I think we all agree that being here is like being at summer camp for the boys. One of Mohamed’s friends is just as eager to get out and play as Mohamed is. His dad tells me he is often ready at 7:00 to go jetting off to gather the gang. He laughs as he tells me that he held him back for a half hour and then let him go.
Sometimes we will be having our breakfast on the back porch and catch a glimpse of him coming down the hill. Sometimes Mohamed is gone just as fast and just as early. It is wonderful that they meet up and go exploring about the campus. There are enough people working about that are willing to say something if need be. Many of the maintenance crew know both Mohamed and Nabih. They stop to tell me how much they enjoy the boys, they are polite (surely they mistake my guys for some others?) and how Nabih especially, always says hello. He has apparently picked out some favorites.
So Mohamed and his friends are free to roam in relative safety. They cannot escape “the wall.” I‘ve come to really think of it this way. It is imposing and comforting on 2 very different scales. I did hear Mohamed and his friend pondering what was on the other side one afternoon and idly discussing what they’d do if they got over.
I relish their ability to have such an idyllic childhood here, though I myself feel like a child of Hamlin at times. I can hear the music at all hours. In the morning, I am reminded of Pocahontas and the “drums of war” – really it is the military cadences. But there is other music too and I am never sure where it is coming from or why it is there. I catch myself being drawn to it and fantasize marching right out of the wall and down the street, around the corner if need be, blind and drawn like a child following the Piper.
There is a dance class starting on Sunday and hopefully this will take care of my need to hear and feel the music. It is beautiful beyond words. It threatens to overwhelm me which is the only way I’ve managed to restrain. Well, that and the fact that I can’t be dragging my 2 children out into the streets of Kinshasa on foot. Not yet anyway.
For now I think we must enjoy the island and have patience and faith that the gates will open and the wall will become merely a physical factor and less an imposing presence.
