I dug up some old journals the other evening and found a notebook I carried with me on my first trip to Congo. Reading it, I realized how much I’ve forgotten. The chicken that flew into our guesthouse room one morning. The plastic jar of Smucker’s grape jelly with Arabic writing on it. And how much I remembered–the first night in Rwanda, eating fried fish in a dark restaurant near the border. Hot chapati bread. My first time eating goat. The man who followed us through that field, yelling, “Sixty-seven! Sixty-seven!”

Sometimes, it seems it was a dream. Or, that it happened to someone else. But there are pictures, and there is the notebook, pages filled with my handwriting. It’s been two and a half years since I first went to Congo, and sometimes it feels everything has changed since then, when on the surface it seems nothing has. We’re still in the same house, in the same city, with the same friends. But I am no longer the same, though I hardly know how to communicate the change, or to quantify it. Even reading the notebook, I know I’m not quite the same person who wrote it. The person who wrote that was more optimistic, more trusting. For her, things were more certain, but she was also more anxious and less sure of herself. She was more rooted, less likely to question. A bit more passionate, but a little more reserved as well. She believed certain things, certain relationships, would never change.

So, perhaps then it is somewhat true that these things happened to someone else.

Generally, I like the person I am now more than the person in this notebook, and whatever I may have lost in certainty or solidity, I have gained in adventure and possibility.

And that change, I cannot help but think, is a direct result of Congo.

Enjoy:

The last funeral I was at, though, was on a bright sunny dusty Congo day. It was May, usually a good month, but perhaps the bad months are different in Africa. The day was hot, and it was the dry season, which means no afternoon rains to tamp down the dust, the orange dust that rises from the roads in clouds, kicked up by cars and people and animals. It settles on everything, this dust, a film of orange-brown, and you can draw your finger along a wide green leaf and watch the stripe form in your wake.

We knew Fiston’s aunt was sick. We’d dropped him off at the hospital one day after the conference. We didn’t know what it was. I’m not sure he knew how to translate the diagnosis. We didn’t know how serious. And then one Sunday evening we were in Mudaka, a little village outside of town, past fields of banana trees, past green mountains, past army trucks and soldiers. We were in a one-room hut, a church, with dirt floors and mud walls. Jessica and I preached, and as we left the church the sun was setting, the air was pale and thin and everyone got quiet as the news passed, whispered from one of us to another: Fiston’s aunt has died.

The drive to Bukavu was in silence. We watched the road, watched the dark hills, watched the black lake. Everything was dark, except Fiston’s bright yellow shirt, in the middle of the van, like a lamp.

The funeral was the next day. Family came in from all over, hundreds of people stuffed into a house with white walls and tall ceilings, relatives, relatives, relatives, and you don’t know how anyone sleeps, and maybe they don’t.

We drove up and parked on the street, the dust lifting to meet us, flying into our faces. We walked to the house, the air buzzing with warmth and the out of the ordinary. And we greeted the family, walked through a path that took us through the house and into the backyard, where we saw a box.

It takes your breath away, a bit, to see the box, just a wooden box about the size of a woman, and there’s a window on the top of the box, just over the face, and there’s a framed picture of the woman on top of the box. There was the vague anxiety of not knowing the cause of death. There was, in the back of my mind, the articles read about Ebola in Congo, the outbreak a couple years ago. I felt a little sick. People crowded into the backyard. They were sitting in rows several people deep. I had been to the house before, when it was empty except for one family, and I remember sitting on the sofa drinking Coke from a tall slender bottle, and when it started to rain Fiston and I ran outside to collect the laundry that had been drying on the bushes.

Now the backyard looked quite different. The rains were gone. The dust was on everything.

We hugged Fiston, told him we loved him, kept moving through the path, walking forward, moving back to the street. We got back in the van. The dust clouded the windows. Or that’s how I remember it—fuzzy, cloudy, blurry.

The streets were so clogged, we couldn’t leave right away. We sat in the van and waited. There was always a little bit of anxiety when we were stuck in the van and couldn’t move. A feeling of being trapped. And the dust and the heat and the people outside pouring around us and then a crowd emerged from the direction of the house. A big truck stopped in the street and people came out carrying the coffin, the window on top now closed, and women screamed, and everyone who wasn’t screaming stopped to look, or they jumped onto the truck with the coffin, you’ve never seen a truck carry so many people, and then it took off up the road, up the hill, toward the graveyard.

