Indiana Jones And The Question Of The Golden Barometer

He brought the woolen bundle from his pack, now hanging limp from his shoulder. The tube sock slid away from the bulbous thing, and a seamless, glass droplet about the size of a healthy cantaloupe sat in his careful hands. Inside of its transparent husk, a golden liquid sloshed bits of black fiber.

"What is this?" I said. Was he actually trying to sell me this urine-filled bookend?

Prosper told me that the man had come to find out whether I knew what the thing was. That he had discovered it, mining for gold, fifteen meters under ground.

"Well..." I turned the orb over curiously in my hands. "No, I don't know what this is." I found it funny that this man, whom I'd never met, had come from who-knows-where to knock on the FH office gate, hoping to find me and seek a white man's expertise on this alien artifact. "I hope it's not a--", I made an explosive noise and threw my hands into a mushroom cloud, "bomb."

"No. No. Hehe."

"There are liquid explosives, like nitroglycerin." I assured them. My Indiana Jones image was fading in the miner's eyes.

"When the power's back, we can research it on the internet." I said, and Prosper smiled and offered to help. We were planning on doing some computer tutorial with my laptop, anyway.

Now-- in the breathless window before a major archeological discovery-- I am writing to you all. Because it's been a long time. The office has been emptied out for the holiday break (and still is empty and inactive, for the most part) and there's been issues with electricity. So seasonal dormancy and power-outage have been my main obstacles to overcome in updating the blog. I feel we should get another one in before the New Year, though.

Hopefully this here-and-there recollection of the pastwhile won't be completely disorienting. Let's start with Christmas (kind of skips a bunch, but I don't really remember much of what happened before then).

Christmas Eve, I'm alone and feeling very soar in a twisted sort of way. I'd started a morning karate routine, a couple of days before, and was feeling the pain. Most of what I remember about that day, was just feeling sick. I ate rice and spoiled beans for dinner and suffered the consequences that night. I thought it was a resurgence of malaria and was imagining my Christmas in the UN mobile hospital. But it went away.

Christmas Morning was my family's Christmas Eve and we communed through Skype video, and spent a wonderful time together. I watched them open up all of their gifts, just like I was at home. They were all wearing sweaters and there was a Christmas tree behind them, and it was odd to be so far away and sweating on their wintery night.

After a long nap that docked me dreamily into the dusty afternoon, I arose and dressed and walked out the front gate. The town was sedate; shops were emptied into churches and padlocked bars took the place of chaotic storefronts. Walking the quieted main stretch was peaceful and I perused the few open shops and stands, looking for my seasonal ingredients. Bread and eggs for French toast and Ceres fruit juice, because it's absolutely wonderful. I found everything but the eggs, without a hitch. Though, I suppose my shopping list was small enough to amplify even the slightest mishap into a relatively-large problem. The eggs eluded me. I went by mototaxi to the nearest-by market and found nothing. Resolute in the sanctified image of my idyllic Kalemie Christmas Dinner, I was ready to pay whatever price to find those precious eggs.

David and I toured the entire Kalemie market fair; five different locations that spanned almost the whole of the city's breadth (Which is quite small). It seemed that all of the hens had taken the day off, just like everyone else. Nevertheless, it was great to see some parts of town that I hadn't been to before and meet various interesting people; so while I was displeased by my egg-situation, I was still happy as we puttered over the river-bridge to our last stop-- my last hope for French toast.

Three, nearly unblemished, rose-coloured eggs reclined atop a hill of white rice. I looked at them serenely and the smell of rotten fluids and raw meats and newborn insects gave way to pure contentedness. David plucked each one and held it to his ear. After he didn't find a heartbeat, I payed my due and we went on our merry way. Thus ended my Christmas Egg Hunt.

I made excellent French toast that, refreshingly, didn't make me sick. I dipped it in sugar and watched Forrest Gump while the sun went down and the house grew dark. "Mama used to say that death is a part of life. But, I wish it wasn't." Forrest said.

Here are some photos I've taken, recently. The first ones are from a little while ago, taken at sunrise at the stadium field and lake shore. The ones of me wearing a Muslim man-dress are from today. I breezed through a mention of karate, earlier. To shed a bit more light: Sensei Sable and I meet every morning and he works me out real hard and teaches me punches, blocks, and kicks, and their names in Chinese. Yesterday he gave me a pair of poofy pants like he wears with his kimono. We practice on the landing of the stadium stairs, pictured below.

