Last night, we watched It Might Get Loud and I thought about art and what it means to struggle and then about important things like sentences and how pretty a black suit can be when set against a backdrop of grass so green it verges on neon. I thought about what it meant to play a guitar so hard your fingers bleed. I have finished (another) first draft of the book. I am taking a few weeks off, to give my brain a break, to try and get some distance, before jumping into heavy revisions.

Oliver has been impossibly cute these days. In the mornings, while Jesse showers I sit on our sink so we can chat before he rushes off to work. Oliver picked up on the pattern and now sits on my lap. Gracie sacks out on our bed (which is nice when I’ve already made it up, but poses a dilemma if I haven’t—do I move her to make it up? Oh, but she’s just so comfy!). I sit between our sinks, and Oliver sits on my lap, and Jesse showers, and we talk. The other day, I was getting ready to go somewhere and was putting on makeup while talking to Jesse. Oliver sat on the sink and meowed at me until I finished and sat down, at which point he quickly climbed into my lap and immediately began purring and licking his paws. He’s on my lap right now, as I type this. Making up for the fact that he was on the kitchen sink this morning, checking out the pan I’d left soaking from last night’s dinner, trying to see if he could find any morsels to supplement his diet-food breakfast.

I dreamed of Congo again last night. Jesse was there too, and we were eating Mama Lily’s cooking and I was showing him how to brush his teeth without using the tap water. Yesterday, I was thinking about electricity, how I have it whenever I want it, how it felt to sit around a living room with flashlights and candles, talking in the dark, about candlelit dinners that were born out of necessity rather than romanticism. Only ten percent of Congo’s population has access to electricity. That kind of blows my mind. And even the ones who do… Every day, we lost power at least once, and our compound had a generator. Bishop goes for days without power. He loves ice-cold soda. He apologizes to us when he has to serve it warm. Some days, it’s not war, it’s not rape, it’s just this—it’s just Bishop, looking embarrassed, handing his guests bottles of warm soda.

For days, I’ve been trying to write about Haiti, but it keeps coming out Congo. I have a friend who is tirelessly campaigning to get tents to Haiti, and she asked me to blog about it, and I’ve tried, I really have. I care about Haiti, and we’ve given money to relief efforts. But it’s not the same. Congo is more than a cause now. But what is it? I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I can’t write to you about Haiti right now, not with any real conviction or passion, you’d see right through me, you’d know my heart was saying Congo all that time, and while it makes me feel a little heartless, a little guilty, not to have enough room for both, what I really believe is that everyone has their Congo, whether they’ve found it yet or not, and we’ve all got to latch on and fight like mad to do something.

And there it is, the man who plays guitar until his fingers bleed, because he’s trying to say something. Something about life and about art, the way we couldn’t paint without dark colors, and there is a beauty about Bishop and his bottles of Coke and Sprite and Fanta that I will never find the words for. But I will not stop trying.

(If Haiti is your Congo, here’s one way to help: www.ahomeinhaiti.com. The rainy season starts soon.)

So, I didn’t give anything up for Lent. Or, I haven’t, or I’m not giving up anything for Lent. Is Lent still going on? When is it over? Is it over already? And why is it that everyone else seems to know exactly when Lent starts, what it’s about, and when it’s over—except for me? I know you give something up. And I know it should be something you like. For instance, I doubt it would count if I gave up, say, cleaning the bathrooms. I’m just guessing here. I mean, maybe that totally works, and in which case I might actually consider finding out what Lent’s all about. (No, I’m just kidding. That would be gross.)

I’m sure there’s a lovely, poetic, and deeply spiritual reason behind Lent. But, frankly, whenever I hear the word, the first thought that comes to mind is, the other day when I was cleaning the cat box outside (spring cleaning for the cats!), I noticed that some fuzz was coming out of the little vent that connects to our dryer, and I wondered if that was a fire hazard. I mean, really, I clean the lint trap with every load—why is it coming out the other end? Should I be worried? Wait, something about giving something up? Oh. Yeah. That.

And, you know, I go to church, my husband works for a church for crying out loud, I volunteer at church, I tithe. You’d expect I should know about Lent. Oooh, look! I defy expectations! Oh, wait, that’s only good when you exceed expectations isn’t it?

I thought tonight, maybe I should investigate this Lent business. Seems like a learning experience or something. Growth, right? But then, I thought, I’d have to give something up. And that’s the main problem I have with Lent. That, and no one ever told me the point. So, I give something up. Then what? I think everyone should give up some money for Lent. We could fix Haiti and save Congo and stop human trafficking. I don’t really care that so-and-so from Wichita is giving up chocolate. Who does that help exactly? Right—so-and-so from Wichita. Maybe Lent should be something we’re always doing. Shouldn’t we always be giving something up for the betterment of others? Maybe the problem is that we only think about sacrifice roughly once a year, and even then it doesn’t seem to produce anything worthwhile.

