Another collection
of rambling stories about our
neighborhood
The end of the second week has left us with better
prospects. Mohamed brought home the
trophy from his soccer championships, apparently the privilege of the team
captain. Both Nabih and Mohamed were
assigned as captains, making it a little hard to root for a particular
team. But they are enjoying soccer and
the activities that follow and that’s the main point. Mohamed has become
independent enough to make trips to the cyber café and pick up snacks at the little
store just down the road. It makes me happy to see him venturing out into the
world in a way that life in Kinshasa never really allowed for. Nabih? Forever the homebody, content with his
electronic games, which leave me a bit mystified as a parent. Am I supposed to
express amazement over his accomplishments on a virtual dirt bike? Or flying a
plane with just a tap and swipe of his fingers? I’m still pondering how to
respond to his electronic achievements and hoping for more reality to intrude
on his life, realizing I may need to step in and make it happen somehow.
I have picked up a bit of sinus congestion, which I am
convinced is due to the air in the apartment. Luckily we have found a new place
and will be moving within days. Although our new spot is not far, I am going to
miss the neighborhood. There is the little girl across the street who cries
every night just before sleeping (and any other time she doesn’t get her way. I
can recognize her demanding scream now- I get the sense she is a feisty one.)
Her tired baby sleeping tantrums usually begin around 8:30 or quarter to 9.
Its been entertaining to watch the gaggle of kids streaming
from that house, the two little girls looking so close in age, though the older
of the two handles the nightly tantrums well. From my distance I can see only
her body language but I imagine a perplexed eye-rolling expression on her face
as she tries to placate her sister’s demands. One night when it rained especially
hard, several kids- this time two boys- came outside to ‘swim’ on the cement
stoop in front of their house- elevated around the edges just enough to keep
the water in, not quite enough for real swimming unless you’re 4. They slid along their bellies and flapped
their arms joyously splashing in the water.
I found out the guy around the corner repairs shoes and I
have enjoyed watching him arrive and set up faithfully every morning. Sometimes
when the rain is particularly heavy, he hops up on his table and sits under the
wooden overhang, waiting it out. It makes a sad and lonely picture that I
haven’t yet been able to capture. Somewhat pensive, though I am sure he is
napping there while waiting for the skies to clear.
I am pretty positive we can walk to our new place if we follow
the trails of dirt roads over to the small market and past the local soccer
pitch. Somewhere behind all that lies more dirt roads and smaller soccer
pitches until finally a little clearing of ground will lead to our house.
Another one of the photos I haven’t yet been able to take is
of the stair maker just before the soccer field. It is a sight to come down the
dirt path and see a set of shiny spiral stairs leading up to nowhere. They are
surrounded by other staircases-straight ones, unfinished leaning ones, more
spiral ones. As I was dreaming of the palatial apartment we had seen, I vowed
to get one of those spiral staircases to set in the corner and line with plants.
I love the sense they give of rising off to somewhere without a real
destination determined.
Across the street from the staircase maker lies yet another
oddity- a perfectly manicured patch of lawn- a park, I suppose. But it is there
in the middle of two lanes, with neat shrubs and plants and cut grass. It looks like a pleasant place for sitting, though
the oddity is found in its emptiness. As if there were signs all around saying Keep
off the Grass. I can’t be sure of its purpose or how it came to be, but it
exists. A small oasis of order and cleanliness just before the busy chaos of
the market stalls with their hanging wares and cluttered countertops.
The market is also home to cages and cages of live chickens,
which you can buy and they’ll clean and pluck for you. We found this out one
night when Christian was looking for someplace close by that sold chicken- already
dead and refrigerated is what we were thinking.
But really, what’s fresher than newly killed and cleaned?
In the opposite direction of all that, on our way to the
soccer camp, is the Laundromat. I
discovered this one day during the first week when I was feeling put out by my
washing abilities. It all comes down to the wringing. Good wringing is
essential if you ever want the clothes to dry. (I have since found out, with
the washing machine, soccer clothes come out nearly dry already. I have a
newfound love and respect for soccer clothes. I heavily endorse them for all
events and outing opportunities.) I had
been passing by one morning when I noticed two men vigorously scrubbing a blanket. I immediately felt better, figuring if it took
two of them to do it, I shouldn’t feel so bad about my difficulty the day
before when it was just me and my blanket (one that had gotten wet in one of
the small floods and took forever to wring out..) I spent a lot of the first
week feeing overwhelmed by the chores of daily living, realizing that many
women in Africa have only time for that- and it’s a problem. I had been
appreciating the ease and freedom of having the washing machine working and
touting to Christian the free time and the multiple uses of it that having a Laundromat
could bring to women. Not the dry cleaners, which seem pretty prevalent around
African cities, but regular old Laundromats- go in, wash, dry, fold, leave. And
that’s when I noticed the sign tacked to one of the posts “Nos Tarifs”- Our
fees. There already was a laundromat in the neighborhood, as I should have
guessed by the mounds of clothes waiting to be cleaned and the neatly hung
shirts on a rack outside. Perfect. For a
single guy maybe. Probably still not accessible to a family. I think there is a
very real place for a self -serve style laundromat. I imagine no dryers but a
covered area that has those lines which hang in a square around a central pole
or drying.
