A bad tech week

dead Kindle, photographed by live iPad

I hate knowing just enough about technology to build a lot of my life around it but never master it. I have come to expect that technology will never work when you need it.

Last Sunday I gave a multimedia presentation in church on my Congo trips. Anticipating difficulties, I made my tech needs known in advance so the church techies could help me be prepared. On their advice I got a VGA adapter. This required a special trip to the Mac store and $31.

VGA adapter. Isn't it cute?

Ten minutes before the presentation the projector seemed to be collaborating with my Mac. But I had to disconnect the computer to move it to a different place and then it didn’t work. After many trials and errors and shutdowns and restarts, another techie came over and helped. It involved something on the display menu, who knew. And then the sound connection didn’t work, apparently because of a dented plug. My presentation started 15 minutes late, unamplified. People were patient and thanked me afterward but I found the whole thing exhausting.

This all lived up (down) to my expectations. I am convinced technology is out to defeat us.

Last spring before my first trip to Congo, Nina, my fellow traveler, suggested that I might interview some people connected with the centennial story project, which I’d been editing. She said she’d shoot the video and edit it into a short piece to use in connection with the book release. Nina is a great photographer so I agreed. I even got some support for our trip based on this venture.

Nina passed the raw video on to me on a memory card in a digital recorder, which she loaned to me for the second trip. I needed to look at it to suggest edits. However, I never used the digital recorder. I felt defeated just looking through the manual. Consequently, I never tried to look at the video until recently, when Nina herself withdrew the card, stuck it into my computer, and transferred the file.

The file was not readable or viewable by my Mac.

After some internet research I concluded that she needed to go through another step to make it viewable. We got together again to do this. (We do not live close to each other.) It didn’t work. In the process my Mac swallowed Nina’s DVD and refused to reveal it, though it did cough it up with a restart. Later when my husband tried both the DVD and a memory stick file on his PC they didn’t work there, either. As I write, the video is still a prisoner of Nina’s computer. It may never escape.

At the end of that day I was carrying my supper into the living room to watch a bit of consolation TV while I ate, alone. Vic was out. As I was sitting down my water glass slipped out of my hand and bounced off the coffee table. Miraculously, it didn’t break. That was because it came down on my Kindle rather than directly on the glass tabletop. It knocked the Kindle screen into a funny pattern. Water splashed onto one of the wireless headsets we use to watch TV and DVDs because we are going deaf. I drained and dried it the best I could but got nothing but static.

The Kindle is gone for good but a few hours later the headset recovered. Phew.

I expected my techie, money-conscious husband to be upset with my klutziness but he was philosophical when I reported all this. I had already replaced the Kindle with another piece of more complicated technology, the iPad. We were hoping to use the Kindle/iPad combination to read the same e-books but we seldom read the same books anyhow. I told him I’d looked into replacing the headphone, which would have cost $57. “That’s not so bad,” he said.

That same day I got a nice email from the pastor thanking me for a really good Congo presentation and apologizing for the tech problems.

While technology always fails, sometimes people come through.

The ordination of Mimi Kanku

The July 26 ordination ceremony was the highlight of the festivities in Mbuji Mayi, marking the 50^th anniversary of the Evangelical Mennonite Church of Congo (CEM). Sixteen people were ordained, fifteen men and one woman.

Mimi Kanku was the first woman to be ordained in the CEM, a church established in 1962 by Mennonites who had fled to this region in East Kasai during the post-independence violence. Mimi lives in Kinshasa and in the last four months she has become my friend. Some of you contributed money tohelp her get to her ordination. She was moved by this, and she thanks you warmly.

I don’t remember how long the ceremony was—maybe five hours if you counted all the choirs and ethnic dancing at the outset, some of which I missed because I was on a jaunt to the countryside to visit a youth animal breeding/fundraising project. We were late getting back but Pastor Mubenga, who would officiate at the ordination, was with us, and things start when the necessary people are there. We, the missionaries, as people called us white folks (over my futile objections), were also in that category.

There was plenty of entertainment during those five hours. Music, dance, processions, pomp, ceremony, and sermons, complete with ecclesiastical costume. The proceedings had a dramatic arc that culminated in charismatic prayer for each candidate and then the final presentations of the new reverends. The Congolese know how to do special occasions.

