Who we become

A few nights ago I dreamed of love. We were singing together and this man had a soul touching voice. It was a sure love, a new love and so comfortable. I didn’t want to leave that dream. The real world is a lonely place. I can’t seem to find my way here. And when I am driving through the city, looking at the thousands of people I don’t know, realizing in cities and towns across the world there are hundreds of millions of people- so many of us, how is it possible for any one of us to be so alone?

It is often that my perspective zooms out to such a scale that I see only humans, and we are horrible to each other. It is as if we are not of the same species. We do not see how we are related. We do not care for each other or tend to our sick or frail. We are a sorry lot, us humans, lost in searching and fighting for things that are inconsequential. We can’t even see it.

Yesterday I passed another person on the street- I am not sure who he was- a forgotten? A throwaway? I can’t even be certain of the situation. As I drove past I saw a man on a motorcycle looking down at him and shaking his head and then driving away. I don’t know if the motorcycle had hit him, or narrowly missed or just stopped to see if help could be offered. It wasn’t clear in those few quick seconds. 

I saw a woman walking by. She looked, kept walking and looked back again. She had a baby on her back and a large bowl of bananas on her head. She was carrying a small table or crate in her hand. None of us seemed to know what to do. Myself- I drove by. I looked, I wondered, I panicked in a way. Yes, it was panic because I did not stop. A steady hand would have stopped and offered help. The street was oddly empty. Usually there are a bunch of sellers on this stretch of road. It is one of the very few places where the street sellers persist. But in this moment, I drove to the corner, made the turn and there was nothing. No one.

I hate that I do this. Drive by. The man had been lying on his stomach, his head oddly facing the ground. He appeared to be having a seizure, his body convulsing in some way. His legs were jerking and his torso rose off the ground. Everything about the movements were unnatural and wrong. He was alone. I did not stop. What would I have done?

My most recent medical training was in CPR- what to do if someone is not breathing- not how to handle convulsions. I am still never really clear on what to do with trauma. It’s not my strong point. I am very, very squeamish and afraid to see blood or bone and organs exposed. I think I am most afraid of being out of control. I cannot fix those things.

In Africa, the situation becomes even more complex because there is no 911. And even if they do purport to have an emergency number (112 or something similar) it will take a long time for anyone to show up. Further complications include being foreign, being white and not knowing exactly what happened. These all sound like excuses, and they are. They are the reasons that prevent me from stopping. Being foreign means that I have a greater chance of somehow becoming implicated or blamed for the incident. Being white suggests I will pay for everything and not knowing exactly what happened means I can’t offer a defense.

They are all good and valid excuses, but none of them make me feel better about myself. It’s not the person I want to be- the person that sees a need and just keeps driving.  I am coming to realize that medical issues are not my area of strength. I am really not equipped to offer much in the case of broken and bleeding bodies. It’s hard to accept this. Sometimes I feel like the only worthwhile thing is to be a medical healer. We do it to each other, this breaking of bodies. War and fighting and anger. We ruin lives, we starve each other, we create situations of horror that don't have to exist. In these times, the immediate need is physical. Nothing else matters when you're a life on the edge. 

But there are other types of healing. And some of these other areas are where I feel more capable. As a healer, however, it is shocking to drive by someone in need and feel unable to assist. It is an overwhelming sense of dread and powerlessness that cuts down to the core and plants a little seed. It stays there long into the night and the day and resurfaces every so often to remind you of who you were in that moment. And who you really are. Not a healer after all, but just someone who drove by.

I passed the area again later in the day and he was gone. Someone had stepped in. Either to offer help or to clear the body. I can feel positive about that- not like the child in the road, whose body remained despite a busy street and plenty of onlookers.

It is situations like these that make me wonder if maybe I am not cut out for African living anymore. Maybe I am full up. When you are constantly facing hardships and battling inequality- facing simple problems that suddenly become insurmountable, it’s not easy to like who you become.

African sensibility

Shards of green glass littered the roadway, sparkling in the sunlight like emeralds. Overturned orange crates lay scattered throughout the ruins, a few still protecting 1 or 2 intact bottles. The motorcart itself seemed to be unscathed. It was parked just off to the side, around the corner. The driver stood in the middle of the mess, hands on hips, assessing the personal cost of his miscalculation. A well dressed man in crisp African clothes gestured to a policeman as the two made their way across the intersection. Perhaps he was the other driver. It wasn't clear which vehicle was his.

