would have been very American. And if he said "no," I could have a great follow-up comment ("And that's the kind of innovation I can bring to your organization").

So here are some of those random thoughts, most of them incomplete:

In Georgia, people assume that I am a missionary. In New York they think I do Peace Corps.

The first question any woman in the development assistance profession asks when proposed an assignment is, what is the shopping like? (Development? Developing my wardrobe).

A conversation I had in French in Kindu, when I realized that no one would ever "get" me:
“You don’t seem very American.”
“No, I’m quite American. As American as apple pie.” There is no word in French to differentiate a pie from a tart. So I say that I am as American as a tarte de pomme.
“I thought tartes de pomme were French.”
“Well, our apple tarts are different and we eat them with ice cream. They are very American.”

The two burning questions face every American aid worker: Why has Bono never visited me? Why had the CIA never tried recruitment?

On why American cleaning products would not be able to take on Congo: Scrubbing Bubbles would probably trapped and eaten. Mr. Clean would get taken down by malaria as soon as mosquitoes zeroed in on his shiny head.

Congo meets Game Theory

2007-02-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

I know as about as much about game theory as I do about auto mechanics, but I read an article about the prisoner’s dilemma and it stuck with me. By contrast, I am of the opinion that if the oil really needed changing, the car would simply stop.

In the prisoner’s dilemma, two accomplices are arrested for a crime. The police officers interview them individually. The men have no opportunity to communicate with one another. The police offer each suspect the same choice: he can receive immunity and testify against his accomplice, who will be given a ten-year sentence. Alternatively, he can stay silent. If the men stay silent, both receive a six-month sentence on a minor charge. Both men betraying one another would result in a two year sentence for each man. The choices boil down to cooperating with the partner or defecting. The dilemma is that neither man knows for certain what choice the other will make.

The solution that maximizes their total welfare is if they both cooperate and do not betray one another. They serve their six months and then are free to pursue their nefarious activities or write a tell-all book about prison life. However, each man knows that the other has a personal incentive to defect and rat him out. No matter what the other person does, a suspect will gain by defecting. If his (obviously now former) friend did not do the same, the suspect will get no jail time. If his partner also defected, then at least he only serves two years as opposed to ten. The ground-breaking, Nobel-prize winning conclusion is that self-interest will motivate people to defect (this of course was later contradicted by ground-breaking, Nobel-prize winning rebuttal demonstrating motivation to cooperate).

Even with no walls and cells, people in Congo assume that others will cheat the system and defect. They therefore defect as well, even at the cost of collective welfare. In this context it makes sense to maintain your army even if you are running for office. Your opponent is doing the same. Disbanding them now might leave you holding the bag with the proverbial ten-year sentence.

The cops do not trust the government to send paychecks. Neither do the soldiers. In this dilemma, they actually are damn near certain the government will defect rather than cooperate, so they had best do the same to minimize their loss by preying on civilians. The people through whom government money passes each take a cut because everyone else does. The only actions people can depend on in Congo are ones driven by self-interest. Cops harassing civilians on the street, governors commandeering NGO vehicles, people stealing bridge materials, generals giving false information, staff pilfering from employers…these are not the problems. They are certainly problems, but they are not THE problem. They are symptoms of the overall problem: an absence of trust causing mass defection rather than cooperation, at the expense of collective welfare.

The elections in Congo are no magic bullet precisely because the prisoner’s dilemma will still exist. It will continue until people have faith that others will not try to cheat the system. A democratic government will only be effective to the extent that defectors are punished and cooperators rewarded. People must trust one another. I should really look up that theory on coorperation, since apparently, it would have the answer.

This is my two cents for the day. Having been working a lot on a book about my experiences in Congo, I've been neglecting this little blog, so I'm stealing from some recent work and posting it.

The Forgotten Kabange

2007-01-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

Twins are considered magical births in Congo. When my colleagues in Katanga found out that I am a twin, they immediately asked me why I did not tell them already. It was as though I had deliberating kept important information from them. Ironically, I get this same reaction in the United States as well.

“My twin sister is fabulous at winter sports,” I might say to someone who tells me about their interest in snowboarding.

“You have a twin! Why didn’t you tell me you had a twin?!” This person would reply.

“Because I only met you two hours ago when I got to the party.”

Just like people with certain medical conditions wear bracelets to let strangers know about them, I should wear a t-shirt that says, “I have twin. No, we don’t look alike. No, we didn’t create our own secret language as children.” When an acquaintance discovers that I am a vegetarian, they respond with mild curiosity, or panic, if they just invited me over to dinner. Discovering that I am twin, no matter how long or short the time I have known this person, is greeted with betrayal that they were not informed.

Perhaps this sentiment is amplified in Congo because twins are said to have magical powers. I mean, if I knew someone who had magical powers, I would expect this to come up pretty early in the course of our friendship. Twins can heal the sick and summon rain. They can bring good or bad luck. I was tempted to ask my colleagues if one twin can bring good luck and the other one bad, because I would definitely be the former. When my older sister bought me a shirt that said, “don’t blame me, it was my evil twin,” she went back to get my twin sister one as an afterthought.