In the middle of all the whoop-de-do, it was clear that something sacred was happening. I saw it in the faces of the ordination candidates who sat next to us in two rows, each backed by his wife. That’s Mimi’s husband Belarmain at the end of the row of wives. It was evident that Belarmain was behind her all the way.

Mimi had been the featured speaker the night before. She issued a dynamic call for Congolese Mennonite women to wake up and take their places as church leaders. Mimi herself is a wide-awake woman with a sweet, gap-toothed smile.  But on this day she was sober, drawn way within herself, even during the part where relatives were allowed to come up and express their exuberance by throwing flour and confetti on the candidates, blowing whistles, dancing, and waving chickens.

 

I didn’t see the heart of the ceremony, the charismatic prayer for each candidate, up close. Mimi told me later that she was overcome with emotion and couldn’t contain herself, weeping and praying. She supposed it was the Holy Spirit, she didn’t know. She’d never experienced anything like it.

photo by Trisha Handrich

 Much was made of the fact that Mimi is CEM’s first ordained woman. She stood a little apart. Her ordination has political as well as personal significance, a strategic move for a divided church and its current leader. Decisions must be made. If her husband, who is a government employee now working in Bandundu, can get transferred to Kinshasa, Mimi will continue co-pastoring her current congregation. If not, she may move to Bandundu and start a new CEM congregation there, another first.

Rev. Mimi Kanku is prepared for the challenges but she could use a lot of prayer and support. Being a star is never easy.

with Mimi and Belarmain the day after

You had to be there for the music

Mama Michoux sings her heart out at Bondeko Mennonite Church in Kinshasa

I’ve been thinking for days about the post I must write about the music of the Congo Mennonite centennial celebrations. I must write the post because it was the highlight of the whole thing for me. But how can you write about music? You must demonstrate. I do have clips but I listen to them and think, nah. They don’t begin to do justice.

The only clip I like is this one of our Mennonite cooks in Tshikapa singing what they said was a Catholic song while they worked. This was not a performance although it sort of became one when I heard them and came out with my camera. It shows how music is part of life. Everybody sings, in tune and in harmony.

But the choir music clips are thin, noisy excerpts of the real thing. The real thing was what made the whole trip worthwhile and you had to be there to get the effect.

What is the effect? You feel the thrumming in your chest and you may get teary. You can’t sit still. You are no longer separate but become part of the body of the crowd vibrating to the glory of God. It is quite clear that the music is religious but I don’t know what makes it religious, exactly, besides the words, which I could seldom understand. It is influenced by both traditional African and modern popular forms. It is original. The best choirs compose their own music. Even if you have never heard it before it finds a home in your soul. It infects even the shy and the skeptical with praise.

You lose track of time in two- and three-hour worship services because so much of it is music. The grander the occasion—the centennial, the Bible Institute graduation we attended, and the ordination in Mbuji Mayi—the more music, the more choirs. And you can dance! Here is the Dipumba youth choir leading the Bible Institute graduation procession, followed by the president, vice president, and president emeritus of the denomination and their wives.

I don’t think you could get the effect on a CD or by bringing one of those choirs to North America. The effect is enhanced in a crowded, hot church. The effect depends on a crowd that responds by getting up and dancing, tossing tips into the basket, clapping and singing along. The effect is enhanced when the song can go on and on, building to a climax and shifting rhythms, ending only when the worship leader says enough.

Each choir has its own style. My favorite at the centennial celebration in Tshikapa was the Grand Tam Tam choir from Ndjoko Punda, 50 or so young women and a few men with drums, flute, and other homemade instruments. They started each morning worship with an alleluja that could have taken up the whole service as far as I was concerned. It was the same every morning, and there was repetition within the song itself. It was hypnotic.

Two women who seemed to be identical twins alternated leading the choir. I thought for a long time they were the same person and then I saw one in the choir while the other was leading and I thought this magical person might very well be in two places at once. Here is a clip of her (their) dance. (Try to ignore the tinny quality of the recording.) The dance, too, was always the same and I never grew tired of it.