I've passed several accidents in the last few weeks. They seem to come in waves like that. Twice my passing coincided with the arrival of the police. I've long been curious about the after incident process but have never actually seen it. In the first case, a policeman was drawing with chalk around the vehicles, large squares outlining their placement. Presumably, the cars could then be moved.

The tendency to leave cars- and even victims, as I saw one hit bicycle rider today- in the exact spot of the accident leads to such traffic congestion and delay. Not to mention it often seems dangerous to those involved as they often stand discussing the problem right there too. No cones, no one redirecting traffic, not even any palm fronds in the road (although someone had placed a cement brick next to the biker guy's bag of rice that had apparently flew from his basket. And to be fair, if it goes on long enough, eventually an on-looker will jump in and start trying to sort out the tangled traffic. Usually. )

We passed the bottle accident a second time on our way home, about 20 minutes later. He was in the middle of the street with a broom sweeping up the mess. I couldn't help but feel for him. No matter whose fault the accident, his life was taking a hard toll that day. Surely he'd be held responsible for the crates of beer that had been destroyed. Any insurance process would take far too long to be of any help to anyone.

Even as I was empathizing with him, there was something about his act of cleaning that struck a chord with me. African sensibility I could get behind, if, in fact, the accident was the result of his own negligence in observing traffic laws. And if he wasn't the culprit? He was definitely the younger of the two and the less wealthy. There's a certain African sensibility to that as well.

Public transit

Now that I've collected taxi stories in three different colors, it's as good a time as any to return to this old favorite. Though they vary in degree of seriousness, they all serve to remind me how quickly life can change. Public transit seems to carry an inherent risk with it and eventually, I figure my odds are going to run out.

I am hoping my new spot will allow a walk to work. I have come to recognize a small stress in the search for a taxi every morning. (Crossing the main road after work for the ride home practically deserves its own post. It holds a high spot on the won't miss list and is a major stressor.  I hate that road.)

The morning commute appears less dangerous, mostly because there is usually less traffic and no major road to dash across.  But I do need to make sure I have exact change and on some mornings, even that isn't enough. There are mornings when taxis are scarce. There just aren't any. It's the randomness of these mornings that creates the stress. You can never be sure until you get to the road and start trying to hail a cab if there will be any (to hail, or any with space.) One morning, one of those scarce taxi mornings, a driver actually refused my fare, because he was looking for more than the regular price.  The law of supply and demand in full, frustating effect.

On the morning of my story, however, there was nothing remarkable about my yellow taxi search. I'd found a cab and squeezed in the back, perhaps the uncomfortable middle, but on my way nevertheless. We had just passed the new roundabout- where mintues can make the difference between a two second circle or a twenty minute standstill. Timing is everything in the morning. And this morning, timing seemed good. There weren't too many cars, although you could see it was beginning.

As we rounded the turn and began to exit, a large SUV also began to exit. I am not exactly sure what happened, lost in the daydreams of my morning commute. The drivers began yelling at each other through open windows and the SUV began to put the squeeze on, narrowing our driving lane until the chauffeur had no choice but to stop or pull up on the sidewalk, a place well crowded with pedestrians.

The men exited their vehicles as the insults quickly turned into punches. Not yet 7 am and they had a brawl going. They were so close to my window I could see the struggle on the face of the SUV driver, the surprise and frustration as the blows landed.

A passenger in the front seat got out and ran between the men. With some effort he managed to pull them apart. It took long enough that questions began to run through my mind. What are the qualities that inspire a person to get involved? The man next to me didn't make a move to get out and offer any help. Why not? I felt stuck in my inner seat, but knew I couldn't get out, or intervene. (Years with sons have taught me that I am usually the one to get hurt in these kinds of scuffles. Inadvertently, perhaps, but I had no place intervening in a grown man's squabble. And then I was frustrated by that thought and my lack of muscles.) 

Eventually everyone returned to their cars, driving off with a last bit of rage. "Meet me at 9kilo...he's got to get out sometime," our taxi driver snarled, referring to the passenger who had stopped the fight. I wondered what kind of rage fueled such anger before the sun had even gotten comfortably into place. I wondered what the woman in the back of the SUV had been thinking the whole time and I wondered if the chauffeur would still have a job. My stop was less than a block away and I marveled at how easy it was to put the whole mess behind me as I walked in to school.