Not mentioned are the new friends that I made and spent time with, the French tutor that I hired and fired, and other miscellaneous happenings that composed my last couple weeks. Those will have to be left for another time or just lost in sweet, vague reminiscence, because I don't see how they will fit in here-- or how I could possibly hold your attention any longer.

(stadium)

subtle Nazi motif

Well, the mysterious orb is still unclassified. Which means there is still a matter of possible extraterrestrial knowledge and/or fame and fortune at hand. I'll let you know if it starts to glow or grant me wishes. Happy New Year, loved ones!

"I was wack!"

The Gerasene Girl

The murky, wine-colored rags swayed below her knees, and she danced out barefoot from a muddy side street. Converging on me aggressively, her palm was thrust out and she begged for money and groped her empty stomach. "I'm sorry, I can't give money to everyone who asks. Many people ask me for money, everyday. I'm sorry."

She leaned into me and took my hand and repeated her plea. Her rough fingers manipulated mine and crushed them and caressed them all at once. She pulled my hand into her chest; and when I resisted, she seized me with a desperate strength. The look in her eyes was strange and fiercely adamant. "Are you going to walk with me until I give the money?" I chuckled. Her breath was smoky and fermented, and it surrounded me.

We rushed on through the busy street, and though I had picked the direction, she seemed to be steering our feet. Faces laughed at the odd couple holding hands, maneuvering puddles and jumping sewers. Arriving at the storefront where I had business, I stopped and she clung to me violently. I laughed.

"OK! I will give you the money!", and I took a 500 frank note out from my bag.

Her arms opened in the air, and she looked at me with adoration and embraced me. I put my arms around her and felt her face move from my shoulder and smudge into my neck. I would let her kiss my cheek; but her lips came quickly to my mouth and I laughed and struggled. I tried to disengage politely, but her arms were wrapped around the back of my neck. She pressed her lips frantically into my teeth and around my mouth as I smiled and pulled away. My hands worked the knot of her arms loose and I stepped back. She caught hold of my left arm and kissed every bit of it that she could before I pulled it away.

"OK." I said a bit sternly. "Goodbye!"

Old men passing the afternoon in chairs under the shop's awning grinned at me and laughed to one another. They had watched it all and told me that the girl was deranged. "She is deranged?" I asked, reviving my senses. The old Arabian men nodded again, and I went in to buy a can of powdered milk.

Honey In My Tea

I was dropped off in a deserted Eden; the Tanganyika School stood like a grazing goat in the golden haze, and I walked up to it silently. Classroom windows passed, one by one, and all of the desks sat unattended in the daylit rooms. I was breathing in the grainy film that washed the late morning and reveled in my singularity, my insignificance in the belly of this deep Cauldron World. Mystery was in the air.

Unsurprised by the miss-communication, I smiled and loitered about a ragged and rich-green field. A few little girls skipped (The way that girls whisper and giggle to one another creates the illusion of skipping) out from behind the building and I asked them where everyone was. No school, today. A huge smile emerged from the weeds at the far-end of the yard. "Hello, sir!"

Paul was a university student and teacher. We spoke hurriedly and excitedly, walking back into the tobacco tunnel and the stirring village. I love it when a person asks me for something other than money, here. He wanted help with his English and already had a curriculum going at university. We did the contact-swap and split into different directions along the main road.

I decided that, during this upcoming break for Noel, I must conduct a photo tour of the Kalemie town and village sights. Smuggling a camera past the Magistrate would be well-worth the documentation of this anaconda-vine, whistling palm, gutter-rivers scene. Paint the scene:

Sunday. 8:30 at his contraband stand. Willy and I went to church. The "tabernacle", it seems, of William Marrion Branham the Kentucky Spirit Of The Lord Incarnate. So, I cursed my way through four hours of weeping and whooping in the Branhamist cult. One large character who looked like a World Leader boomed and stammered theatrically from his Branham sermon texts. His eyes stayed forcefully shut the whole time, except for when his head reared back and you could see the whites through accidental slits. He yelled in Swahili and his companion yelled in French and then they switched places, and a holy-drunkard from the back affirmed "Très bien! Très bien!". Three kids thumped on steel barrels wrapped in animal skin, and Xena the Warrior Princess, sitting in the woman-section of the encampment, kept up a skilled yodel for most of the time.