Ndjoko Punda was the original Mennonite mission station, established in 1912. It is in the middle of nowhere. This particular choir had walked 200 km, some with babies on their backs, to get to the celebration. On the last day of our stay in Tshikapa I flew with a small group of my fellow travelers and the president of the denomination on a small plane to Ndjoko Punda for a brief visit. We were ferried from the airstrip by motorbikes and dugout canoes and braved a wild welcome in a lovely old hot church. Another choir sang. Grand Tam Tam was still in Tshikapa.

We couldn’t fly the choir back to Ndjoko Punda but we raised $750 to send them back down the Kasai River by boat so they wouldn’t have to walk.

What I wouldn’t give to hear them again. I imagine choir tourism, the equivalent of ecotourism. I know that’s the dream of a rich American. Is there a better way to support such treasures?

Interlude with a two-year-old

Every night since I returned from Congo on August 1 my dreams have been set there. I do not remember most of them. It seems like my psyche has been caught there and is still going over stuff. There are no messages, few remaining images, only a kind of churning over experiences. But the result is—or maybe it is the cause—that I have not felt like I am really back home.

One thing I have discovered over a lifetime is that I am able to feel “home” in many different places. A tiny two-room, tatami-matted house in Tokyo. A duplex in Bukavu, Congo, that came with a cat. A Moscow apartment with tall, dusty windows and a portrait of Leo Tolstoy above my couch-bed. The open front of the Mukendi home in Kinshasa where visitors come and chat or wait. These places, where I may have lived for a year or a week, carve a deeper place in my soul than some of the houses I have inhabited in the USA—present home, with porch and woods, excepted.

I don’t know what this has to do with visiting my granddaughter except that I needed to do it in order to feel like I was really back home. I think it has to do in some way with story. The homes of my psyche are part of a story, not my story only but stories in which I am participating. In addition to my grandma-infatuation with cutiepie-ness, Hazel’s story is my chance to observe all over again what it means to be a human being. We are doing the human story together, Hazel and I.

In the month since I last saw her, Hazel, who is two and a month, has learned the miracle of human language. It’s not that she wasn’t talking before, saying words and some sentences. But it was more like a toy for her, an experiment. Now it is her most important tool and she is building her life and personality around it.

Her imitative chatter has been replaced by words and sentences, every one of them carrying meaning, whether we can decipher it or not. She is patient with us and assumes she will have to repeat things many times so that we can understand. Eventually we do. She repeats after us and expects us to repeat after her: communication involves mirroring, making sure we understand each other. I am taken back to language school, both learning and teaching. I pull out my gift for understanding strange accents and imperfect structures and we are having a ball.

“I” is a new word for her in the last month and nearly every sentence includes it, with a slight twist to indicate “I want” or “I like.” A two-year-old’s strong will is partly a reflection, a reveling in, this new power of communication. The right to say no, the clarity of being able to indicate exact preferences. I want to see a dance video but not this ballet; that one. And not this scene of the Nutcracker, and not that, not that, not that, but yes this one.

And then there is the joy of following the story, narrating as it goes along, how the people are saying bye-bye and hugging each other and then Clara goes up the stairs and says night-night. So, too, with the story of the chicken who goes on a walk, chased by a hungry fox who is thwarted at every turn. Fock hiding. Coming, coming! Oh no! Not. Coming! Catch! Not. Wet! Chicken walk. No Fock. Chicken night-night. She gets the jokes and laughs but looks at me every time to make sure she is laughing at the right places, that we are laughing together.

This sense of being part of the human family, able to hold her own and join in, must be terribly exciting. I share her excitement. This is typical human development but each little person must experience it for herself. It is really a great adventure.

 

At peace with one's nature

Mado seems to be at peace with her nature. Am I?

I was going to write next about Congo church music but first I have to say something that I came to understand about myself on this trip. It is that I am never going to work very hard toward being a published author, nor am I going to strive for other forms of success and achievement.

Retirement, in fact, is a kind of giving up on my part. I have given up on making my mark as an environmentalist just as I gave up on making my mark as an antinuclear crusader or a journalist or even as an editor—and now as a writer. I do not fault myself for this.