Failing to observe rites associated with twins can be catastrophic for their families and entire villages. In other words, do not mess this twins. They will make life hell for you. Singing the Mapasa when twins are born is en example of such a rite. This song celebrates the birth of twins. One version begins with, “Eldest twin, watch out, don’t go under the bosenge tree/Youngest twin, watch out, don’t go under the bosenge tree/The day that you do, you will die.”

How fabulous. My whole life I have been living in ignorance that there is a tree, which if I go under it, I will die. Twenty-nine years on the planet and only now does anyone bother to inform me of a twin-killing tree. I do not have a clue what a bosenge tree looks like. For all I know, my parents are planning an annex to their bathroom out of bosenge trees.

Because people are afraid of supernatural twins, they might not discipline them. If your child can cause a drought for your village by keeping rain from falling, some battles parents might choose not to fight. My parents might have been less strict on our curfews if they thought Leah and I could wipe our Marietta with a plague.

There is an entire vocabulary associated with twins (and no, not as in their own secret language. Let’s try to get off that track, alright? TWINS DON’T HAVE THEIR OWN SECRET LANGUAGES). In English, both twins are known simply as “twins.” In Congo, mbuyi is the eldest twin. The second one is kabange. The father of twins is shambuyi; the mother is mwambuyi. Far from nicknames, these titles replace parents’ given names. Though I am no linguist, it seems like the entire twin vocabulary is focused on the eldest twin, mbuyi. My parents did not know they were having twins. My twin sister got the chosen name. My father came up with mine on the spot. Now I come to learn that my parents might as well be called, “Mother of Leah” and “Father of Leah.” Apparently, I can never escape the shadow of my twin sister’s glory, even in Congo.

Stop that 29-year old from drinking!

2007-01-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

I got used to many things in Congo that are different in the states. With so many big changes, like no running water, driving a trunk, living in a rural town with dirt roads, I often forget about the little random changes I now come across on a daily basis in the United States.

Here are a few of the random products or insights I have noticed in America:

1- Red wine does not have a hint of vinegar
2- I have never eaten a Lunchable in my life, but I had completed forgotten about the pre-made assemble-it-yourself weird lunch phenomenon.
3- Spray butter. Why?
4- Offices do not keep supplies like pens under lock and key
5- I get carded for alcohol

On this point, yesterday my friends and I went to see Pan’s Labyrinth. When the 4:45 show was sold out, we decided to buy tickets for the next one and get a beer in the meantime. I did not have my ID on me, since I figured were only going to see the movie. We went to a brewery. The waitress gave us beer samples without carding, so I figured that I was in the clear. Wrong. I am 29, and even though I do not quite look my age, I certainly do not look 20. Not wanting to put the waitress in a bad position, I tell her that it’s okay if she does not want to serve me. She suggests my friend order my beer. Problem solved!

Or so I thought.

The waitress tells me five minutes later, apologetically and with a smile, that she will have to confiscate my beer if she happens to catch me drinking it. What? Que? Quoi? Having my friend order for me was her idea, not ours. My friends and I, albeit a bit baffled, create a system where they scan for the waitress each time I move in for a sip. One puts his hand to his chin when the coast was not clear. In this manner, I make it through two beers. People might think that Congo is absurd, but when I am using a friend’s hand signals in order to consume a beer when I am eight years past the drinking age, I would argue that the USA is not a bastion of logic.

An Essay on Character

2007-01-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

Hanging out with my twin sister in Breckenridge a couple months ago, being unemployed was not a problem. We mountain-biked, went camping, and drank beer with absurdly high alcohol content that I had not seen since my days of cross-border raids into Belgium. Job? What job? My sister’s Breck friends embrace that freedom with the same vigor they tackle ski runs.

Washington, DC, is quite a different story. If DC were a guy he’d constantly be talking about his work and would feel naked without a tie. I’m pretty much waiting for a little airplane to sky-write “UNEMPLOYED!” with a perfectly drawn finger in the heavens pointing down at me. That is what being a jobseeker in DC feels like. Rather than eating humble pie, it’s like free-basing humble heroine. In a few short months I have gone from a bilingual, Masters-holding, respected, work-is-my-life management position overseas to swimming in a sea of overqualified professionals who have two Masters or speak three languages. I’ve thought what a character-building experience this is. That thought was immediately followed by another thought: “Screw that.” Congo hammered a certain amount of character in me that I feel should suffice for at least a year. Is unemployment really going to provide some sort necessary humbling that I didn’t garner while lying in intensive care in a hospital in a third world country with only three IV drips for company (a day before which a friend shot me in the butt with anti-malarial drugs and an Indian colonel held back my hair as I gracelessly vomited at a military base)? Character, that devilish friend, is always on the look out for a new “in.”

