Kinshasa--the day after

Angelique, Bea, Marie-Jeanne and Felly at the botanical garden

I stopped the day to day writing but that doesn’t mean things stopped happening. At a certain point there was just too much. Also, our trip was coming to an end and I thought I should be thinking about summing up. That seemed a much bigger task than observing what was happening day to day so I put it off till after the trip, hoping I could make better sense of things after I came home.

In the final days there was:

1) A much-needed excursion to the beautiful countryside, to remind us that Congo, outside of Kinshasa, is gorgeous. Fresh air, botanical gardens, smooth road. It was trafficked by vehicles chugging into the city burdened with produce and charcoal (one top-heavy truck had overturned). We ate goat and stopped at a market but I was too tired to get out of the car. I did not visit a single market during our visit—something I had been looking forward to. Our hosts stocked up, wedging produce between knees.

2) A big church service that tested my endurance because it was long, I got very hot, and that day I was having the only tummy problems I experienced on the whole trip. A few degrees of temperature and crawlies in the tummy can turn the tolerable into the unbearable. This trip required fortitude, with which I was blessed most days but not that one.

3) More beautiful people. Both the Linds (MCC directors) and Pastor François Tshidimu have the gift of identifying talented people of great integrity and commitment and putting them to work or mustering support for their work. Church agencies would do well to rely on such on-the-ground judgments.

Tatiana, who runs peace camps

4) Money shuffling and borrowing. None of us had brought enough cash or budgeted for things like church offerings and other generous or shopping impulses. I am used to credit cards, and being forced to deal in cash only was a new experience.

5) A parade of gift-givers and request-makers, none of which we were fully prepared to deal with, especially as we were zipping our suitcases shut. Perhaps the best gift of the whole trip was given by Mama Swana, national president of Protestant women, to Pastor Nina. Nina had admired the clerical collars ordained women (and men) wear, and so Mama Swana came to visit on the last day with gifts for all of us and a purple shirt with clerical collar for Nina.

I can’t sum up yet. I am tired, catching the cold that passed among us like the Holy Spirit, and swamped with work and laundry.

All I can say now is that I have been bitten by something besides mosquitoes. I want to go back.