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.

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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!