The message trampled my attention span within the first few minutes and, from then on, every sound was a unique pitch reaching my heartbeat through my ears. Whining and groaning, and faces squealed irritatingly as they contorted. Branham's head hung next to Jesus' at the centershrine, just behind the pulpit. Childish wonder was on every face, involuntary smiles breaking out as they heard The Word.

A baby was dedicated (and not sacrificed, to my relief) towards the end, and an engagement was announced. The couple came to the front and were nudged shyly together by the Big Stammering Papa. Everyone was laughing joyously and one woman went so far as to dance, twisting in between the two, and scattered her blessing around with a handkerchief. The boy and the girl were the only ones not smiling; each seemed to be either on the brink of a smile or tears. The young man was more convincingly pleased, and I remembered him from a soccer game one morning at the Stadium. The girl was really pretty.

When I emerged into the sun, I felt like I was exiting a koo-koo dream. But its little fingers held on to me for a while, and I felt odd.

What The Town Does To You:

It collapses on you, while you walk; grows around you as you fall through it. Each dirty wrapper and torn grease cloth lands in oily mud, like a dove descending from the Divine Hand. If you stand still in the town, you have to keep your head down to stay upright. Everything moving on a different axis. You're surprised when a mat of silver minnows, drying in the sun, ends up to be odorless. At other times, you smell the fish like its dying breath was gasped inside of your own nostrils; but where is the fish? Walking the main drag is like using a bulldozer to undermine a labyrinth. You cut through disturbed intersections and happen upon the ancient rituals: the Oxmen, heaving giant barrows of beer bottles through the street, the Motomen revving their engines and smoking cigarettes, the legless and distorted who move in new, acrobatic motions, and the mango-pits that dot the ground, black fly clouds expanding and contracting around them.

----

The rain has been falling for at least three hours, and had me locked up in the house until a car stopped by to pick me up. Everyone outside is shin-deep in mud.

Thank you for encouraging me! Your comments and e-mails are so wonderful, and just the fact that you are reading means so much to me. I love you all!

"Ah, this is a hard time-- this is a difficulty", and I tried to make sense of it and remember that energy I had possessed just an hour ago. Walking fast out through the Kifungo gates, bobbing up and down in a fluid stride, deafening the voices and faces of tiny students clad in blazing white tee-shirts. I didn't look at their faces and mumbled back at their Jambo's and Good Morning's, just wading through them all like a flock of domesticated doves, unfazed by my stomping feet in the dirt. So, the first class had been a disappointment. In fact, I was utterly discouraged and dejected to the point of implosion.

That morning, I had walked through a gray drizzle, leather agenda shoved officially under one arm, to inquire once more about the missing Madame Agnes. The English teacher was still sick, they told me. So I asked if I might start without her, and it was quickly agreed upon. Although there was a 6th level class scheduled in an hour, I said that there wasn't enough time for me to prepare and that I would come back tomorrow for the 5th level.
On my way back to the office, I tantilized myself with the possibility of simply jumping headlong into the experience and running back for that class in an hour.

Teetering in the office, there were 5 minutes before the class would start. I scooped my computer and little book into my backpack and set out, nervously, for the school once again. The principal escorted me to the correct alcove in the concrete compound and left me standing in front of twenty grinning faces-- faces that, for the most part, were older than mine. "D-o y-o-u r-e-m-e-m-b-e-r m-e?" I ask, like they were all retarded. A resounding "YES!" boomed back at me. Well, I'd committed myself for sure. This claustrophobic cell would be my prison for the next hour. An hour of people expecting me to have all the answers, and an hour of doubt when everyone found out how old I was, and how poor my French was. And, of course, the chalk broke on the black-washed, bumpy wall when I tried to write my name.

Well, the meat of the lesson was to be an excerpt from The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". I had taken my laptop along to play the song for them, which turned out to be insufficiently loud in the din of high-school chatter, and the song well-beyond the students' comprehension level. I had overestimated their competency, by far. I hadn't translated the lyrics into French, or even come ready with any of the new vocabulary written in French. I had meant to enter into a semi-meaningful discussion, based largely on class participation and original thought, etc.. The class was, instead, focused on how exactly a guitar might weep and what the word "surely" meant, and whether or not I would marry a black woman. It ended with my conceding to a request for Bob Marley. "Get Up, Stand Up" moused out of my tiny laptop speakers while a real teacher sauntered in routinely and expertly began scrawling on the blackboard. I'm not sure if he noticed me. I said "G-o-o-d-b-y-e !" and was sent off with that same, unshaken enthusiasm. Despite their perpetual cheeriness, I was in a sweaty, confounded pit of despair and shut the computer's lid bitterly. Drudging into the schoolyard, I felt like Ms. Shirley in Anne Of Green Gables on her first time teaching at that wicked all-girls school. How could I have presumed to be at all qualified to teach? I wanted to cry.

