I want to paint the wriggling shards of light coming through this thatch encampment. My favorite ones-- there on the right, with the acute bulemiea, off to the left entrance, sawed off at the torso, and a few of the tiny diamonds-- all positioned like stained glass, interlocked or precariously dismembered, dancing the tango and the night-away.

And the rain sinks in, like it always does if you listen to it long enough. Thank you, Mr. Hire, for the books you sent with me. All of them have changed me in unique ways. I still have Catch 22 and the second half of On The Road to go. I found an ornate book of Edgar Allen Poe's collection of short stories and poems in a box at our house.


This beer tastes like Kung Pao.

Pictured here, is a small collage of the light forms I spoke of before, scattering beams, and our house-cat falling amongst them. We hate that cat.


Hundreds of black centipedes writhe in the rain, unfurling their shiny armor and maybe dying-- I don't know what they're doing. Sometimes, there are thousands of them on the beach.

Man, I love to dance. I'm chair-dancing now to the Killer's new album. Sometimes, we seem absurdly enslaved in our bodies. Dancing is defiance- uncouth expression of disregard for the laws of muscle and tissue and opinion.


Keith and I commenced to walk home in the drizzle. A girl punched me in the arm as she passed us on the road. Keith waved down a van, and we road it to the center of town and, from there, took a couple motos to "Dr. Franks", a place where we like to eat.

(Writtent Yesterday)

Now playing: The Killers - I Can't Stay

Thanksgiving

Keith, Jeane, and I shared a Thanksgiving feast-extraordinaire. Complete with french toast, tortillas, fried bananas, mashed bananas, and syrup and jelly on everything. A very pukeable meal, I'm sure you'll agree. Immense sweetness-- I was full, fast.


While we ate, we all shared what we're thankful for. Here are some of the things I'm thankful for: The most loving family that I know of in existence. We've had rough patches, but the sweet relationships I share with my Dad, Mom, and Emily promise a truly beautiful future that I am eager to discover. A God who gives me the energy to live meaningfully, and who seems to have a grand design for my life. I'm thankful that Keith is here with me in Kalemie-- that I can have a friend who's a great listener and gives sound advice. I'm thankful for all my friends and family who are constantly supporting me and my Congo adventure.

Before I went to bed, my whole family called from their Thanksgiving get-together and we got to talk for a while. That was wonderful-- thank you, guys! I love you!

Written yesterday:

My tongue tasted like I had a cold bullet in my mouth and I was starting to feel dizzy, so I left work early yesterday. I woke up on my bed five hours later; it was dark, and I had been having a dream about an old friend. The door whined an alarm, as I slapped out into the cement corridor wearing my shorts. Some guys were sitting around on the sofa and chairs, watching TV. I laughed. It was 9 o'clock. "Well," I thought "I'll go find out about Sarah." She was the girl in my dream. So, I grabbed my backpack and picked my way across the muddy train tracks to the office, by cell-phone-light, to use the internet.

I skyped with my family, I did push-up's on the tables, I wore my wife-beater, wrapped around my head, I danced barefoot to my shuffling music library, I looked at pictures of food. Everything but connect with this girl. It was a hoot.

While the black sky was getting blue, I bid the guard adieu at four in the morning. Back to bed, I slept another two hours and was wide-awake.

Practically skipping, I entered the front room and ate a bowl of mangoes and papaya. I'd been so frantically busy doing who-knows-what (I mean really, I was busy doing nothing) the last few days, and I had the momentum in me. Lunging one way and ready to dive into a million scattered directions, my feet making brush strokes on the ground all-along. If I had a goal, I chased it and looked like I was chasing it. If I found some new route, I would march toward it like it was my destiny.

There wasn't any power at the office, so I trotted out along the main road into the market to find some items for a little Thanksgiving Bash Keith and I were planning. I walked so quickly and with such determination that I forgot all about buying doughnuts and brandy, and reveled in the possibility of my destination. I walked far out past the shops and the cops and the bridge, and the lancing cobalt steeple of the Catholic church, and the road ascended a hill before the docks. Standing at the crest, the fellow who'd joined me said to turn back at the yellow guards and roadblock-- so I did. And veered off toward the Tanganyika beach.