The following week I found my story in the cover of night with the neon glow of fancy gbaka lights. While I don't really remember the color of the gbaka, inside it always seems a flourescent blue. Gbakas in Abidjan have some of the fanciest interiors I have ever seen, often strung with LED tube lights and flat screen T.Vs spewing the latest videos into our evening commutes. This one had all the amenities.

I was coming from my Friday night dance class, meaning traffic was inevitable. When we reached the main intersection, the red lights of stopped cars shone brighter than our interior blue light show. Drivers have all kinds of tricks for evading the lines of stalled traffic, and our driver did not disappoint. He rode the narrow edge between the curb and the open sewer gulley ( the same place where I'd seen a gbaka nearly run a woman over some months before.) He took the 'short-cut' through the gas station and joined the queue of vehicles who'd also taken this route. We found ourselves, as short-cuts often lead to, at angle incongruous to the precise lines of cars in front of us. We were directly behind a large truck and it soon became clear there was problem. I am not sure if someone reversed, or someone pushed ahead too quickly, but we seemed to be attached to the truck in front of us.

The apprentis jumped out and there was a general congregation of people in the middle of the road, forming a soup of men and lights and vehicles, swaying and rocking and shouting and figuring. Finally, we were unstuck and the road ahead cleared a bit. We assumed our driver would continue and take the right turn in the direction of our intended travel. Instead, he followed the truck through the next turn around and began heading off, back in the direction we had come from.

Passengers started shouting and the apprentis started banging ( there is always a lot of banging involved in gbaka travel) and finally the driver stopped for a minute. "Saute, saute. On vas marche," a woman next to me shouted. We jumped into the dark waters of the night street like passengers abandoning a sinking ship.

Apparently our chauffeur intended to follow the truck driver- in the wrong direction with a bus full of passengers- to seek revenge. Road rage at its craziest.  Again. luckily for me, I was less than a block away from my stop and quickly walked to the next leg of my transit. Other passengers, however, had been intending to go as far as Faya, and would need to find a new ride at the main intersection. The apprentis had enough mind to collect my fare before I disappeared into the night, but what about the others? Do you have to pay when your driver suffers from an irrational fit of road rage and only gets you half-way to your destination?

I found myself asking this same question a few short weeks later. This time, I was in an orange taxi- taxi express in Kinsahsa terms. Orange taxis generally take just one passneger and offer you door-to-door service, or street-to-door as the case may be. I was returning from a new tutoring job, this one well across town. We were returning at dusk, an hour when the threat of traffic looms on the horizon. Our route took us past the president's quarters, which can be a sticky area. But we'd made it past there, and the occasional back ups by the Golf Hotel without much of a delay.

I was busy in my mind when I happened to glance up. There's no escaping the cliches. I saw everything in slow motion. The car in front of us, another red taxi (everyone calls them red, but they are so obviously orange- I don't really get it.) The back end was getting larger and larger. There was no sign that we were slowing down but I didn't say anything. Until it was too late. Perhaps I gasped, or sucked in a breathe sharply, or maybe I even said something. But it wasn't Hey! Stop! or Attention! It was nothing useful.

By the time the driver came to, because surely he was off in some daydream of his own, we'd already slammed into the car in front of us, which had, in turn, slammed into the car in front of them. Three car pile up.

We all exited the vehicles and I began wondering what to do. In Kinshasa, the rules were clear. Get away. In the US, you stay to file a report. I wasn't really clear what the rules were here- and did I have to pay? Because once again, I hadn't quite reached my destination.

I hung around for awhile. I asked the driver of one of the other vehicles what would happen next. They seemed to be debating about whether or not to call the police- well, I guess they call the sapier pompiers- the firefighters- but everyone was debating how long it would be before they showed up. The taxi drivers had to call their bosses. A passenger in the other taxi was injured and bleeding. He didn't leave the backseat and alternated between sitting with his head down and laying on the backseat. The woman with him kept asking the (my) taxi driver what he was going to do.

"He's bleeding," she kept saying as the drivers walked around the cars assessing the damage. "That's material things. What are we going to do about him?" she asked. Another taxi driver stopped for a minute, perhaps to offer support (again, what makes people get involved? I took a class on this way back when and poignant moments have never left me. Victims and Their Experiences it was called. And it was mind blowing.)

