Conversations from Home

The internet in Njombe doesn’t work well or often, but on rare, beautiful occasions, and after doing a certain tribal dance and putting my computer into an exact, random location du jour, I can get enough network to get my internet key to function. Today, not only did it work, but I was able to get a group chat going (an unknown possibility to me before today) with three of my siblings! Having four Harveys in one tiny instant interwebal exchange was just too good. And thus, my week was improved tenfold.

I was trying to fill Seth, Rebek, and Gabo in on the daily tedium of my African life – still no work to report. Within this last month, truly, very little has happened. (Well, except for the Cameroonian Presidential Election which is a big deal - predictable results are to be announced later this month; but, this has had no big effect on my daily living.) I’m sure they too were bored. Catching up on their lives was much more fun…twin baby nieces now smiling, Penn PhD classes with tweed jackets and Mid-Atlantic apple tosses, homemade blueberry cobblers baking, an improved “Lucky Dime” logo, LSU Tigers winning. News from home really warms the cockles of my tiny cold heart. Not that I need any more warming here – and speaking of which, I’m a little frightened of dry (hot(ter)) season that is soon approaching. No, being from Louisiana doesn't make me sweat less or decrease my body’s temperature.

Anyway, what the conversation also did was remind me of how good I have it right now. Despite my days of current restlessness and feelings of unproductiveness, despite the daily killing and removal of dozens of tiny millipedes from my house, despite the foot-long lizards and New Orleans-sized cockroaches that dictate when I use my outside latrine and shower, despite living in a small town in which everyone thinks I’m French and part of the unloved, underpaying big fruit exporter that employs most of them, despite the constant rooster cries outside my bedroom window, I know I’m lucky. How many jobs require that you live in a culture completely different from your own and do just that – live? Live within a community, become part of it, and then, in time, figure out how you can contribute in some sort of positive way to it. I’ll eventually be able to communicate semi-ok. I’ll eventually start “working.” Ca va allez. More things will start happening. And, that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself. For now at least.

So, I will continue to enjoy the little extraordinary things like learning about Cameroonian witchcraft/sorcery (a prevalent part of its belief system), eating “prunes” (a delightful fatty little purple vegetable, not found in the US, that tastes like a perfect blend of olives, eggplant, and artichoke hearts) and extremely fresh pineapple, having my Halloween costume custom-made by a tailor, shooing the neighbor’s adorable baby goat or obnoxious chickens out of my house, and taking “bucket baths” under the warm Njombe sun.

And like my ‘ole Papi (or Thomas Fuller and/or Francis Quarles), I’ll hope that there will be no “abused patience turning to fury.”

A few highlights of my day’s conversation:

• [after telling my siblings about some of my current movie/episode watching] Gabriel: Ask not what you can do for your country; ask how many different seasons of your favorite shows you can watch.

• [after telling them about some of the local foods eaten, which included a delicious peanut sauce and, separately, large rats; the following is, of course, to be read in a Cajun French accent] Seth: Oooooh cher, put some o'dat sauce piquant on de old farm rat...ooooeeeee!

• [talking about future plans] Rebekah: I watched a story about gangs today and i was thinking that we should start our own; you and Gabo could design all of the tattoos that we will have to get. Blood In, Blood Out.

• Me: this was lots of fun for me! Gabriel: You are a dork. Who likes talking to their siblings? [their lonely American-African sister, obviously]

(a love note which I received in a package from my siblings)