In fact, I would have liked for any or all of that to happen. But I have not wanted it enough to do the work that it takes. It was just a little too far beyond my nature, both inborn and cultural. I, the Little Mennonite Girl born in 1944, achieved quite a lot in my working life but not what I saw was possible, what I saw others doing. I was not cut out with the grit, determination, focus, and need to achieve the kinds of things that bring recognition. Recutting my own patterns to make that happen required just a little too much effort.

What I was cut out for was happiness. Balance and contentment come easily to me, as does the kind of success that comes easily to the peculiar gifts of my mind. I write well so I happily doodle around in a journal or a blog—happily is the key word; it makes me happy to write like this. Writing in other ways doesn’t make me happy so I have stopped trying to do it. I am not inclined to tout the positions I have achieved, the jobs I have done, because I don’t feel like I have achieved much of anything through effort. Whatever I have done has come fairly easily and naturally. I have always used my gifts well in teamwork and behind the scenes. But I simply have not had the drive to get my own ideas and creativity into the world, leave some kind of mark or legacy, or achieve recognition and other forms of success, even for the sake of making the world a better place.

I’m not saying happiness and success are mutually exclusive. I’m just saying I am this way and not that way. It’s a matter of nature. We can do a lot to shift and balance our own natures but that kind of shift becomes much more difficult as we get older.

Thus it was that on my latest trip to Congo I found myself quickly setting aside the idea of writing a book about Mennonites in Congo, in the style of a travelogue à la V.S. Naipaul or Ian Frazier. Who was I kidding? I was still a lazy notetaker, just like I have always been. That is, I was still too immersed in the experiences I was having to stop and take notes, even though I knew I would forget them later if I didn’t record them. I was still impatient with research. I was still not observant enough of the details that create telling pictures. I was still too focused on my own feelings and not enough on gathering the kind of information that I would need later to convey a full picture to readers. Face it: I would never be a Naipaul or a Frazier. I didn’t have the drive to start earlier in life to be a “real” writer and why had I ever dreamed that would suddenly come to me when I was pushing 68? Realizing this was one of many "wrong again" moments on that trip.

Instead, I found myself being attracted to working in a way to which I was accustomed: behind the scenes, as an encourager, an editor, a mentor, a team player. I met some Congolese writers whom I would like to serve in that way. I have some plans in mind to do that. If I am not going to write about Mennonites in Congo, I can find others who will. I will collaborate with some young, ambitious writers. I will encourage in others the drive that I myself do not possess.

I have often thought about how far we can push the natures and inclinations we were born with but which are also partly the products of our environments. I know ambitious people who really need success and recognition. I know people who do not have my peculiar gift for happiness and contentment. I am trying harder to understand such differences and not criticize them as failings, either in myself or in others. I realize that overcoming them may require work that I and others simply are unwilling to do or incapable of doing.

Perhaps there comes a time in life when we must work harder only to come to terms with our own natures, to be at peace with our lopsided selves. I may yet achieve certain forms of success, but only if they are fully integrated with my drive for happiness.

P.s. Yes, drive. I realized after I wrote this that it is not just that happiness comes easily to me. I am willing to work quite hard for it. To arrange my life around it.

Luxuries and necessities

The plane trip from the DR Congo capital, Kinshasa, to Tshikapa in West Kasai province was long enough for a nice little lunch service. That would be the last conventional luxury for a while but we were not exactly roughing it. It was a short walk over sandy paths from the airport to the brand new Centennial Center and guesthouse. Our baggage was hauled on the back of a truck. A young lady was summoned to carry my big suitcase the rest of the way to my room. It was a lot lighter than before but still too heavy for me and my bum knee.

The rooms smelled of fresh cement. Screens weren’t up on the windows yet but the beds were draped with mosquito nets. The bathrooms, each shared by two rooms, had sit-down toilets. This would become very important to me. I’d had plenty of experience with squat toilets in my world-traveling past and I thought I could deal with anything. But I was older now and temporarily crippled. Suffice it to say that during the whole trip I would have to use squat toilets only three times, and each time was traumatic because it had the potential to become an “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” scenario.

