This blog has moved

This blog has moved, as of October 1, 2012, to a new address: http://thepracticalmystic.org/

Thus I leave blogspot  and join wordpress. What this means for my regular readers is that you can now subscribe and get my latest post by email if you choose.

Archives for February 2011–September 2012 will remain at this site.

A 50th high school reunion

I was the editor of this gaudy yearbook. The reunion committee provided ID badges of our former selves.

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Last weekend my high school class of 1962 had a reunion. Fifty years is real time.

I had attended our 35- and 45-year reunions so people’s appearance was no shocker. It is a bit disconcerting to see such familiar faces wearing the disguise of age. But after a weekend with my peer group I look at my present face with more respect and affection. I see in myself, like I saw in them, the gem of who I used to be and still am, the spark of my essential self. Some of the women, like me, look like our mothers but with good haircuts.

Melba and Janis, looking like their mothers only better.

 The reunion committee had asked us for updates and reflections on our lives and published these in a booklet. I was impressed by the breadth and depth of the lives people have lived. Travel, family, achievement, service blended with a remarkable integrity. My classmates have been true to themselves and to their faith. They have served the world at large and the communities where they have been planted or the one they never left. They have become beloved parents and grandparents.

What is even more remarkable, though, is that this high school class of mine still felt like a community, a group of people united by affection and common experience despite our differences. We pulled together as a high school class, though each of us played a unique role. This exercise in building community is one of this small parochial school’s great gifts to my life.

Faye

Faye Mosemann was the one who pulled me into the community-building exercise when she greeted me practically on the doorstep that first day of freshman year. I soon learned that Faye was the daughter of the pastor of the largest Mennonite church in the area, the one associated with the local college. I was the shy daughter of a farmer. And I soon learned that this didn’t matter. Faye and I became best friends.

I can’t say exactly how this class came to feel like a community and still does, after all these years. I don’t think there is any good theory of community building; you just have to do it. Music was important in our community. Faye and I and four girls quickly formed a singing group and most of the class eventually joined one chorus or another. Singing and shared classes blurred the boundaries of the cliques that high school students always form. We were a group of 50–60, a good size for community building.

Wayne and Eileen

  We also came together with a hunger to learn, a sense of being in momentous times, which was cultivated by some really great teachers. John F. Kennedy was elected president in our junior year. Faye reminded me last weekend that she came to my house to watch the returns on television—because her stricter Mennonite parents didn’t have TV—and we stayed up all night. I suspected that my parents had voted for Richard Nixon if they had voted at all. They considered their voting a very private matter.

The historian Leonard Gross, who went on to become curator of the Mennonite Church’s archives, taught for a few years at Bethany. He lectured us college style, made little Anabaptists out of us by teaching us about our origins, and made us pay attention to the news. Leonard introduced me to the life of the mind and I never left it. Delmar Miller and Rosemary Wyse introduced me to great literature and great writing. Latin became my second language because it was the only foreign language available when I was a freshman and C.J. Holloway was available to teach it. It was an invaluable foundation for learning more languages. When Leonard came to the school I took German from him and I began learning French with private lessons from his Swiss wife, Irene.

Leonard, Rosemary, Bible instructor Royal Bauer, and John Ingold, who taught me to drive on a stick shift (a lifelong gift), were at our reunion, beaming with pride and affection and looking great. How did I miss photographing them? I was caught up in the emotion of the moment, feeling a little self-conscious and high-schoolish, wondering if I lived up to their expectations.

All of our teachers were great human beings as well as good teachers. We were surrounded by good people who brought out as much good as possible in fickle teenagers. We were sheltered, protected from many of the social and societal pressures that assail adolescents. It was a stifling environment for some, no doubt, but I thrived in it.

I told my classmates on Sunday that Bethany Christian High School had spoiled me for living any kind of life but one that carried meaning and one that built community. It was a good way, I think, to be spoiled.

For more reunion photos go here.

Consider the asters

Retirement has finally hit. For the first time since I retired at the end of June I find myself with more time and energy than things to do. This simply means that I have to reshape my life around different goals and practices and I have to do it all by myself. There are no assignments or requirements and few obligations.

If this sounds like paradise to you, think again. It’s fine for a day or two, but the rest of my life? What was I thinking?? Well, I was thinking that I knew what I did not want to continue doing even though I wasn’t sure how I would fill the gap in my life that would open by quitting that great-part-time-job-for-a-good-cause. Now I have some sense of new directions but have not quite gathered the momentum or the certainty to propel myself in any direction. I am in a liminal period. I have been here often before. I know the drill for times like these: pay attention to the here and now.

Fortunately, this liminal time opens up in my favorite season of the year. A weird hot spring and summer have morphed into a gorgeous fall. I have been taking daily walks down the road to Dayton Wet Prairie a former Nature Conservancy site just a mile away, recently acquired by a local conservation group. Wet blooming prairies are relatively rare so we’re fortunate to have this one so close.