My throat hurt and I was tired from going to bed real late and waking up at 5:30 to play soccer at the stadium. I staggered home to my bed in a self-disgusted stupor, nodded off miserably into a twenty-minute nap, and dreamed about how long these next three months would be. I wanted to get out of this place, get out of this skin. The switch from Western to Congolese cuisine, effective that afternoon, wasn't the comfort that I was looking for. Green heaps of lenga-lenga heaped up on my plate and the fufu tasted exactly like Africa. Burning my mouth on chunks of fufu sopped in hot, bright beef juices, I bore down on my plate in disgust. It wasn't the taste. It was this culture, this commitment-- the bizarre, ragged bear trap that clenched my feet in its rusty teeth, and held me in a place where I didn't belong.

When I was received at Tanganyika School an hour later by Mr. John under the white sun, I looked down at my red forearms and grimaced. He reproached me for forgetting the song-lyrics he had personally requested, and I reproached him for telling me to come a half-hour early. His giddiness and closeness kept on, though, and I wasn't amused.

I was counting on a smile to hide my weariness from these kids, and it reappeared instinctively as I stood in front of the fifty of them, all attentive and stuffed together.


Everyone was loving me, all at once. Every face sincerely in awe of who and what I could possibly be. Thank God they were clueless as to what I had been thinking about them all day, how much I had loathed them and myself-- flipped horribly inward, my soul like a black pinhole. And they never stopped smiling and neither did I, and everything went smoothly. Oddities that were bound to happen with me were simply laughed off and they loved me all the more for my silliness. I had, in that short break in my schedule, gathered a little more material, based on what I had learned during my first experience. I had all of the french translations that they asked for, and my hand became gradually less clumsy with its chalk on the blackboard. I called on students when they raised their hands, they stood up to attempt reading example sentences that I'd written, and they completed and turned in the assignment that I gave them.

One student had a camera and wanted to snap a shot of Mr. John and me in front of the blackboard. Then, lining up one after the other, students began paying the guy money to get their pictures taken with me. All with whimpering solemn lips, stepping up next to the Mzungu Teacher. Flash after flash of reasons to stay-- reasons to enter, once again, into this mad Congolese Carnival that cracks me like a whip at strangers and into wild adventures.

My throat was the only part of me that still hurt as I stowed away from the happy school, accompanied by John, discussing witchcraft and cannibalism. Whatever was meant to be accomplished wasn't done yet. That was clear, and I knew that there was much more, ahead.

Essence

Inside a quiet holding cell. The mind is a deep burrow away from chaos, traveling far to cancel the outer- noise. As I walk, various peculiar things slide by, like drops of water rolling off of a zooming windshield. Conscience of the assaulting colours and many patterns, we may catch only their trails-- the remnant of our surroundings.

Oddities of life and business have corralled me inside of myself for as long as I can remember. Emerging from the gray-matter/mire can conjure a rude awakening, and I often completely avoid it. But the contact with World is needed. Outside, in the world, we gather our precious bits and swim back into our burrows.

Examination. Excruciatingly-thourough examination. Then, maybe we learn something.

Kostas and I are chatting now, and he asked me, "Do you feel that it [my experience, here] is meaningful?". Recently, I watched the twisted film Perfume. Subsequently, I learned a bit about the perfume-making process. Kind of like a deep episode of "How It's Made" on the Discovery Channel.

The essential scent of an organism is captured through a tedious, bizarrely-massive mechanism of stirring and boiling in cauldrons and sweating ardor (at least, it was in 18th century France). Animal fat is used to capture the scents of fruits, herbs, etc. and is then pressured until the desired essential oil drips from a tap.

Thousands of roses are gathered in order to obtain just

one

drop

of their "essence". In fact, around 60,000 roses produce only one ounce of oil.

I do feel cocooned now, even when so many strange things are happening around me. Even when I, myself, am doing these things-- having these new experiences.