There was no water in the bathrooms, however. The cistern/pump/running water scheme was not yet functioning properly, and at the time we moved in the alternative barrel/bucket/pitcher scheme had not been set up either. No water, only one or two buckets for 30 people. Within a day, both the running water and the barrel/bucket system were functioning, though the latter was far more dependable than the former. Running water came to seem like a luxury, not a necessity.

The thing to remember was that the cistern at the bottom of the property, from which water was either pumped or carried to our bathrooms, was itself filled by carried water. Every drop we poured upon our dusty feet had been carried some distance in a basin atop someone’s head. I soon learned to shower with a pitcher and less than half a bucket of water. And I felt just as clean afterward as if I’d stood 15 minutes under a spray of hot water. Well, almost.

Cooks Anto, Anne Marie, and Albertine boil water for morning tea and coffee and cheer on the water carriers.

Before the opening service we were served a delicious meal, prepared in an outdoor makeshift kitchen. The center’s intended kitchen was even less finished than the rooms, just a large empty space with a countertop and potential sink. All the food prep and dishwashing took place outside on charcoal burners and in big plastic basins. African cooks may be used to preparing food this way but they are not used to doing it day in and day out for 30 people. Nevertheless, the women who served us did an amazing job over that week, providing three nutritious, tasty meals a day, singing while they worked. Once I tried to get my tea first thing in the morning, like I am used to doing, but that upset the routine considerably and I never asked again.

But during that week in Tshikapa, it was music that became both luxury and necessity. We got a taste of things to come as we arrived and were welcomed by the singing, dancing ladies of the Thousand Voices choir, dressed in the specially printed pink cloth marking the centennial. And later as the opening ceremonies got underway, choir after choir brought heaven to the hot, crowded hall. I knew then that for me it would be all about the music. 

A missed celebration

Gracia just couldn't close her eyes for children's prayer.

Pastor François Tshidimu wasn’t in church that first Sunday in Kinshasa; he was already in Tshikapa. But you can tell that others are used to taking responsibility for services at Bondeko Mennonite Church. When Pastor Matala started preaching in French rather than Lingala, I realized it was entirely for my benefit. Celestin, also a gifted preacher, singer, and translator, translated to Lingala for everybody else. I then did my best to give Dwight the gist of what was being said. I couldn’t always see Pastor Matala’s face because he is short, the pulpit is greatly elevated because the cement has not yet been poured over the dirt floor in the seating area, and we were sitting as honored guests in the front row. This made him extra hard to understand. The energetic Lingala translation distracted me while I was trying to translate to English. It was pretty exhausting. But once again, the music more than made up for it.

After church we went to dinner at a nearby house. Ah-h-h pondu. How I’ve missed you! The host, a woman who sometimes comes to church, wasn’t there. Other women had prepared the dinner and carried it in. People sometimes borrow houses for special occasions.

It took two-and-a-half dusty, fumy hours to get back to the MPH guesthouse through traffic tieups.

After a shower and a nap I came out to the dining room and saw Mama Kadi and Mama Swana, two leading forces behind Congolese Mennonite women and their quest for ordination. Ordination of women is a big issue in the church. Mama Kadi, who belongs to the Mennonite Brethren, is ordained. Mama Swana, equally qualified, is not, because her branch of the church, which everyone calls CMCo (“sem-co”), Communauté Mennonite au Congo, hadn’t yet taken that step. A third branch, the CEM (“sem”), Communauté Evangelique Mennonite, was about to ordain their first female pastor, my friend Mimi Kanku. As my fellow traveler, Prof. Marlene Epp from Conrad Grebel University, had already discovered in her conversations the day before with a circle of women, the CMCo women have been downright angry about the resistance to ordaining women.

Ordination represents not only recognition of particular women’s spiritual gifts and calling. It is also a liberation leverage point, a fulcrum for increasing women’s power and leadership. Pastors are important, respected leaders in society as well as the church. Ordination constitutes admission to an exclusive club and gives a cachet of authority. The women—and men—who are ordained often wear clerical collars wherever they go.

Mama Kadi and Mama Swana had brought Marlene dinner and I joined in for another round of manioc greens and rice, which I can’t seem to get enough of. While we were eating, Charlie Ntumba Malembe, one of the journalists from the day before, showed up with a piece of news: the general assembly of the CMCo, which was meeting then in Tshikapa—the place we were headed the next day—had just approved the ordination of women.