Bystanders streamed out from the plant and garden stands along the roadside. I wondered if I was supposed to stay and give my testimony.  It seemed pretty clear which driver waas at fault. However, he said there were no brake lights on the other taxi, so it wasn't completely his fault. I couldn't speak to that. I didn't remember if there were lights shining as the back of the taxi loomed closer.

I knew that my head hurt, I'd managed to block most of the impact but not all. The next day a deep and angry bruise appeared on my knee, but I didn't feel it at the time. I was nauseous and tired and I couldn't tell what was accident related or just the result of working too late on too little sleep for too many days. Eventually I handed my driver most of the fare and headed home on foot. I found a yellow cab after 10 minutes of walking and continued my commute, wondering what had happened to the bleeding man, grateful there were no serious injuries that would haunt me into the night.

Except. sometimes, possibility haunts us as much as reality. Traffic accidents are a major cause of death in Africa, something I think about everytime I am on the road. It is a false sense of comfort to think if you are driving you are more in control, but I don't even have that to offer a bit of solace. I am at the mercy of chauffeurs who succumb to road rage, who battle with money to keep their taxis in safe working conditions- so many times I have diagnosed a problem (having a mom who worked for years in the automotive industry has taught me a thing or two about the sounds cars make, not to mention years of tooling around in my own clunkers) but often drivers don't know or won't admit the problems their cars are suffering from.

It's a risk, public transit in Africa. Everytime I get in a taxi or gbaka, I think of my children. I wonder what would become of them. I think of myself. Will there be pain if the gbaka tips over? How long will I wait for treatment if my accident is serious? Will it be the waiting or the injury that does me in? It takes a lot of effort to close my mind to the possibilities, the risk. I always imagine that meme I ran across, about stalled traffic in Germany versus stalled traffic in Africa, and the comment, il faut changement de mentalite.  The images and lessons from Defensive Driving are never far from my mind. I think courses like these might make a difference. But, of course, I am not really sure how many drivers have even passed any sort of test about road rules or practical driving.

There is no shortage of driving schools, though the clients I see there are generally women. For me, the  plus grande question, we call the boy who rides the door and calls out the destination, we call him apprentis- but what is he really learning? And in a few years, he will move to the driver's seat.  

Christmas a la Cote

Just in case you are wondering, Christmas in Ivory Coast is just as decked out, over-inflated, and amped up as anywhere. The streets are lined with row after row of unmoving but ever homking cars. Gift wrappers offer to bundle your purchases in bright packaging for stress free giving.

I took this opportunity to visit the big Orca Deco in Marcory. This department store is four full stories of everything you think you need and plenty of stuff you don't, including an entire wing of fabric bolts  that sent my imagination on fire.

Trying to navigate this store in the pre-Christmas  rush was rough- I just kept my head down and my sights focused. I had only a few things in mind and refused to even head over to the toy section. They do offer an after Christmas discount though, and that's when things really got bad.

On my second visit, I took more time to explore the store- still not  making it past the first floor. I browsed housewares and craftwares, Christmas-wares and toys. I had that Dorothy-out-of-Kansas feeling and wondered if I was even still in Africa. Whatever I needed, surely it was here and possibly even at a price I could afford.

My senses were thrown completely out of balance as I walked by colored light displays and snowmen and santas smiling serenely, wishing me a peaceful season. I was completely overwhelmed by the stocked shelves, the merchandise exploding out of unpacked boxes cramming the aisles,  and row after row of choice. Too much choice. I felt an odd urge to take photos- a tourist in the land of holiday wonder.

I went back a few days later, drawn like a gawker to a roadside accident. This time I brought Nabih and I did snap a few photos, though somehow resisted (and now regret) a few  that I didn't take.  Nabih was looking to spend a bit of his birthday cash and he managed to find something in the happy medium between the Chinese knockoffs and the over-priced imports. Fantastic. One step closer to understanding the Abidjan-is-Paris phenomenon (but wait, I thought Bandal was Paris? Not sure why I keep winding up in places that claim to be Paris but, having never really explored Paris, I can't hope to understand the comparison.  Not really. My guess, in the case of Bandal, that it is more about the ambiance and in the case of Abidjan, more about the offerings. The two places themselves- Bandal and Abidjan, or even Kinshasa and Abidjan for that matter, couldn't be more different.)