Most of the year Dayton Wet Prairie is just a drab, swampy mess. There are a few spring flowers, but the woods around our house have a much showier array in April and May. However, in late August the prairie begins to put on a real show. The summer Joe Pye weed and wild sunflowers are joined by the goldenrods. 

Then, as the rosy Joe Pye weed fades into September, the asters begin to bloom. Purple, lavender, and white among the brilliant goldenrod.

This seems to be a good year for wild asters. A bouquet of white ones greets us at the end of our driveway. I have never seen them before. 

But then, I have never paid attention to the wild asters like I am doing now. This is a between time for me. I don’t know where I am going. I have no assignments, no big projects lined up. Instead, I watch the prairie become beautiful.

I am taking no thought for the morrow. I am considering the asters, how they grow.

For more Dayton Prairie photos go here.

Feeling fat in Japan

I just had my Medicare annual physical. This is not like the physicals I remember in the past. It happens fully clothed. The Medicare physical requires (pays) the doctor to cover certain territory, mostly by questions. How much exercise do you get, how much sleep, do you want a flu shot, do you want a pneumonia vaccination (it won’t prevent you from getting pneumonia but it may prevent complications). Look in the ears, open the mouth and say ah, lie down so the tummy can be probed a bit, and that’s it. Blood is drawn for certain diagnostics.

One of the requirements is the weight discussion. My BMI is 29, which puts me in the overweight category, uncomfortably close to obese, which starts at 30. I could tell the doctor was not eager to have a long talk with me about weight, however, because he sees so many patients in worse shape. Yeah, yeah, he said, it’s really hard for all of us.

I live in Michigan and my doctor is in Indiana. Both states are in the top 10 for obesity rates. You can tell this just by looking around you at restaurants, stores, even the YMCA. Michigan is number 5 in the nation, with 31.3% of the population in the obese category. Indiana is tied with South Carolina for number 8, with 30.8%. Studies show that your weight is influenced by your community, the people with whom you associate.

I often think of this. Six years ago, when I was 20 pounds lighter than I was last week, I visited Japan and felt fat. The Japanese are prone to make frank remarks on certain topics that we shun, such as weight and annual income. One driver wondered whether my traveling companion and I could wedge into the backseat of a car that was “not built for Americans, who are fatter than Japanese.” No offense intended but offense taken nonetheless.

It may seem silly, but I would really think twice about going back to Japan for this very reason. Or to France and other parts of Europe. Not that I am inclined to travel to these parts of the world these days. It is just a mental game I play with myself.  Could I ever get thin enough to feel comfortable in a Parisian café? Or would I immediately be spotted as a fat American?

Maybe I should spend time with relatives in Oregon and Vermont, which are numbers 1 and 2 for fitness in the USA. Maybe it would rub off on me.

I am writing this on the third day of a juice fast. My intention is to get a jumpstart on losing . . . I won’t even say how much. Just some of those 20 pounds I’ve put on in the past 6 years. Get just a little more comfortably below the obesity index, just a little closer to a global normal, not a Michiana normal. And to do it while I can still see my toes.

It is hard. The fruit-veggie juice fast is working. I’ve lost four pounds in three days. On this third day the hunger pangs are mostly gone. I feel alert and energetic, not as headachy and grouchy as the first two days. It is kind of neat to get to the edge of tolerance and then feel revived by a large glass of juice that goes straight to the veins. But I am bored. I would like some real food pretty soon. This may be a three-day fast.

However long the fast, it is only a start. My eating habits were pretty good but not good enough. I must apparently eat even less and exercise even more than I used to. That no-burp diet that I wrote about some time ago is good but it’s not enough. I have to eat teenyweeny portions like a Frenchwoman or absolutely no fat like a Japanese.

The juice fast is a reboot. When I start eating again it will be very, very carefully, savoring every delicious bite.

 

Juicing up a new practice

our new Omega juicer

While I was in Congo in July, my husband bought a juicer. This was not just any juicer; it represented the latest technology and was rather pricey, a real boy toy.

Vic has been reading for a while about the benefits of juicing for weight control and health and he has sporadically tried to interest me in it. But I am a cook. I like the taste of good food. I like to prepare and serve meals. Juicing represented an entirely different approach to food, a new practice that would require some investment of time and money. I wasn’t interested.

But now the juicer was sitting on the countertop. The money had been spent and, as Vic demonstrated, this model worked easily and cleaned up in a whiz. He showed me a sheaf of recipes and said that while I was away he had gone on a juice fast over a weekend, lost five pounds, and kept them off at least until that moment. He made some of his mean green juice: kale, cucumber, green apples, pear, lemon, ginger.

