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.

Diving down

Going away on a great vacation or a long trip can be like diving deep underwater. Everything above the surface fades away. Nothing can reach you. You are in a different world. You don’t resurface until you come back home.

I began a very long dive after the July 4 party celebrating my independence from gainful employment. Yesterday on the drive home from a sweet family gathering 750 miles away, I kept adding to the preparation list for the Congo trip, which begins in three days, as I watched the sun go down. We had stayed till past noon at sister Sylvia’s, reluctant to leave the sisters and brothers-in-law we see at most once a year because we are scattered coast to coast.

Vic and I enjoyed the silence and he drove like a robot because we decided after a few hours to go all the way home rather than stopping off. We talked about family history. I reviewed the names of his cousins and their spouses, whom I have met over the years but I lose the connections so easily. They were all there, the cousins from his father’s side, a real coup for the organizers, who were as proud of getting the whole family together as my mother would have been. A number of their children and grandchildren showed up, too.

I think I have remained unnecessarily confused about his paternal cousins because there are so many maternal ones. Vic’s mother’s family was large. His father’s family was smaller, just the three sons and a sister who was single and died young. Arthur, Chester, Leidy, and Edith. Each of the sons had a farm. Each of the sons had children and they were all there, at cousin Lois and Frieda’s farmhouse for lunch and the afternoon, and later at cousin David’s house.

Lois and Frieda's farmhouse

Frieda in the pink skirt, Lois in the orange blouse

Lois and Frieda’s 1760 farmhouse stands on the land that belonged to their father, Arthur. They rent out the land and haymaking was going on as we gathered. Leidy, the youngest son and my husband’s father, got the family farm a few miles away. How did that happen? And why did he sell it in the 1960s rather than rent out the land? We discussed those things. Not all the answers are clear. Does it matter?

Obviously, other things mattered more to Vic’s parents than hanging on to the family farm. Economic survival, for one. It is hard to know what will matter to you as you grow older, or what will matter to your children. 

Video games matter, but so do wagon rides

Cousin Lois has researched ancestors back to the 16th century. Chris and Bethany review the history.

Our children, who were present at this gathering only briefly through FaceTime, always loved going to Lois and Frieda’s farmhouse, with its foot-thick walls and whiff of old age and sweeping vista down to the creek. Joanna would love to have a place like that. The house where her father grew up has been renovated by its current owner into a magazine-worthy modern version of its authentic self. None of us could afford to buy it if it were for sale. The owner has graciously given us tours.

The to-do list for Congo gets longer, then shorter as I tick things off, then longer again. This time I may be incommunicado for most of the time that I am there. The electronic connections will be extremely uncertain so I will dive deeper than usual. I will resurface after August 1.

Can you pray with an iPad?

what I would be looking at if I wasn't looking at my virtual keyboard

This is not a product endorsement. Still, I was delighted when Vic asked me whether I might like an iPad as a retirement gift. A sleek little bit of compact technology that I could carry with me to Congo. Remember when laptops were the ultimate in portability? I did carry my beloved MacBook Pro on the last trip, and used it a lot. But it stayed in whatever home I was staying in. An iPad would stay in my purse. But would an iPad do what I needed it to do?

I need a writing machine, or what I learned to call, to my amusement, in 1981, a word processor. Since that green-screened Wang in George McCoy's office in downtown Chicago, where I fat-fingered letters that I mailed to the members of the organization I was helping George run, an antinuclear business group, technology has come a long, long way. A year later I was helping the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists into the new era by urging the editor to splurge on a little box called an Apple Macintosh. As soon as page layout software came up to speed we began putting the magazine together in Qark Express. (It is indicative of what ancient history this is to note that this iPad's officious correction system did not helpfully substitute "quark" for "quark" as I was typing. It does not recognize its own history.)

So I am no technophobe. Still I have been slow to enter the era of mini i-this and i-that for two reasons. 1) They are too tiny for my aging eyesight. I don't like to wear reading glasses all the time. 2) They are not really geared to writing. Texting with your thumbs is not writing. Writing is touch typing without looking at the screen. Writing is letting your ideas flow out through your fingers without having to think about it. Writing is going on and on at length and getting your creative juices flowing and then going back and editing afterward or starting somewhere altogether new.

And for me, writing can be a form of prayer. It directs my thoughts deeper and broader to things I didn't know before I started writing. This means that I have to write without being aware of technology, of how the machine or the pen or paper are helping me or not helping me. These are supposed to be neutral tools, extensions of my own physical self. Above all, I should not have to think about them.

So here I am, nearly four decades after that clumsy "word processor," still, or once again, fat-fingering words awkwardly on a screen. This time I can't even feel the keyboard, so I have to keep looking at it, bowing my head to the technology rather than gazing out at the trees that surround me. And I am writing about the technology rather than whatever deep spiritual thoughts I might otherwise have.

I can hear the techy males in my family say, just buy a separate keyboard, which I may do, but I am resisting for two reasons. 1) I want to travel light. Maybe I will use this little rectangle also as my camera, also as my ebook device. 2) I want to see if I can totally adapt to this new technology. If they put a keyboard on the screen you should be able to write with it, right?

My hands are threatening to cramp up from fitting themselves to to a 9-inch virtual keyboard and my shoulders are tense. But I am doing. Enter than yesterday. No, no iPad. I meant, I am doing better than yesterday. Sheesh.