Mama Swana, Charlie, Mama Kadi

 I immediately got the attention of our fellow diners, the nearly 30 people from North America and Europe bound for the centennial celebrations, and made the announcement. The response to my news was underwhelming. Later I learned that the rumor about this decision had been flying about for some time and there was little reason to believe that it was more than a rumor at this point, even though Charlie, a slender, passionate young woman with the instincts of an investigative reporter, said she’d gotten the news from someone at the meeting.

Oh well. I was getting used to making mistakes.

But this wasn’t a mistake. The next day in Tshikapa I learned Charlie was right but nobody was talking about the decision, at least not yet. That wouldn’t happen until a few days into the centennial program. I couldn’t help feeling, however, that by being careful about announcing this we were missing opportunities to celebrate.

What matters and what doesn't

The journalists

On my first morning in Kinshasa, after a comfortable night in the Methodist-Presbyterian Hostel, my knee was feeling better and I could walk without limping. But I wasn't planning to go far that day. The hostel, known universally as MPH, is Grand Central Station for Protestant travelers in Kinshasa. Anybody can find you there. I was planning to hang out and let my Kinshasa connections come to me.

Thus, before the morning was over I had handed over much of the extra baggage I’d been carrying, passed on to Mimi Kanku the airfare to get to her ordination in Mbuji Mayi (my little fundraising campaign had been more than successful, garnering some extra funds for Tatiana Ndjoko’s peace camps and other causes), and met the extraordinary Pakisa Tshimika, who was holding court in a corner of the MPH commons. My stream of visitors was sparse compared to Pakisa’s.

I’d also sat in on a workshop for aspiring Mennonite journalists conducted by Lynda Hollinger-Janzen, who seemed, unlike me, totally alert after our 24 hours of travel. And during the workshop I’d entertained the germ of an idea of how I might continue to be involved with Congo. I was feeling pretty good and very efficient.

I was also feeling good about seeing Marie-Jeanne and Gaston. I was planning to spend the evening with them and accompany them to the little Bondeko congregation the next day, where we’d worshiped before and made many friends. The Nkoles had been our hosts last May. I had it all worked out to stay with them for a night at the front end of my trip and with the Tshidimus, our other hosts, at the tail end. I had even calculated the time-saving strategy of staying with the Nkoles the night before church so they wouldn't have to make the arduous trek into the center city to pick me up Sunday morning before making the even more arduous trek out to the little church off the perpetually-under-construction airport road. I was so clever and thoughtful.

Except they didn’t show up. And I didn’t have their phone number to find out why. That was in the computer I’d left behind in favor of my new superlight iPad.

Supper time rolled around and past, and I accepted a few slices of the pizza others had ordered though I’d been counting on a real meal of fufu, pondu, chicken, fish, rice, and fried plantains. I consoled myself by noodling around on Facebook. I happened to notice that Nina, my fellow traveler from the May trip, was online back in Michigan. I sent her a message. Did she have the Nkole phone number? Within minutes she emailed me the contact sheet for our May trip. I borrowed a cell and phoned Gaston. There had been an apparent mixup on the days and he was counting on picking me up Sunday morning. Okay fine. I knew we would get to church late but that never really mattered.

The next morning Gaston indeed came, and rather late, but it didn’t matter. In fact, the moment he walked in was the very moment the Derksen family had come out to the foyer and was ready to leave. The Nkoles had lived near the Derksens years ago when both were in Kasai. This meeting launched a round of hugs and kisses and catch-up conversations that delayed our departure even further but one doesn't rush that kind of thing.

I learned that the Nkoles were also scheduled to take one of my fellow travelers, Dwight Short, to church with us. So my staying with them Saturday night wouldn’t have saved anybody any time and would have just meant an extra trip. Okay fine. It was at this point, as we were on the way to church, on the airport road, which was remarkably open, that I told myself, “Nancy, you know nothing, so just forget about trying to figure everything out.” And I sat back and began to enjoy the ride. We stopped to pick up Marie-Jeanne, who wasn’t quite ready. And then their daughter’s mother-in-law, who wasn’t home. Actually, she was at church when we got there.

the daughter's mother-in-law

Church started after we arrived. Late, but it didn’t matter.