It happened fast. It happened in slow motion. I can still hear their screams, and feel the dust in the back of my throat.

Sometimes it’s January, and sometimes it’s May. The pessimist in me wonders what funerals 2011 will bring. The denial part doesn’t want to think about it. The realist hasn’t made up her mind what to think. The realist never knows how to end things, never knows how to wrap it up—sometimes it’s January, and sometimes it’s May. Sometimes it’s your family, and sometimes it’s someone else’s. And time continues.

After spending the night at the border of Rwanda and Congo, we got up early and had a few restful moments in the courtyard of our hotel before the chaos of the border crossing: the immigration forms, the piles of suitcases we needed to transport (fortunately, many of them–with their heavy containers of baby formula and bottles of vitamins–would not be coming back with us when we left), the man in a cement-floored room handwriting our names and passport numbers in a large book, and then the streets, the people jostling by, the shouts of children, the rumble of engines, the smell of gasoline and exhaust, the beggars with no legs on makeshift skateboards. A choir from the church came and sang a welcome to us, and I felt a confusing mix of gratitude and embarrassment.

Then, we were crammed into taxis and whisked off to Bishop’s house, where we ate breakfast (omelets, rolls with margarine and grape jelly, Cokes and Fantas, tea). Almost immediately afterward, we piled into the van and drove to the church, where we met the people who had been waiting for the conference we were there to conduct. Some of the people had come in from the villages and would be staying at the church the whole week because travel to Bukavu every day and back before dark would be impossible. So, though tired and with heads spinning from the travel and the border crossing, we dove in.

This video begins our first evening in Bukavu and goes into the next day. It shows you around our “compound,” gives you a taste of how lovely Congo can be in the mornings, and ends with some clips of driving through the city. You’ll see a little glimpse toward the end of people selling things near the road (charcoal, flour, etc.). Forgive all the coughing; though I was feeling better by this point, my voice had not recovered.

This year was similar, though I felt no apprehension when we arrived at the guest house. I was ready for my single room, and when some of the other girls expressed their unease at being alone, I assured them they’d love it. I’m not sure all of them did.

Here is a quick video of our trip through Rwanda and some shots of the guest house. (Including the impromptu stop along the road in the jungle, where some of the girls had to pee. While they were squatting there on the side of the road, a car drove by, and the rest of us just about died. They will probably kill me for posting this. Sorry!)

So, since my last Congo blog was about the flight to Africa (and the child who screamed almost constantly on a fifteen-hour flight), I thought I’d put up a little blurb about our layover in Ethiopia. We flew in late, spent far too much time in lines at the airport, realized Clay’s personal bag was lost, tried unsuccessfully to locate it, eventually made it to our hotel where we ate dinner around 11:30 p.m., and then tumbled into bed. I was still fighting my illness (I apologize for the coughs and raspy voice on the video below). It’s funny, though, as soon as we started driving to the hotel and I could see Africa speeding by us, I began to get excited. I began to think, maybe it wasn’t a colossal mistake getting on that plane.

And then the next morning, our hot water tank proved broken. Ha.

Enjoy:

Layover in Ethiopia from Erin Bond on Vimeo.

Tuesday night, the night before we were to leave, I was still vacillating—what to do? Go? Stay? What if I go and I get worse? What if I stay and get better? I had a prescription of amoxicillin just in case, but it wasn’t very strong. My sleep that night was fitful. My alarm was set for 3:00 a.m.

I woke up at 2:30 and went to the bathroom and threw up. At 3:00, my godsister called and said she was worried I shouldn’t go, was worried that the illness was a sign that I wasn’t supposed to be on this trip. I didn’t know if I agreed. But, as much as I hate it, I do have a bit of a superstitious streak, and I thought immediately of all the stories about people who should have been on the plane that crashed but overslept, that kind of thing. Stories about mining disasters, about men who survived because they just happened to be hungover that morning and stayed home.