Some highlights from around the city- complete with that ubiquitous reference to Paris.

But of course, Abidjan is not Paris. There are some major differences, important differences as I came to find out just a few days after Christmas. I had stopped by the bank- yeah, on New Year's Eve, not the best of choices. After sizing up the situation inside- at least a 2 hour wait- I decided to just hit the ATM outside, even if it meant less cash on hand and an inconvenient return trip in the next few days.

I was waiting in line (a much more desireable line of 2, of which I was first) when I heard that all too familiar but always sickening crunch and tearing of metal. I covered my head and turned away- I have long ago learned how haunted I am by tragedy and did my best not to engrain any images. All I saw before turning was an orange taxi speeding away.

Of course, I eventually turned my attention back to the crash. My line wasn't moving and the whole street had become involved by now. A motorcycle was down. The driver had gotten up and was holding his head in his hands as he paced back and forth. My first thought was a grateful prayer until I realized he wasn't just bemoaning a headache or the loss of his bike. Someone else was there, on the ground, and he hadn't gotten up. I peeked just around the corner of a car parked in front of the bank, mercifully blocking my view. Sleep was going to be hard enough to come by this night. I saw an arm, confirmed a friend on the ground and returned to my hampered perspective.

Cars continued to move slowly forward, around - and what I can only imagine was perilously close- to the injured passenger. I wanted someone to go over and stop traffic- turn it back, make it wait, anything but drive by the tragedy. The security guard next to me was calling the local emergency number. No one was answering. So much for Abidjan being Paris. Not where it counts anyway, not for the important things.

People were commentating- a woman in the ATM line was so graphic I had to tune her out. I assumed it was her way of dealing with shock, but she was including too much detail in her account of the man hitting the concrete. Others were murmuring not to move him- good advice although in the end useless. There was no emergency team coming, no paramedics, no stretcher, no police, nothing. No one.

Ironically, there was a clinic just two doors down from the bank. Surely there could be a faster response? I turned to the security guard. "So what are we going to do then?" I'd hoped to spur some action.

"I am calling, but no one is answering. They are going to take him." He gestured to the street. I turned around to see what appeared to be one of the gbakas, though I didn't really see any seats inside. I couldn't tell if it was just someone who had stopped to volunteer (I strongly suspect) or maybe a vehicle from the nearby clinic.

"They will take him to the hospital?" I repeated, needing confirmation. We watched as a group of men picked up the injured motorcycle passenger and placed him in the back of the vehicle.  No backboard brace, no stretcher, no IV, no on-scene treatment.

It is what infuriates me most about African road accidents. Injury is often compounded by the wait times for intervention and unavailability of emergency treatment. Not to mention the taxi driver, who just continued on his way after plowing through congested traffic and mowing down a motorcycle. I  wondered if he had passengers and how they'd responded. How would I respond if I had been in the taxi?

But mostly my thoughts remained with the injured man. My mind kept repeating sorry- not the American sorry used for apology related to guilt for wrongdoing, but the African sorry full of empathy and sympathy that says I am human too and  us humans need to be there for each other. I'm sorry that this happened, on this day, unexpectedly and completely avoidable.

I kept thinking how this morning he was just a regular guy, full of plans and positivity. Maybe he had a family, a wife and children somewhere that would soon be learning of this tragedy. I thought about how their evening wouldn't be shaping up as earlier envisioned. It is this suddenness of it all that affects me most. I am keenly aware of how everything can be taken away in just one moment.

I spent New Year's Eve sending prayers for this man and his loved ones, assuring myself it was possible to survive- the driver, after all, had gotten up without a scratch on him. Thoughts back to Kazadi and his accident also kept me in positive spirits. It is possible to persevere. I imagined trying to find him, just to be sure he had made it, and then realized perhaps it wasn't the most rational- or possible- thing to do. Sending my prayers would have to be enough.

My thoughts were split between families, a friend having shared with me an equally  tragic story about Christmas day, an 8 year old girl and a completely normal afternoon that somehow turned fatal.  And of course, there's always Jean-Marie. This Christmas a la Cote, I spent my time alternately feeling blessed in my present moment and praying for families of strangers that need more than I can give, completely unconvinced that Abidjan- or Bandal- are even remotely close to Paris. There needs to be a lot more than impressive light displays and music to move to around the clock to equal the true advantages of living abroad.