A speck gleams and I grab it, and I'll stare at it for days, months, years. Until I know it and, then. Then, it is mine. It doesn't return to where it came from, because I don't discard it. I didn't use it; I slowly possessed it. The world quickly filled in the microscopic blank like liquid, after I snatched the thing so long ago. It doesn't exist Out There, anymore.

To answer Kostas's question, and to answer the same question that others have asked and will continue to ask me:

Yes!

Noel

Nothing in its entirety-- throughout all of its extremities-- is ever true. At the end of the world, at the end of the day, no one was completely right. Neither were their philosophies or their perceptions of the "original truth" left-over from yesterday/the beginning of time. Flashing minnows nibbling at bits of golden droppings from the firmament. Back and forth between scraps of light, hoping that one day-- at the end of our existence, in the soft, apocalypse-black of closing eyes-- the lights we've gathered will shine bright like a planet puking its molten lungs out. Maybe that's why the theory of a bloody, explosive End Time is so intriguing. We want our lives to culminate, to solidify into something tangible-- if only for one, chaotic instant. Everybody wants to stop and realize something at the same time.

I think I'll go to Uganda for Christmas, fly into Kampala and hang around the business-center streets for a couple of days. I've been informed of a Dominoes pizza, there. Then, I could drive up to Jinja and explore the source of the Nile and go rafting. Or I could travel South to Kabale and hike in Africa's highest mountain range, and stay in a chilly cottage for New Year's.

I don't want to hear anything about the intrinsic falsities of that first statement. This is a blog. Anything with a name like "Blog" is predestined to be foolish. I sound so bitter. I'm a little boy and I'm bitter. Such a pity-- youth and vigor being squandered in nervousness and serpentine patterns in thought. I have a dream to be completely impulsive and magnificently strong, to live as the decision made after wisdom is sought. To be that final effort, energy, the last burst of resolve that makes ideas real.

Keith left today, for good. The second stretch of Congo might get a little lonely. I will be very busy I think, by the time I leave in Feb. All of yesterday, I spent with the teachers and students at Tanganyika School and set appointments to begin teaching there, next week. As soon as Madame Agnes is back in school (she's been suffering through malaria), I will begin teaching at the Kifungo Institute, as well. Jeane told me today that I "will be very busy soon" at the office; with what, he didn't say. I've also begun doing some writing for the FH Congo blog. Hey, the generator's running! Now, I can actually post this.

----------------
Now playing: Ry Cooder - La Bayamesa

Welcome To December!

I was in December before all of you, so I feel like I have the right to welcome you into it. I'm collecting Christmas songs with their guitar chords off of the internet, right now. Here's a depressing short poem about being alone on Christmas. "No man is an island." I don't know who first said/sung that phrase, but I remember it from the movie About A Boy, which I love.

The mud didn't crunch like snow under-foot,
Flies didn't melt like ice on my tongue,
They just whirred around, mating,
Like the universe was done.

On Christmas in Kalemie, the coal train still runs.
Mamas at the tracks still nursing their young;
Goats naying jolly cries under the night,
Bodies in darkness are tucked out of sight.

The moon shines a preying glare
On the grand multitude of naysayers,
Who creep round the Earth, under cold street-lamp lights
And sleep alone, in the Holy Night.

Hey, I need some comments, readers! Are you out there? I'm like Santa Clause's sled, which can only run if there's sufficient Christmas spirit (if you've seen Elf), or like a battery-operated boombox-- that's out of batteries. You are my spirit and my batteries. There have been like five posts without a single word from you guys. Only echoes of my own absurdities coming back to me from the Digital Void. Disagree with me! Critique me! Encourage/discourage me! Say hello! Maybe the blog has been too unpredictable and too infrequent. Maybe there have been too many casualties along the way, and now it's just me and this keyboard.

That lonely poem followed by the cry for contact was merely coincedence. I'm not suffering, here, beyond anything usual. Just wanting to know that I'm communicating with people, I guess. Also, if you're reading this blog and have gone, thus far, unannounced-- don't be bashful. Let me know you've stopped by. I would love to know who all is reading.

I finally made tortillas last night, and they were pretty good. We watched The Count Of Monte Cristo and I admitted to Keith that I don't know how to eat Skittles in moderation.

Liam called me, out of the blue, this morning! Thanks for making my day special, man!

Thanks for reading!

If you have questions, e-mail me at nathandbrien@gmail.com.