Jesse woke up, and I just sat on the couch, half dressed and wet from the shower I’d somehow managed to take, crying, not at all sure what I should do, not wanting to stay, but not wanting to go either. I was so weak I could barely stand.

He said, well, let’s get you to the church. (Where we were meeting the rest of the team.) If you feel too bad there, I’ll bring you back home. If not, go to Raleigh. If you feel too bad there, I’ll come pick you up. If not, go to DC. If you feel too bad there, we’ll get you on a plane home. As long as you’re in the States, there’s time to turn back.

I nodded, pitifully, and he helped me put on clothes, and he put my things in his car, and he drove me to the church parking lot, where I cried some more, curled up in the front passenger seat of his car. By the time the van showed up, I was feeling a little better, the nausea not as strong as it had been, and I got in the van (front seat, so I could keep my eyes on the horizon) and went to Raleigh.

And at Raleigh I felt better, so I went to DC. And then we had a nine-hour layover. At lunch, I took a Mucinex and started to feel much better. Ah, I thought, I’m so glad I came, I’m getting better.

Then, while waiting at the gate, I started to feel very hot. I was flushed, my neck and face a brilliant shade of strawberry. I felt kind of prickly.

This whole time, I had been telling myself, well at least I don’t have a fever. If I had a fever, I’d know I should really stay.

I’d packed a thermometer, but it was in my checked luggage. No one else had one. Some of them went to hunt for one in the airport shops, but they were unsuccessful. I was right back where I’d been that morning. What to do? What was the right answer? Was this some kind of sign? Or was this something I needed to persevere through? It was agonizing.

Then Christie, who used to work at a hospital, pointed out that I didn’t feel that hot to the touch and that the flushing looked more like an allergy than a fever. I realized the Mucinex had been one of those time-released things and called my doctor’s office to get a nurse’s opinion. They called back later and said they’d had people with a similar reaction to Mucinex and that it would in all likelihood go away on its own.

That gave me a bit of relief, but I still had a decision to make. Without the Mucinex as an option, I would have all the congestion and stuffiness to deal with, and I was facing a fifteen-hour flight, an overnight stay in Ethiopia, another three-hour flight, a six-hour bus drive through Rwanda, an overnight stay in Rwanda (at a guest house I knew offered fairly rough accommodations), and then a week of go-go-go in Congo, followed by another several days of travel. But. I’d been planning and preparing for this for months, and there was all that money spent, and I really thought I was on the upswing, that if I could just sleep through the flights then I’d more than likely recover quickly, and if not I always had the antibiotics.

I was kind of a mess. I went to the bathroom and just sat in one of the stalls, the only place I could come up with where I could be alone. I just sat there and cried and prayed for the right answer. Then I realized: there was no right answer. I felt calm, almost instantly. There was no right answer. I could stay. Or I could go. It was just a choice. So, I thought, all right, I have a decision to make. Well, what’s the better story? Going is the better story. Going and being sick was a better story than staying. So, I went to the sinks and washed my face and took some deep breaths and went back to the gate. I was going.

Just before I boarded the plane (literally, I was two or three people from the door of the plane), airport security pushed their way through the line and stopped the man in front of me, pulling him out of the line and asking for his identification.

My immediate thought was: Oh, crap! A terrorist! I wasn’t supposed to go! I told myself I was being ridiculous, and boarded the plane. I sat down, started arranging my stuff, pulling out my sleep mask and earphones, getting a book within easy reach. Maybe he was a terrorist, but the security guys have him now, and he’s not on the plane. Well, then who walks right onto the plane and past me toward the back? I started texting Jesse, telling him how much I love him, just in case the plane is going to crash (I don’t mention the man in any of my texts). Then, they closed up the plane and we took off.

Well, you know the end of the story. We didn’t crash. I didn’t die. In fact, I was sick right up until we got into Congo, and the first day we were there I felt remarkably, unexplainably better. No need for the antibiotics. This is all the more amazing because of what happened on our flight to Ethiopia. See, we did have a sort-of terrorist on board, but it wasn’t the man.

It was a little girl, elementary-school-aged. Who screamed at the top of her lungs, for nearly fifteen hours straight. That sleep I wanted to get? The sleep I was sure would aid my recovery? Nope. Didn’t happen.