Still, I smiled when I woke up with a headache this morning. No panic that it might be malaria. I simply reached for my Advil. Moving back to America was about my need to change my lifestyle, and maybe I forgot that the comforts of my home country would be combined with the uncertainty of leaving my job. DC’s fixation on work highlights this uncertainty, and the greener grass is never as green once you get to it. So perhaps I should stop trying to figure out how green it is and start doing cartwheels on the lawn. How’s that for character?

The dog who stole my cell, or something like that

2006-12-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

Did I say uneventful? Really, I am trying. But it’s not working.

In the past month I – 1) Got attacked by a dog while jogging, 2) Had my cell phone involuntarily adopted, 3) Went ass-over-tea kettle on my bicycle avoiding a cat that darted from underneath a car. For all of these events, I can’t help but wonder how I would have dealt with them differently if I were in Congo.

Dog bite - The dog belongs to a neighbor of my parent's in Georgia, and I knew it did not have rabies. Bonus! My mom took me the emergency room, since the second bite, right behind my knee, was pretty deep. I certainly am not the first person to limp into an ER wearing jogging clothes, the thought of which made my mom and I giggle a lot. We called all our relatives and played “guess who’s in the emergency room?” With a niece and nephew and my sister in town the odds were pretty even. The nurses commented that we seemed to be having an awful lot of fun. What can I say – my family always finds humor in non-lethal injuries. Better to happen in Congo or USA? – Much better for this to happen in the USA because of medical facilities.

The cell phone - My phone slipped out of my pocket as I biked home in DC. I borrowed my roommate’s cell, frantically called and called my number hoping someone would pick up. I even retraced my bike path while calling. I never hear this damn phone ring even when it is ten feet away from me in my apartment with no music on, so why I thought I’d suddenly hear it on a busy street is anyone’s guess. A man who owns a small grocery watches me pacing the street and dialing, and someone finally answers. Thank god! I think. I tell her she found my phone, she tells me that no, it is her phone. Bad sign. The next call she says the same, the third time a man answers who tells me he does not speak English. He hangs up and turns the phone’s power off. I get angry. The man outside his shop then asks me why I did not ask him for help, implying I made a mistake and he would have solved the problem. I get angrier. Where is good karma? Why does this man hover and watch me and then reprimand me? I walk home furious, wishing I could throw something. My roommate is home and listens to my tirade about karma and stealing and the one time I found a phone and tracked down the owner because that is what you do. Luckily she informs me that I can keep the same number but I should head to T-Mobile to cancel that phone quickly to ensure no international calling on my dime. I do just that and feel better. USA or Congo? I would have dealt with this much better in Congo, where something akin to this happened at least once a week. There I let these things go, but in the USA I have a harder time. My theory is this – in Congo I decided to stress over only the things in my life I could control, which was about 5% of all happenings. I let the other 95% go (generator breaking, warehouse getting broken into, annoying cops, mundane food, canceled flights, random illnesses, etc). In the USA most of us, myself included, are under the false impression we can control 100% of our lives. Hence the cell phone freakout.

The bike spill – A muzungu lady falling on her bike in front of a crowd of Congolese kids? Heck no. I would infinitely prefer to go down on pavement on a quiet street in DC than fall on cushioned dirt in a Congolese town. It’s all about pride.

Last week, as I am pulling my bike through the door with a slight limp, wondering what wrench I need to use to get the handle bars straightened back to their proper angle, I get a phone call from my best friend who tells me she is engaged (I had been waiting for her to call since, like everyone else, her number was in the cell phone no longer in my employ). Not all events are bad.

Ch-Ch-Changes

2006-12-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Not many people make a decision to lead an uneventful life. As a goal, it is not a very good one. A person eventually settles into such an existence. But when I decided to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo, my home of 16 months, I did so with this very objective in mind. I wanted Sunday brunches, Target, and coffee with soy milk on a Friday afternoon while reading an Oprah-endorsed book. I wanted to just take an Advil when I got a headache, rather than have a panic attack that I had contracted malaria. Again.

People often tell me that they are envious of my adventurous lifestyle. They claim to live vicariously through me. I can see their point. When I read my former blog, Breaking Hearts in the Heart of Darkness, I see someone whose engagement with the world and unique lifestyle makes for an extraordinary experience, even if I never saw it as such at the time. That was simply my life, no exaggerations, and I included the annoyances and boredom as much as I did the beauty and excitement. The former usually outweighed the latter. For those that envied or even complimented my choice, I could not help but wish I felt the same love for my lifestyle. Ideas are easy to love, and the idea of living in such a stimulating place like Congo is like having a crush on an exciting hottie who drives a motorcycle and reads Camus. That was Africa for me. The land I liked from afar for one reason and grew to love for the frustratingly beautiful reality it is. However, I have chosen to leave that life for the tame one. I doubt this blog will inspire the same envy, but writing has become a lovely addiction.

This blog is about coming home - being a former expat, exploring urban jungles, and coming to terms with knowing that the rest of the world is there waiting for me like an old flame, as it is for every person who has or will step outside their own corner of the world. Welcome to the adventures and non-adventures of Conrad's ex-girlfriend, on the rebound from her relationship with the Heart of Darkness.