I took a sip and became a believer. It tasted a little grassy but it was good. I could see drinking it for pleasure as well as health. This had the quality I required of food: I have to like it. (Some of Vic’s previous health food purchases did not meet that requirement.) This is also a requirement of any new practice: it must bring some immediate enjoyment. I need early rewards to keep me going until longer-term benefits kick in.

Still, the juicer languished on our countertop for a few weeks, mostly unused. Now that I was back in the kitchen Vic was happily eating my meals and wasn’t volunteering to exercise his new juicing expertise.

And then last week, while he was away for a few days, I watched the documentary that had inspired him to buy the juicer: Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. The adjectives do not apply to us and I didn’t necessarily believe all the claims but it added another quality I need in order to adopt a new practice: desire. I have to want to do it. It must not be a “should” or carry any hint of self-punishment. I really wanted to try regular juicing after watching that movie. I suppose it was no coincidence that I watched it after eating nothing but pizza and popcorn for nearly two days. I was 100 percent ready to try something new.

A third element I need to start a new practice is creativity. I have to be able to make it my own.

Where food is concerned I am not a recipe follower. Instead I apply principles I find in recipes, and my own taste, to preparing what is in season or on hand. So for the last few days I have been playing creatively with the juicer. By experimenting I quickly learned three principles of juicing:

1.     Put fruit like apples or pears in every mix. Along with carrots, beets, and certain other vegetables, they add sweetness to the grassier greens.

2.     Add half a peeled lemon and a small chunk of fresh ginger to every mix. These wake up the best flavors of almost anything.

3.     Taste before you finish and add what’s missing or what you think it could tolerate.

Last night I made a watermelon-carrot juice that was pretty as well as yummy. I hated to mess up the color so added just one large leaf of Chinese cabbage for the green.

The juice was my supper last night and my breakfast this morning. I am thinking of substituting juice for one meal a day. Or maybe going on a 3-day juice cleanse. Or maybe a 10-day one, depending on how I feel.

That’s another requirement for a new practice. I have to be able to take it a step at a time.

I just made this pretty green juice and decided to have it for lunch.

Cutting into the cloth

Congo Cloth Connection's centennial banner

I dream of a crowded restaurant bathroom. It’s where all the action is taking place though I am one of a group about to board a plane for a very important trip.  A group of women is chattering and laughing. I see intriguing group dynamics and I compliment the leader of the group, telling her she is like a character in a movie, but I can’t remember the name of the movie.

Waking, I think of the movie Day Night Day Night, which I watched two nights ago. It had sat for a long time near the top of our Netflix queue. I had been resisting watching it because it’s about a young woman who has volunteered to blow herself up for the sake of an unnamed cause. But the movie was terrific. I liked the girl, pretty and polite. I liked her fellow terrorists, systematic and kind. It was all so matter of fact and real. By the end I didn’t know whether I wanted her mission to succeed or fail because she wanted it so badly. A lot of the action, such as it is in this psychological thriller, takes place in bathrooms.

Against the backdrop of the larger terror of the world and even our own lives (everybody is going to die, the girl says to herself, naming all the ways that could be worse than the one she has chosen), life goes on one bit at a time. And grace, humor, beauty wind through even the worst moments.

I read two blog posts this morning about cloth in the Congo that we all hear about, the eastern Congo of the horrors. They made me a little sad because in neither case does the western writer allow herself to fully participate in the beauty and joy that the cloth represents in that terrible situation.

One writer watches a seamstress sew clothes for her fellow refugees and suddenly wishes for a dress for herself, to wear to a wedding after she gets back home. But she sees the seamstress is busy with a stack of orders and she doesn’t make the request.

The other writer is back home. She has bought cloth in Congo and is wondering what to do with it. She hesitates to cut into it. It reminds her of people she has met, especially a tailor in a refugee camp, stitching colorful cloth on a battered old machine. She thinks of how much she has and how little the refugees have. She already has another dress in the works. She will make that one. Perhaps one new dress is enough. She is not ready to cut into the cloth.

I know what it is to observe the pain of the world and think we, the privileged who do not suffer, must carry our share of that pain. We can’t allow ourselves to embrace happiness and beauty so long as someone else is suffering. Similarly, we can’t enjoy the beauty of the natural world without the gnawing awareness of how humanity is destroying it.

I’m not sure how I make the connection among all these things. The message I get is that I can’t fully participate in someone else’s suffering. We seldom have the full cinematic treatment of what that involves moment-by-moment, as we are given in Day Night Day Night, and when we do it turns out to be far more complex than we can imagine. Being present with it is one thing. Taking it on is something else.

What I can take on is the affirmation, the beauty, and the joy that represent hope and healing. That is what Congo cloth is about for me. That is the solidarity of the cloth, the Sisterhood of the Cloth. I intend to keep cutting into that stack of cloth that is piling up in my closet.

Gathering under the banner

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