A stony path dropped into the fishing village below, and I buzzed down it like I was being chased, overtaking everyone on my path. That's the way it was all day-- overtaking everyone, going faster than everyone and talking to everyone. I slowed my pace a bit when I landed in the criss-cross dirt, sticks, pink-flowered shade, naked kids, sneezing goats, and excrement that was the village. I didn't want to seem too over-eager or pretentious walking through these peoples' yards and waving at their kids, so I eased up and soaked in some friendly faces on my way, smiling all the while.

And then I was on the beach; hot sand scooped into my sandals and the lake breeze cooled the sweat on my face. The frenzy of activity! Canoes shoving out, some out on the horizon already, some returning with bloated nets; and some were beached, like wooden whales, on the sand. Hundreds of people dotted the shore: women gathering tiny, silver fish in heaps onto platters and canvas; men tugging moorlines and heaving their boats out from the water, or bent over mumbling in the white sun. I threaded between them all, stopping and chatting with many and greeting what seemed like the majority of the crowd! Ha! These people are wonderful; I must have spoken with a hundred different people, today!

On my way across the sand, I met a student name Frank. He showed me the way out of that madness and towards the main road, and we talked about his predicament. He lives with his grandfather who's too old to work, and couldn't find a job because there's no work for young people in this place and really barely any for the older men, either. He can't pay the two or three month tuition for school. So I said "Where's the school? I'll pay for you."

We crossed that main road and sped off into another unknown, this one more-heavily forested. The things that grow here! Everything has spectacular flowers on it-- the most foreign plant forms sprout in hordes like weeds! Soon, we were walking through more villages and past more silly, absolutely wonderful kids and staring old men and chattering women and students in their uniform white-and-blue. And it was really hot. The leaves grew thicker and crept closer on either side of us and huddled over us, like a secret Eden passage. And then, Zam! We're walking the precipice of a steep, green valley and the dirt path led on...

The school looked really nice. The building was painted white like the kids' shirts. I met the principal and we followed him into his office where the payment took place. We wound up talking about my plans at the Kifungo Institute near the FH office, and they said that I "must teach here, too!" Once a week. And, thrilled, I agreed.

And back before lunch. Which I'm about to eat now -- potatoes and fish, so if you'll excuse me.

I have malaria; but I'm feeling perfectly fine, now, after treatment at the UN military hospital. This is a little excerpt from a message I wrote to my friend last night:

I thought, this afternoon sitting outside the mobile clinic after a rainstorm, that I might be realizing something very important. That I can be happy, because I have a great ability to make happiness-- out of nothing! That indeed, for a very long time, I have cursed the fact that happiness--joy--might come too easily. I began jabbering away to myself, aloud, not really caring if anyone heard. I said what ever came to mind: I swore profusely! I laughed! I pretended to be other people, trying out different accents. I thought, "Sparking laughter and conversation or meaningful contemplation is positively natural, and should be practiced uninhibitedly with others!" I can clench this present time in my teeth and wag my head like a wild, mad beast. I will have controlled time. And for a while today, I did that. And I think that I can do it, again.

What roaring fires we can build! Gathered together as kindling, breaking our laughter and words into smoldering bits over our home-made furnace! Create. Create. Create.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
-Jack Kerouac, On The Road


I have lots of ideas for my involvement with the English students here, but as nothing has really happened yet, I will save that topic for later.