Okay, I’ve just angered most of my friends and a whole host of strangers. Who are all probably very sincere and fabulous in their observance of Lent. Reference previous statement about “lovely, poetic, and deeply spiritual.” My hat’s off to you. You’re all better people than I am, much more self-denying and monastic in a way I can only admire from a distance. I mean that. I’m much too lazy to go about investigating Lent in a meaningful way, and secretly I’m sure that I’m threatened by people who are able to give up something they love for any length of time. I once didn’t have ice cream for forty days, and I nearly died. True story. (Well.)  So, whenever Lent is over, you can go back to chocolate or cleaning bathrooms, and you’ll have gained something lovely, poetic, and deeply spiritual, and I’ll still be in the dark, a little bewildered and feeling like there’s a boat I’m missing. But, it’s all good. I’ve got chocolate-covered gummy bears to console me.

Today, I went to the doctor for malaria meds and to make sure I’m current on all my vaccines. Because I got about four million shots last year, I only had to get flu shots this year. My arms still feel tired and wimpy. Come on, arms, have you no memory? This was nothing!

I also snagged a prescription for Cipro but was warned that the drug can cause ruptured tendons and major birth defects. !!!! But there’s a possibility I might be allergic to the alternative drug. The frustrating thing is there’s no way to know until I take the medicine. My mom had a serious reaction to this drug—we’re talking an in-the-hospital, get-ready-to-meet-Jesus reaction—so I’m kind of petrified of trying it. Especially in the middle of Africa with questionable access to healthcare. But, ruptured tendons… Well, I’ve got a couple months to think it over.

Speaking of which, as far as I know the tickets have been purchased! We’re flying out of Raleigh at 6:15 the morning of May 18^th. That’s exactly three months from today. Which seems like a long time, but time has a way of passing quickly.

Right now, I’m taking a break from cleaning the floors, and I’ve got Congolese music blasting (it’s great cleaning music) in the living room. I’m enjoying the trip preparation more this time around, mostly because the element of surprise has been lessened. Because once the line has been crossed once, it feels easier to cross the second time. Well, having to get only two shots helps, too.

Tonight I watched Hotel Rwanda again while stuffing envelopes with support letters for the May Congo trip. On the letters are pictures—of Asha, of her baby Faida, of Bishop. Sometimes I feel such a weight, such a weight, like I came back from Congo a hundred pounds heavier. The knowledge of them and what they’ve lived through and what they’re still living through can be hard to carry around. I email Bishop and Fiston on a somewhat regular basis, telling them I’m coming back. Right now, I’m listening to a CD I bought in a Bukavu music shop, a tiny room whose walls were plastered with pictures of musicians, a black boom box with bad speakers belting out music in a language I couldn’t understand. The sounds of Bukavu—the music, always piped through bad speakers, unless played live; the lovely clinking of bottles as men carrying sodas in tin buckets on their heads advertised their goods by running metal bottle openers against the glass bottles. People, and cars, and chickens, and motorcycles.

I’d watched Hotel Rwanda before the trip last year, but this was the first time I’d seen it since. It was a shock in the beginning to realize I recognized things. I couldn’t pick out or label any building except the airport, but it was immediately familiar to me. When we landed in Kigali and drove out of the city and toward the border, it had seemed entirely and utterly foreign, as if I had walked off an airplane and onto another planet. But now, having seen parts of that city, having passed through those streets, the sights seem familiar. I wonder what it will feel like to be there again. To walk across that border.

Before I went to Congo last year, my parents worried over our itinerary, which had us spending the night in a Rwanda border town. They knew about the genocide—by now, pretty much everyone knows at least a little about the genocide. What many fewer people know is that when the architects of the genocide fled the country, they fled into Congo. Set up camp. Reorganized. There’s a line at the end of Hotel Rwanda, just before the credits roll, that references this, a line of text about Congo. When I saw that line, I thought, And so it begins. How strange to think as one story wraps up, another begins. Or maybe the story never ends, it just relocates.

But the funny thing is, for all my parents’ concern, Rwanda has done spectacularly well, all things considered. I’d vacation there. Lots of people do just that. You’d never guess something so ghastly could happen in a place so beautiful; that’s what was running through my head as we drove on fairly good roads from the capital to the border. The closer we got to Congo, though, the worse the roads became.

Rwanda gives me hope for Congo, to see how far a place can come, to see what odds can be surmounted. Maybe one day, we’ll see a movie about Congo, and we’ll say, can you believe that happened there? Can you believe the country was once in ruins? And that, I know, will be a wonderful day.

