it took me a year to start this. one whole year in the congo. and then the realization. i have to begin now. so here it is.
it took almost three hours for the sun to rise this morning. it seemed as if the sky was frozen into place, paused. silver blue with pink edges. skeleton trees in silhouette. it was fitting. this is exactly how my life feels at the moment. after a year in africa, i am home. the strangeness is in how nothing seems to have changed. its as if i never left. as if i stepped into a time capsule when i got into the plane a year ago. before i came home i caught myself wondering many times: what is more real, my life in africa? or my life at home? i thought i would be able to answer that when i got here but now i realize that it is a meanless question. they are all real when you are in them. and when you are not, the other life seems like a faraway dream.
goma was a riot. it was undiluted life at full volume. i vastly underestimated how it would affect me. i should have known, in retrospect, that it would change everything. what i come back to, when i consider my time there is this. music. music i hated at first for all the trumpets and the brashy brassness of it all. music i couldn't figure out how to dance to at first. and then, suddenly, it all made sense. i had to see it live to appreciate it. the blaring trumpet, the slow swing, the guitar man so chill, the cadence, the rhythm, it came alive. what got me was that it had no minor notes. no, it was all upbeat, kick up your heels, major notes. not usually my style but so what. there was the chaos of dallas (local club). the rain at coco's (ex-pat club) pouring down on the dance floor through the thatched roof. we danced anyway. the energy at parties where the you danced until you forgot yourself, you danced until people were swinging from the trapeze, jumping naked into the lake, or dancing with fire. goma is crushing music and fierce energy.
i traveled to beautiful places while i was in congo. by boat, plane, helicoptor and most dangerously of all, by vehicle. from the sky the mountains are bright moss green bumps rising like the backs of ancient beasts. rivers are winding clay snakes, easily confused with roads. on the ground its a different story. you see the mountains in all of their grandeur and shining rivers from the back of a lurching landcruiser rumbling over potholes precariously close to the edge of giant cliffs. you think, i might die, but then, it wouldn't be a bad place to go.
uvira was a lined brown hand stretched out to heaven and lights on invisible hills across tanganika. baraka was hot dusty streets and refugees piling out of UNHCR trucks. beni was a mosque singsong praying at five in the morning. bunia was a border town. sake was riddled with bullet holes. that is what it was to me. it would be something different to you.
moving to kigali meant an entirely different world. it meant trading the lake for a thousand hills. living in the office with a curfew for my own apartment with two balconies and a view. and volunteer work for my first real contract. i will still travel to goma. sit beside the lake. drink a mutzig with dave or sean or luke, whoever is still around. watch another glorious sunset. talk about all the people that used to be there. i'll take a UN flight to bunia, conduct a baseline survey, work with our new team there. but something tells me it won't be the same as living there. rwanda is very tranquil. i miss the breathless energy.
there is alot more to tell. stories of crashed planes, heroic pilots, illegal plane rides, bribes, entanglements with UN soldiers and other escapades but those will have to wait for another time. i should have started this earlier.
