...unless of course you're having a sack race on the soccer field. We spent the day in the village of Ngana Peo. It rates up there with one of the more bizarre experiences, equally fraught with the complexities of opposing emotions. The project is from a small Italian aid group working in Kinshasa. This particular day was an organization of fun and games in a village where several former street youth have been relocated. It is a rare moment of success as most of the boys seem to be doing well in their new surroundings. The process, a gradual introduction to village life and agriculture, continues with the building of a chicken house and periodic reviews of how the new responsibilites are being handled.
But there's a certain incongruity in the way they throw themselves into a game of Explosion whereby one person leaves the circle as a shoe from a pile in the middle is designated the 'bomb.' The sequestered person returns and begins selecting shoes while the crowd chants and claps. If he touches the bomb, everyone makes a sound of explosion and the round begins again. Or the way they embrace a game of relay where runners must retrieve sticks placed in a row, each in its own circle, and hand off to their partner. Their partner must then run back, replacing the sticks inside the circles. Or, the craziest game, participants must grab a handful of water and hold it in their mouth while running to a bottle, which they then must spit in and return for more. Whoever fills their bottle first wins.
Everyone enjoyed the games, even some elderly and some women joined in. At the end, there were small packages of cookies for the winners. The woman who won the sack race was so shy she could not lift her head to accept but merely stuck out a hand while turning away the rest of her body in secret pleasure.
The boys showed more pizzazz, bowing humbly before taking their prize and showing off to the crowd. It was only months ago these boys were having the very same laughs because they had just grabbed someone's wallet or made off with someone else's cell phone. Of course, the distribution of biscuits quickly deteriorated to an all but outright attack on the village chief. The carton was eventually plundered under threat of a mob with raised sticks.
So quickly we're reminded that this isn't just ordinary fun and games. The progress is slow and for as many steps forward there are so many that just march in time, going nowhere.
We are making plans to return for some art groups. I'm wondering how to bridge the language, how to bridge the culture. Some of the simple techniques for warming up and getting started seem irrelevant here, without meaning in this world where 'draw a picture of your family' and 'draw your name and 3 things you like to do' are potential triggers, not easy intros.
Even as I wandered the site, noticing the beauty and tranquility (surely this is how Ngana Peo received its name, literally 'the place of quiet meeting') I was impressed with the difficulty of transitioning from the hip-hopping nights of Kinshasa to the starry, quiet nights of the village.
But I am looking forward to the challenge, to the balance. Because, despite the near fight between two boys and the biscuit mob, I also lost myself for a minute today. Not once did I wish to be anywhere else or doing anything other than exactly what I was doing.
Instead my mind was filled with images of teaching in a village just like this one, a little closer to the dream. And racing with the implications of bringing education to the 46 children in the village that don't go to school. As I watched a plane soar overhead, I felt just as far away from the city, and wondered briefly what good could come from teaching English and French. I thought about all the people that have come from villages as small as this and made something bigger. I heard the ringtones of cell phones, even here, and realized its all good. Of course its good.