So, the Congo preparation has begun again. My visa application is filled out, and I’m already having quasi-nightmares. Last night, I was at the airport without the following items, which my brain deemed most important: a neck pillow, medicine, and an eye mask. Frantic, I called Jesse to have him bring the items in a backpack. I woke up, told my brain to stop dreaming about Congo. I told it: Stop dreaming about Congo. Then, I fell asleep and dreamed about Congo. The next dream, we were already there, but I was wearing PJs. Then, my travel mates and I sat around in a living room, and no one really spoke to me. They talked to each other, they asked me a question or two, but no one had an actual conversation with me.

Before I fall asleep each night, it seems my mind can do nothing other than think of all the things I have to do in the next few months. Make a doctor’s appointment to get malaria meds, extra prescriptions of antibiotics in case I get sick there, and any vaccines I’m not current on. Get passport photos for the visa application. Buy stuff—hand wipes, bug spray, protein bars. Somehow come up with an ungodly amount of money to pay for all this. (That would be where “support raising” comes in—something I fear I may be allergic to.)

We had our first team meeting last Sunday, and going into it I felt somewhat sick to my stomach. For every bit of excitement I have about going back, I have an equal amount of “Oh crap, what have I done?”

I remember the morning I walked across the Rwanda-Congo border, toward Bukavu. I could literally feel order and reason falling away, like skin shedding off a snake, revealing something bright and something sinister underneath. Congo was chaos, it was manic energy. As we stood outside a squat, yellow building while Bishop and Robin got our visas, we smelled urine and human sweat and something else, something fetid. The air was still and warm. A man hobbled down the street toward us, a growth under his face the size of a couple grapefruits, making him look like one of those caricatures of Jay Leno, an enormous chin, only this was decidedly not funny.

It’s those images that come to mind now, as I go to team meetings and listen as a group of college students say how excited they are to go. I’m on this team because I’ve been before, because they can look at me and say, see, you can go to Congo and be just fine, and because I can tell them to bring a bottle of Cipro and only eat raw vegetables that have thick skins. What I want to tell them is that being in Congo feels like spending two weeks inside a pressure cooker.

But in my dream last night, there was also the lake. The bougainvillea, the mist rising off the jungles, the banana trees, the avocados. There was seeing Fiston again (though my subconscious gave him a mustache—what’s up with that?), seeing Bishop and Mama Lily and everybody. I told the team I was going back for those people, to show them I had not forgotten, that I had not forgotten what I’d seen and heard, that I will never forget.

And so I will fill out the forms and I will send the letters and I will buy the stuff. And I will pack a suitcase and a backpack (hopefully forgetting nothing important). And I will spend two days straight in a series of airplanes. And I will pass the Rwandan hills and fields of tea and clusters of eucalyptus trees. And I will cross the border and feel Congo hit me like a closed fist, and I will hate it and I will love it.

So, if everything goes as planned (ha), I’ll be in Congo again in about five months. Tentative dates are for mid-to-late May…ish? Should know something more concrete soon, I hope. But at any rate, this time last year I had just signed on for the first trip, and I was scared stupid and trying to figure out how to tell my parents without worrying them too much. This time, I’m more excited than nervous, thinking about the people I’ll see again, the food I’ll eat, the air I’ll breathe. As I tried to go to sleep last night, I thought about the breakfasts we ate—the potato omelets, the rolls, the avocadoes, the lemongrass tea. I could practically taste it. I’m not looking forward so much to the preparation, the malaria meds, the hours upon hours in airplanes and airports. But, then there’s this:

And this:

And this:

Hello, Friday. My, what a week. Some actual work came in. I got up early. One day. Grew broccoli sprouts in my little sprout-container thing. Bought ribs buy-one-get-one-free at Harris Teeter. A million other things I’m forgetting. I am learning the joys of Pandora. And then there was the nearly three-hour meeting today about human trafficking in Wilmington. Oh, slavery. What a way to end the week.

I came home from the meeting and immediately took two Tylenol. (I always start with one to see if that does the trick, but not today. It was a straight-to-two kind of day.) Then, green tea. Then, The Daily Show because I needed to sprawl on the futon and chuckle a bit. Paid bills. Updated the budget. Continued to customize my “radio” stations on Pandora. Thought I’d spend the afternoon writing, but no way.

Tonight I’m doing Congo stuff. Shoot, on the same day as human trafficking? Seriously? I’m not sure where my involvement with either cause is going right now, but here I am attending meetings, talking about things like a gang in Wilmington—little old Wilmington—called the Murder Mamas, full of thirteen- to fifteen-year-old girls who to join the gang must have a baby and must kill someone. I am not making this up. Right now, I’d like to curse, and frankly I feel that might be wholly appropriate. And no, my children will not be attending public high school in Wilmington.

Okay, then. Now, I’ve got to get off the futon and eat something for dinner and go do the Congo thing. And then I’ll come home and relax and do the weekend thing. And then I’ll get up early next week, at least one day, and somehow, somehow I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to do, what my part is. All I need to do is my part. And keep stocked up on painkillers for the headaches along the way.