Back To School

~Written yesterday~

This morning, I sat in on Madame Agnes's English classes at the "Kifungo Institute" secondary school. The compound of concrete classroom facilities reminded me of an empty aquarium exhibit. Open air where the glass used to be... And people instead of fish -- although once I thought that I felt a jellyfish tickle the top of my ear with a fizzling confetti-leg. I tensed up and pursed my lips -- It was probably just a fly.In a beige deck chair squeezed into the back corner of the room by the doorway, I sat surrounded by sixty students in her first class. This room, maybe the size of a big shipping container, was packed -- everyone sitting, shoulder to shoulder, on tiny stools that would probably be better used for milking cows. It was, for the post part, a typical high school classroom scene that took place. A lot of giggling, a few know-it-alls, some note-passing, and a stern reprimand every now and then. I kept quiet in the back and jotted down some ideas for possible activities and lesson plans. The first class, which lasted for about an hour and a half I think, was one of Madame's more advanced. At the end, I was given the chance to introduce myself and to answer any questions that the students had. Everyone is excited to have a native speaker here to teach English -- a very rare opportunity in Kalemie.

All of this, so far, has been written during the break in Madame's schedule. She is sitting next to me, correcting last period's work in the students' copy books. We've had time to talk a little today, about ourselves and about the possibilities of my work here. I think that I will probably go to her lessons (based on the scheduling of different-level classes) two or three times per week. I'd also like to provide some occasions, perhaps twice a week, when students can meet and converse privately with me. There are so many unknowns, though, so all of this is very tentative.

Now, I will wait for the whistle to blow here in the "Teacher's Lounge" with Madame Agnes and her stack of copy books covered with newspaper.

I just returned from a meeting with some teachers at the nearby secondary school (high school). Tomorrow morning, at 7:20, I'll begin helping the English teacher there with her classes. Just a little update. I'll let you know how it goes.

What's A Dad Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

Defiantly, I have smirked at the citing of a greater power, I have cursed God's name as it echoes off the walls of my room, I have stolidly folded my arms in braced-protest, and shaking, I have uttered foolish words of "prayer" when trapped by the Circle Of The Brethren. And I have a fear of the Church Of Christ, because when its shadow falls over my face, I am hidden and caught in a swill of hypnotic warmth, and I am in the once-familiar building. And in my mind, I have said "I don't know what will become of me; I just hope I don't end up a Christian". Yet, here I am, bare in the open Hand of the Gospel that stretches to these forgotten places on Earth, intrinsically fashioned to fit the part. I am a rogue palm line, wriggled free and wandering a maze of fleshy valleys. Shirking the stigma of Christ, I groan towards the Voice I heard. And I will find Christ after-all, it seems -- not on my terms, nor on the terms of others, but on a route truly designed and always foreseen.

My solidarity was broken this week when my Dad and I met in Bukavu. He had been away on business in Nairobi, and also had a few matters to address with FH Congo. So, seemingly by magic, we were reunited at the Kamembe Airport in Rwanda. I saw my Dad standing under the Arrivals archway, and he was all the sudden in Africa with me, in my life. The foreigner I'd become to myself, the runaway thoughts, the French-- he walked suddenly into all of it, like a picture of home pasted conspicuously onto my view. I won't attempt to re-cap the three short days we shared. I want to say though, that my Dad has a certain ability, whether conscious or not, of opening my ears to a quiet truth that never stops its sound in my life, but is often smothered under sediments of other noises.

Catching my breath, after screaming my raging lungs out at religion, at the nonsense I swallowed, at the imprisoned proles of the Corporate Church and the drunken tide dragging the world away from passion, I hear the still small voice. And my red face, hot from hatred, pales and is sedated; my eyes redden and my own voice is much softer than before. And my speech is slow, because I don't know what I want to say-- but somehow I know what to do.

There are many things coming up for me here in Kalemie. And many new things have began. My time away from this public communication has not been accidental or thoughtless; it has been a form of avoidance and of guilty silence (I find that a lot of things in my life are inspired by guilt). I am not saying this because I feel that I owe anyone a formal apology (I'm sure that everyone's gotten a long just fine without new posts on "DRC News"), but because it feels good to admit my stubbornness and even falseness. I think that there will be things to write about in the upcoming months and that I will want to write about them. So, to those of you who actually checked this site again (and to those who get an automatic update), thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to telling you more.