But at the end of my trip, on the day I left the country, Marie-Jeanne was, or pretended to be, upset that I never went to their house. No matter whose fault it was, I think that did matter.

Marie-Jeanne, middle, and Gaston, with Felly, our other host

A metaphorical injury

I wake this morning with what feels like writing energy but I could be wrong. I am wrong about so many things these days, not least myself. Maybe it is not writing energy but jetlag that wakes me at 5:30 with images and ideas swimming through my head.

The theme of them is being wrong, how often in the past three weeks in Congo I was wrong, how many versions of being wrong I have experienced. I might have titled this post, “So You Think You Can _____”. (Add “speak French.” “Write.” “Keep up.” “Adjust.” And, yes, “dance.”)

I was wrong so often that I got used to it and came to expect it. I became cheerfully wrong, wholeheartedly wrong, laughably wrong. I remembered that being wrong was the one dependable, consistent cross-cultural experience. That in order to learn anything you have to be wrong first.

It started right at the beginning of the trip, before I even got to O’Hare on July 12 to leave for my second visit to Congo in two months, to attend the centennial and 50^th anniversary celebrations of two branches of the Mennonite Church in Congo. This was going to be such a great trip. I was going to learn so much, meet so many people, see friends I had learned to know the previous time, and, above all, start a new writing project.

This was the first step in the next phase of my life. I had just retired from decades of work on environment and peace. I was free. I was now going to become a real writer. How often have I told myself that? But now the dream of becoming a real writer was going to come true and my topic was … well, a little hazy but I thought it would be something like a travelogue, a visit to African Christian spirituality with an emphasis on Mennonites.

But really, it was about me becoming a writer at last, with my own book, written in the style of V.S. Naipaul or Ian Frazier, looming large in my imagination. That was the big step, the one that would propel me, finally, to realize my own potential as a writer.

And so, I was given a metaphorical injury.

The white rented van that took nine of us centennial attenders from Goshen, Indiana, to Chicago had a high floor and no handholds to help you get in. A big step. I made it up the first time. The second time, at a rest stop, I depended too much on my left leg to lift me in and I felt the muscle at the back of my knee cramp up. By the time we got to the airport it had fully clenched and I could hardly put any weight on the leg, let alone manage my baggage—two bags to check, one of them pushing the 50-pound weight limit, plus two heavy carry-ons. I was a fully loaded Congo mule, and now a crippled one who had to depend on others to help with the burdens I had taken on for other people.

How many ways was this injury metaphorical? I was carrying “too much baggage,” in the form of my personal ambitions as well as the I-can-do-it-all willingness to carry everything other people asked of me. This was “a big step,” one for which I was not as ready as I thought. I should have asked for help (getting in the van) and didn’t, so now I was totally dependent on other people.

The injury rattled me. Maybe the bad vibes rattling around me were what kept setting off the security alarm at O'Hare when I walked through, after pulling out the three computers plus iPad that I was carrying. So I was subjected to a full pat-down and hand-baggage search while departure time approached. Pastor Jeremy Shue, one of the group in the van, waited patiently for me and carried my carry-ons down the long corridor to the gate while I shuffled along. Boarding had started when we arrived.

As if to reinforce humbling experiences, I made a wrong turn in the Brussels airport 8 hours later and had to hobble through security a second time with my heavy bags, cutting a close connection for the Kinshasa flight even closer and worrying my travel companions. The thing is, I had warned everybody else not to make that wrong turn that Nina had made back in May. And then I made the same mistake.

Pastor Jeremy came back looking for me and helped lug my carry-ons again or I might not have made it. As it was, we had to wait a full 10 minutes for a shuttle to the terminal for Africa flights. The door to the ramp to the plane was already closed when we got there but they opened it for us and a few other stragglers. I collapsed into my seat and took some satisfaction in not being the absolute last one to board. When the free alcohol was offered after takeoff I had myself a vodka tonic.

I was not cheerful about being wrong. Not yet.