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.

The Itch

I should be working. Actually, I should be sleeping, but am forgoing it at the moment to get ahead on my online courses so I don't have to lug my textbooks to Kenya, where I will attend a conference next week.

Instead I am scratching my ankles. Even yes, while typing, I am rubbing my ankles against the legs of my chair.

Two nights ago, I passed out on my bed with King Leopold's Ghost on my face. I was REM cycling when I should have been pulling my mosquito net down and tucking it in tight to sleep peacefully under a halo of permethrin impregnated gauze. Instead I woke up to rows of flaming mosquito bites punctuated by smaller and itchier black fly bites. The little bastards are probably passed out bloated somewhere in a post Thanksgiving-eque coma. Although no longer feasting on my blood they continue to drive me out of my f***ing mind.

For the past 48 hours I have felt no emotion or sensation other than extreme itch. I am slathered in hydrocortisone and still I itch, even my throat, my eyelashes, my blood (which may or may not now be coursing with malaria) itches without pause for relief. Mark my words, I WILL drink DEET to make my entire body poisonous. And if I live to tell the tale I will say, "I showed YOU, evil insects!" Until then, I try to kill them as they land on my touch sensor lamp, but the the light flashes on and off with every swat until my eyeballs buzz.

I did find that hand sanitizer provides momentary but genuine relief from itching. This discovery came yesterday when two kindergarteners had major accidents involving upset tummies and far away toilets. In the post-disaster clean-up, I hand-sanitized up to my armpits and made my assistant do the same. No one gets sick before Kenya!

A First

I can no longer say that I have never bribed the police. It's a fact of life on this continent where police are corrupt and poor (here they haven't been paid in 2 months) and bureaucracy is impossible. Part of my reason for actually never giving a bribe is utter cluelessness. Before I got a residence permit in Lesotho, I was given constant trouble at the border trying to get another 30 days by leaving the country for five minutes and crossing back over on the other side. Sometimes an official would ask for "help." "Help with what?" I would ask. They would never ask for money outright and they would eventually give up in exasperation. On another occasion, one of the border police kept complaining how hot he was while gripping onto my passport. It was really code for "Give me money for a cold drink," but I just suggested he take off his jacket and get out of the sun. It was really months before I caught on. Who knows how many bribes I avoided paying by being completely stupid.

In Congo they are more up front. Last weekend while driving to a 20k run in the bush a friend tried to move some cones at a construction to site to squeeze by. A police officer shouted at him, "Don't you know this is Congo?! You can't just do whatever you want without a coke!" So he gave him a couple hundred Congolese francs, the cop moved the cones and the runners were on the road again.

Today in horrendous rush hour traffic, I set off grocery shopping for a camping trip with a couple of other teachers. We almost missed the turn, when a traffic cop started giving us wild, conflicting gestures. We stuttered for a bit trying to figure out what to do, and then decided to just keep driving straight. Although not illegal, it pissed the cop off. We stupidly made a u-turn and tried to enter the street from the other direction while the cop was probably shouting to all her colleagues, blue car full of white people! blue car full of white people! Two police stepped in front of us and stopped us. Police stop cars all the time. They don't need a reason to stop cars and they generally don't have a good one. They're bored and disgruntled and probably hungry. And since they are used in lieu of traffic lights, there are a lot of them. The rules of thumb for foreigners are leave windows up and doors locked. Show your license through the window glass. Don't speak French. Act like you understand nothing. If all else fails call your boss, call the Regional Security Officer of the US Embassy, call Post One US Marines.

We said "English" over and over again through a crack in the window and held the registration up to the glass. She asked for the driver's license and the guy driving said, "Shit, I changed my pants." This was bad. Pulled over by police and your driver's license is in the pocket of a pair of jeans crumpled on the floor. He shrugged in despair. We were told to roll down the window, we said "no." We were told to come to the police station, we said "hell no," and called our boss.

She concurred it was bad. She told us she would have to make phone calls.

We stared straight ahead in a moronic deadlock, waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally one of the cops approached the window smiled, and rubbed his fingers together. It was a universal sign that even I could not miss. It was not a hard decision. When I was deemed to have the lowest denomination that would not be laughed at, I passed a twenty forward. The officer smiled wider. The driver accelerated wiping his sweaty palms on his "Peace is Cheaper" t-shirt. Nothing but relief.

You Know Your Librarian's a Missionary When...

She orders the following books:

Dinosaurs by Design
Dinosaurs of Eden
Dinosaurs Unleashed: The True Story of Dinosaurs and Humans
The True Story of Noah's Ark
A is for Adam: The Gospel from Genesis
Life before birth: a book for Christian families and others (ha!) who teach the dignity of life before birth

In retaliation I requested Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution (Steve Jenkins) and It's Not the Stork (Robie Harrison).

It's on!

(And I miss you, reasonable, Hindu, previous librarian)