I could try and describe it, or I can just show you.

All I can do is tell you a story. It was a Wednesday and we spent the morning at the church, running the seminar, playing games and talking about Jesus, or trying to anyway—we were never really certain what our translators were saying for us. But that’s another story. That afternoon, we piled into the van and drove to a feeding center. The road wound around the edges of Lake Kivu, so impossibly big, so impossibly blue, and as the city blurred behind us we looked at the lake, and I thought about the methane building beneath the surface. If it ever escapes, like it did in a lake in Uganda, it could explode above the lake and spread across the city and kill a million people. I turned my head from the lake and watched banana trees and mountains speed past the other windows. So much beauty here. I almost asked, how can you stand it? How can you stand to live someplace so beautiful?

We pulled into a village and stopped and we hiked past all these little falling-apart houses, we walked along narrow mud pathways, and I cursed the fact that I was wearing a skirt, that blasted skirt, and I wished for my hiking boots, but then someone would pause and help me cross a difficult part. We had a little band of children in hot pursuit, we were stared at by adults and teenagers, by girls who spoke to one another about us, not bothering to whisper because they knew we didn’t understand them, but you could look at their faces and understand enough. You could understand whatever it was, it wasn’t all that nice.

We got to the feeding center, a little wooden church building, and waiting for us were a group of kids, all chosen for the program because they were in various states of malnourishment. They each held a plate, and at the front of the dirt-floored room was a table with three large buckets of food: one of rice, one of beans, and one of cabbage. It smelled good. We took their plates, one in each hand, walked to the food table, had the plates filled, and returned them to the children. And then we watched them eat. I don’t want to describe it, watching a starving kid eat, because it feels like a violation somehow, it feels too intimate. I felt almost embarrassed.

What happens, we asked Papa Jean, once the children are healthy enough to graduate from the program? They stay healthy for about two months, he said, and then they’re usually back. There was a little girl at one of the feeding centers whose parents refused to feed her because they thought she had an evil spirit. A kid like that, she’ll always be back.

Near the other feeding center, they’re finding parents in the village who won’t feed their kids because there’s a feeding center nearby to do it for them. And so there’s talk about shutting them down, the centers, because you can’t destroy a village like that, you have to think about fifty years from now, you can’t handicap these people with your attempts at generosity.

But, that girl whose family thinks is evil—what do you do about that?

How do you not feed a starving child? But how do you do it knowing you’re causing more harm than you are doing good? And is it good that you’re really doing? When they’re just going to be back in two months?

We went outside the feeding center and stared at the mountains. We could see the lake from a clearing, between grassy hills dotted with banana trees. There were clouds building over the lake, and we hurried away, knowing what the little mud path would become if it rained. My calves were burning by the time we got back to the van. My stomach ached, and I was trying to wrap my head around my own thoughts.

We drove toward Mudaka, the little village where last year we’d seen someone Bishop said looked like interahamwe. On the way, we turned off the road onto a gravel driveway next to a little thicket of bougainvillea, and Christie asked Bishop where we were going. I looked out the window and saw the trees, recognized the road, and my eyes lit up.

Bishop looked at my smile and said, “Do you know where we are?”

I said, “Yes, I think so. Are we at the nun’s place?”

He grinned.

“And ice cream?”

He laughed that quiet chuckle of his.

We all got out of the van and the sky was cloudy and the air was warm but not too hot and we ate ice cream out of Styrofoam cups, surrounded by gardens, by cacti and birds of paradise, in the hush of the convent, the peace an actual physical presence.

Then we piled back in the van and bumped over a torn-up road to a tiny one-room church. And later, as we left the church, the sun was setting and we were told that Fiston’s aunt had died and we drove back to Bukavu in near silence, Fiston nearly motionless in his bright yellow shirt, sitting in front of me like a tall skinny lantern, a faint glow as the lake darkened.

I was glad it was dark, so no one could see the tears in my eyes as I watched the lake again, as I watched the dark shapes of trees, as I thought about two months and the death of a mother’s sister and how the ice cream tasted so much better than it actually was because of the place where it was. How can you stand it, how can you stand it.

That’s why I haven’t found the words for Congo yet.