Another issue that got to me a lot during our first week
here was constantly being accompanied by someone, namely Christian. I didn’t go
anywhere alone and it began to feel oppressive. I thought of women in
Afghanistan and Pakistan who are prohibited from going out without a male
escort and I wondered if it was just my American sensibilities of independence
and privacy that had me yearning to be free- and alone. While cultural norms
color much of what we come to see and expect as normal, I do believe women in
those countries feel a sense of injustice and inconvenience in needing to be
constantly surveyed and accompanied. Oh to be a woman. It’s something that
confronts me everyday here, in so many seemingly small ways. It’s another post, churning on the
burner- one I can get to thinking about
once I have absorbed all of the nuances of our new situation.
Something else on the burner, more literally speaking- our borrowed
propane bottle was recalled and so we had to go in search of a new one.
Christian installed this one and called me in to see it. “Look,” he said a bit
perplexed as it quietly lit, “it doesn’t go whoosh.”
I had to laugh a bit and reassure him. “It’s not supposed to go whoosh,” I
said, happy to be back in the land of lighting stoves that I knew. I have such
a hard time determining if I am over reacting that I usually end up under
reacting. I guess I should be grateful
we didn’t blow ourselves up last week.
Finally a few words on our new place. It’s much larger, 3
bedrooms, a good-sized living room and a kitchen that 2 or 3 people could potentially
fit in at once (African kitchens are notoriously small I noticed. I’m guessing
it is related to the preference or the habit of outdoor cooking spaces.) There
are two doors leading out of the kitchen- one to a little alcove that I
envision as an outdoor eating area (my version of tea on the back porch in Kinshasa.) There are screens (no flies!) on all the
windows and doors (notice the all the ‘S’es- lots of air flow in this house! So
much to be grateful for.)
The main bathroom breaks from the drench-the-whole-room style
and actually separates the toilet from the shower and sink into two different
rooms. Heaven. There is another bathroom off one of the bedrooms (Abidjan seems
eternally obsessed with 2 or more bathrooms, sometimes one for every bedroom, even if they are absurdly small. I
wonder why one large and comfortable bathroom doesn’t make more sense than
several closet sized wash rooms you can barely spread your arms out in. luckily,
we are in neither of those situations any more. Yay!)
There is a little veranda in front big enough for some
chairs (and plants!) two patches of grass (of which I hope to claim one for flowers)
and a driveway. Wow! Christian is claiming the driveway for dance rehearsals
and I am sure he will have some competition with the boys for soccer
practice. However, there is a small
soccer field in the lot next to our house.
And the main selling point? While I’m worried the place is
too isolated, just beyond
the little patch of empty playing space, through a gate and down a country lane
lined with patches of cultivated vegetable plots lies the lagoon.
It’s the second story I have heard of a white man getting
shot during the political upheaval over the presidency. The first was on our
trip to Bassam. The luxurious hotel, restaurant and beachfront we went to in
order to access the ocean was also said to have belonged to a Frenchman, killed
in the war. His wife had recently sold the place to someone and it was under
some transition.
The same with this picturesque waterfront. Waling down the
dirt lane, one is greeted first with patches of and rented out to locals who
farm it for vegetables to sell or feed their family. Following this is (pause
for a guess here) a soccer field (you see why I believe Mohamed will make it
big in soccer here? It’s hard to go very far without stumbling across a pitch.
I even saw- a rather joyous sight- 3 little girls, not more than 3 or 4, playing
a pretty serious game of foot, something I haven’t seen before- the ever
present gender divide absent in that one sweet moment.) After the soccer field,
the land opens up a bit with space for gatherings and what appears to be a small
administrative building. There is a pier leading out to the lagoon and several
boats for renting. None of it appeared operational at the moment. The story is
the owner, the infamous white foreigner killed during the skirmishes, is no longer
present, thereby leaving the land to his close buddy (to be honest I thought I
heard the story go that the close buddy had been the one to kill the white
foreigner but….maybe I was just letting my imagination get away from me….) In
any case, the land is now “transferred” to the buddy and lying in wait for the
perfect transformation.
Enter Christian. He immediately proposes classes by the
‘beach’ and Salsa BBQ’s. Memberships
that include fitness classes and trips on the lagoon. The ideas only grow from
there. The ‘buddy’ seems amiable enough and open to all of the proposals. They have a meeting on Friday to work out
details.
And so our Dance Camp Ivory Coast on the beach is formed.
I’m still worried about being a little isolated, but I figure the boys can get
some bikes and find their way around the neighborhood and back to the soccer
camp. I can look forward to painting in plein air in our ‘cozy’ front yard
(yard is really too big a word for the patches of grass we have between the
house and the walled gate. I’m not sure if it is a matter of changing my
vocabulary or changing my word-picture associations. I hesitate even to call it
a house, for some reason, as that doesn’t conjure images of what I normally
think of when I say house, but there’s no other word. And, like many African
abodes, what it lacks in appearance on the outside, it makes up for inside. We’ll
feel perfectly comfortable, downright luxurious inside- especially if it
doesn’t leak when it rains!)
In the meantime, we’ve had a few more floods in our little apartment-
the Abidjan rains proving too hearty for a mere caulk gun solution. Our first
few thunderstorms were magnificent, though lacking in some quality that Congo
storms have. Closeness, is the best I can describe it. Congo thunderstorms make
you feel as if you are inside them. I
had a bit of nostalgia for my front porch last night as the lightning and
thunder cracked the sky. But I am
looking forward to the next stage of our adventure in a new house with outside
space for drawing and writing and daydreaming the summer days away.
