Kalemie

400 miles south of Bukavu, I jumped out of a little propeller plane at Kalemie airport. Vincent and I stretched our legs in the sun that shone bright in the evening over the endless Lake Tanganyika. All that pushing and shoving, frustration and dejection, hoping and doing, and there I was, rubbing my tired eyes on the threshold of my new home. Sometimes you get to be somewhere, and you can't remember how you got there or what made you so sure about leaving.

Keith and I are sharing a room and silence, except for the sound of “Hear Me Out” by Frou Frou. It's pleasantly bare, the concrete floor letting chair legs and the soles of shoes prop, visibly cockeyed, from equilibrium, whereas a fluffy carpet might disguise the shadow beneath a deck shoe or the small, dark space between a chair leg and the floor. I like to look over at the stack of books on my new desk, balanced precariously against the creme-washed wall.

We live with a South African family, here. Dudley and his wife, Grace, their daughter Dawn and son David. Also Jean, the provincial director, lives here. The power had just returned after a week of darkness when I arrived, this evening. With it came a weak but encouraging trickle of water. We dined on luxuriously soft bread rolls and a Lazy-Susan-full of Nutella, strawberry, raspberry, and plum jam, and tuna. I became acquainted with two dogs, a cat, and a parrot.

I am writing this on the night of my arrival in Kalemie, but since we don't have internet access at the house, I won't be posting this until tomorrow morning at the office.

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It's Friday morning and I'm at the office. Just finished with the morning commune, and I have been welcomed warmly by just about everyone here. Right now there isn't a wireless connection here, either.

I was telling Keith on our way to the office that I really liked the environment here. Things seem simpler and less obtrusive in Kalemie than they did in Bukavu. The dirt is less red from all the sand that's mixed with it, and the lake isn't broken up by peninsulas and stopped short before the horizon like it was in Bukavu. It pushes far out like an ocean, and when I look across I think of it as saltwater. We don't weave ten minutes through traffic mayhem in a brutal-white Land Cruiser to go to the office. We just walk five minutes through the sand and a small grove of trees and across a solitary pair of train tracks.

When I woke this morning, a cup was drifting noiselessly on top the water in a bucket in the shower-room. I liked washing with a cup. When rinsing shampoo out of your hair with a cup, you don't need to close your eyes. The steely shower-head's relentless spray would scatter foam into your eyes and all over. But the cup is much more precise and gentle.