How to Ask for Something and Not Get It

In DRC I am learning the art of asking for something you have no intention of getting. Let's start with school supplies. Now my school really likes bureaucratic and lengthy systems. Example- How my kindergartners get lunch:

Step 1: Come in the class in the morning and indicate if they brought lunch or are buying.
Step 2: If they are buying, ask them which of the two meal options they would like.
Step 3: Field their questions about various choices. "What's a beef carbanado?" (You might as well ask me what wicket is) and "Is rice and beans that spicy thing I don't like?" ("No, that's chicken curry.")
Step 4: Ask them if they want juice.
Step 5: Tell them you don't know the damn juice flavor and they can commit to an unknown flavor or else drink water.
Step 6: Tally their choice.
Step 7: Write their name on the juice list.
Step 8: Give them a necklace with their meal choice of the day to keep in their cubbyhole.
Step 9: Enter cafeteria lady.
Step 10: Hand over the tally and juice list.
Step 11: Label juice boxes with juice-drinkers names
Step 12: Cross off the dollar amounts of various lunches off of children's lunch cards.
Step 13: Fill in forms of how much money each student has left.

Step 79: Several hours later, children have eaten lunch and after briefly considering walking across campus to eat with the other teachers, pass out in the reading corner.

Requesting supplies has fewer steps, but is no easier in practice. First of all, the supply closet opens once a day and once a day only. That is at 3:30 pm so if you need something, you better know the day before. And when you do order something, be prepared to have to reorder it the next day and the next as your request is continually screwed up from your dutifully filled out request form. For example, I asked for a notebook and got a grade book, I asked for an ink pad and I got an ink cartridge, I asked for sticky tack and I got a thumb tack, so I re-requested with the brand-name Bostik and was given post-its. When I finally stuck a sample on to the request form, I was told that "this thing" does not exist in Kinshasa. The thing is, every time your request is messed up, you have to wait another 24 hours for the next request to be filled. I once waited 3 days for a pencil. The best (by which I mean worst) was when I requested paper and they gave me one sheet-literally. Why on earth would I use a piece of paper to request another identical piece of paper?! Really, this goes far beyond a language barrier. My classroom is completely out of erasers but I'm afraid to ask for more for fear that I am going to get a bunch of razors in my mailbox.

Of course my neanderthal French also contributes to my not getting things I ask for-even something as simple as a name. When I first met the custodian in charge of my classroom. I introduced himself and asked my name. He apparently didn't understand my busted French so he clarified, "Mon nom?" and not realizing what had taken place, I called him Manome until I was embarrassingly corrected.

Asking for things in the grocery store is futile if you don't know the right nouns. Craving popcorn, I approached a man in the store and said "Do you have popcorn?" (This was all in French except for the word 'popcorn'). He looked confused. I said, "I don't know the word in French but do you have these small things that say pop pop pop?" "Do you play with it?" he asked me. "No," I said, "You eat it." He looked baffled so I went on to say, or at least attempted to say, "It is a little thing from corn. You put it in a pot with oil. When it gets hot, it says, 'pop, pop, pop' and you eat it." Now he looked absolutely mystified and like he wanted me to go away. So I did, and eventually found a bag and brought it back to the guy and asked him what the word for this thing is in French. The name was so wordy and long and I repeated it several times to remember. Later, someone told me that popcorn in French is pop-corn. Maybe the man was making me say, "Help, this small, white girl is bothering me."

Enjoying the Rain, Dammit!

One winter in Malawi, in the inspiration of a torrential downpour experienced from an outdoor, tin-roofed kitchen, I decided that when I become a real grown-up, I will have a tin roofed shack specifically for enjoying rainstorms.

I don't know if that day has come, but I do now have a tin-roof porch in the concrete rainforest of Kinshasa. In the first big rain of the season, I climbed in my hammock, hung specifically for rain-listening and had only just leaned back when I realized that I was not only being poured on through gaps in the roof, but that I was positioned directly under a steady stream of mud

After flinging myself out of the hammock, determined to enjoy the rain, I got my umbrella (picturing the faces of all the presidents or dictators as the case may be, of DRC), went back on the porch and crouched in ankle-deep filth.

And that is how I spent my first Congolese rain.

Three Gems

My students took awhile to start saying things that make me choke on my own saliva, but then three gems in 24 hours:

Precocious: I tried on my dad's knickers once and I looked really silly.

The UN Interpreter after realizing she forgot her swimsuit for PE: (Sigh) Well, I guess I just have to swim naked. (She can say this in perfect German or French too should the need arise and I thankfully know how to say "no" in both).

Me: (While reading a Chinese folk tale about 3 princes searching for the most beautiful thing in the world in order to win the king's crown): What might the most beautiful thing in the world be?

Sparkles (previously unnamed in kinderfolk): A diamond covered in Muslims. 

Thank You Note to Maasai Mara, Kenya

Hey there, savannah, thanks for magnificent open spaces. After years of my field of vision being molested by the mountains, skyscrapers, jungles and split levels, plains are a valium for the eyes. Infinity is good.

Hiya rain. Thanks for lying on the windshield in psychedelic patterns, cleansing the dust from the air and quenching the thirst of brown grass. Good job.

Hey mama and baby cheetah, thanks for posing on that gray rock just there. Judging from the way your chests are heaving, I know you had to run really fast to make that photo shoot.

Giraffes, your walk rivals the open plains as a treat for the eyes. Please show emaciated supermodels that your strut is all the more magnificent with a big round belly.


Oh big buffalo, with your swooped up curly horns, you look like you should be 19th century judges. Oh baby buffalo, you are a delicious lion meal. I feel a little bad but it's the way of the food web.

Wow mama lions, crunching on them bones like they're string beans. And baby cubs, how do you manage to look so darling, even with your face smeared with blood? And thanks papa lions for having that nice sandy mane and yawning and stretching and sleeping again until I am lulled into a nap myself.

Wildebeasts, you are a little ugly (to be generous), but who am I to judge? Keep sprouting beards in weird places and keep being you. I'm sorry some of you got swept away by the river during your great migration. Evolution makes tasty snacks for the storks.

Mongoose (mongooses? mongeese?), thanks for eating snakes. Better you than me.

Swanky zebra, your whites are so dazzling I want to ask you for laundry tips.

Thanks dik-dik for revealing yourself to me. Ever since a pony-tailed peace corps volunteer in Mali told me I looked like "that fast and friendly big-eyed midget gazelle," I've wondered what you look like. I suppose I see the resemblance.

Thanks, shy children in open doorways. You are the cutest kind of child.

Maasai men and women, with your long legs, red cloth and braided earlobes (how the heck do you do that?), thanks for showing me around.

Love,
Sara


P.S. No thanks, bedbugs in my mattress at the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi. The way you bit up my thighs is rather unholy.

P.P.S. I know I'm missing some pictures. . .I don't like taking pictures all that much since it's a waste of a beautiful view to spend it staring through a hole in the camera and you can find a better picture on google anyway.