Till it happens to you

It comes up every time a large number of people die a violent, senseless death: why do we care more about Paris (Nice, Brussels, etc) than we care about Istanbul, Baghdad, Beirut, etc. The debate heats up and includes comments that question, albeit rhetorically, when we will see a #prayforBeni post.

Thing is, we won't. And the explanation, I think, is rather simple. We care about whom and what we know. I'm no expert on the matters of the human mind, other than the fact that I have one, but I think it's difficult to relate, especially emotionally, to something abstract. Places we've never been to, people we don't know, are abstract. How many people you had to account for at the Istanbul airport that day? Maybe the occasional traveling one, who was, by the way, in transit, relatively far from the actual trouble. How many you had to worry for in Brussels? I, for about a dozen. That's when it hit closest. And although I have nobody in Nice, it is a weird feeling to picture that promenade where we were strolling with Shari and it was so damn cold, in a state of sheer panic.

The rest remains abstract, unreal; Beni most of all.

I'm not trying to excuse the way we act and react, but I think it's the main reason. And the way we consume news and information these days – you choose the channels you follow, and most probably your friends are from a similar culture so they will care about the same things and you get somewhat stuck in the same circle, with the same news focusing on the same region, geographical or cultural.

The solution? I doubt there is one, but love thy neighbour sounds like a good start. Get to know people from Beirut, Baghdad, Istanbul, from places and cultures initially foreign for you. They will stop being abstract, and you will be able to relate more.

Then you can worry about more people in more places when something happens, because all of a sudden it's not something remote, but it's happening, even if indirectly, to you. Then you understand, the bell always tolls for you.

I know my kingdom awaits

Home is not a place. I suspect I've known it for a while; I've had and keep having many homes, some are in places I've always only been a visitor, and I'm slowly recognizing that home, in fact, is not a geographical term.

The house you grew up in and never left is of course a home. But very few of us have that house still, and even fewer of us have never left it. For those of us who did leave, and returned to either the house or ourselves being in a changed state, the search for home is on ever since.

Good news: once given up on the idea of „the one” home, we can see that homes are everywhere.

Home is in any city where you don't need a hotel room. Where you can cook, because you know where to find all the devices in the kitchen, even if it's not yours. Where you bump into people you know on the street. Where you find your way without a map, relying on landmarks more than street names. Home is where you know your reference points, literal and figurative, even if they keep changing. At home, you know where you are.

Home is people, too. Conversations where you can say what you think without being judged for it, debates where you can disagree without dismissing the others' opinions. It's inside jokes and terrible puns, and if you’re doing it right, it's also comments that would sound awfully un-PC in any other context. At home you dare to make those jokes because you know that they know what you mean and what you don't mean. Home is where you feel you belong – a feeling our band of gypsies is so eagerly after.

Home is time. Time you spent somewhere, a period of your life that has been instrumental in your personal development. Important in becoming who you are today; or in building who you will be tomorrow. In short, home is where you know who you are, and its geographical location is but a stage decor.

Home, they say, is where the heart is. Now that's good news, considering that your heart, in the vast majority of the cases, stays within your body. Meaning that your heart is wherever you are. Meaning that your home can be anywhere you go. you carry it in your heart, and you're never without it

Ultimately, we're a bunch of emotional superheros

I had to say goodbye to four people today only. And to a few others in the past weeks. Not the "I'm driving you to the airport, or worse, dropping you off at the border" type of goodbye, but the "I'm going on holidays and by the time I come back you won't be here" kind, which is pretends to be a little easier because it allows denial about the fact that it's indeed a goodbye.

I know that Christian would ask, before I could even make a sad face, "But Kata, what did you expect?", and that Anders would tell me that "people come and go". Except that I explained to both of them several times that I am fully aware of life being just like this, and I didn't expect anything else, so they wouldn't actually have to say any of it. 

This time around I'm actually on a positive note: I'm happy for having met them, and quite excited about seeing them again in a probably confusingly first-world setup. Or in a familiar mission environment; one never knows.

However, the beauty of the experience together, and the perspective of a next one doesn't make the actual departure day much easier. It's like staying up all night talking with your flatmates about life and love and David Bowie and belly dancing and tattoos and friendships that fade away and second chances and adoption, and then having to go to work the next day. Was it a great night? Oh yes it was. Do you feel like a zombie? Oh yes you do. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Does it make you feel any less of a zombie? Not really. Would you do it again? Without a shadow of a doubt. Knowing full well that it would leave you feel like a zombie for a while. 

Couple of naps/weeks later you will still remember how comfortable, deeply connected, blessed and grateful you felt for having somebody listen to your often ridiculous relationship drama and highly inconsistent political views, whereas the zombie day will seem  a proof of your inner strength - see, I could go through a day without sleep! 

This is how goodbyes should feel. I'm damn lucky for the days they were around, and I'm a total badass for getting through the day they left.

TL;DR: Still very happy!

The Tshukudu Movie Club came back from its winter sleep that night. Admittedly, the winter sleep was induced by my antisocial tendencies, topped up with kazi mingi (brush up on your swahili for that one).

But then Benoit came back from where he was, and Habibi came back from where he was, and even Ponyito was home, and then German decided to take a nap on our sofa, pretending he was participating, so Movie Nights were definitely back.

On top of that, we (Benoit) offered the Oscar-winner foreign language film of 2015, which happens to be Hungarian. Not a very cheerful one, but certainly one with a very unique point of view. One of the many things I enjoy about this otherwise surreal life setup is that I get to proudly show around things „my people” have made and done. Including the ball point pen and the Rubik cube.

And there, in the living room, between guacamole and Danish (?) brie cheese, I just realized that it was an anniversary. I'm a terribly nostalgic person, I remember what I was wearing when I first met somebody important, or that I was buying mango juice with the Chief when I realized I was missing somebody, so it's somewhat normal that I remember that it was the 7^th June when I arrived to this mission. I remember how I was explaining to the immigration officer at the Entebbe airport that I don't need a visa because I will be working for the United Nations, how utterly bizarre it sounded, and how disappointed she was that she couldn't make me pay for it.

Accounts of those first days can be read here  and here , and although you could follow the last two (2!! TWO!) years through this blog, I'm not sure it can really reflect just how far I've come. 

Professionally, which is important, since no longer enjoying anything at work was the primary reason for quitting the old job, but ironically, coming here made me see just how much I learned on the old job. And how important it is to call it quits when it's time.

Personally, too – I figure everybody is changing , and while „maturity” isn't necessarily the adjective that comes to mind when you're talking about a person who is excited about the trampoline in her sister's garden, there is certainly personal development to be noted. Development not in the sense that what was before needed fixing, but development in the sense that exposure and time makes all experiences richer. I'm not saying I'm afraid of fewer things now, but maybe of different things, and I'm more open-minded towards my fears. And a lot more confident about the few things I know. And the many things I have an opinion about. I don't fear Game of Thrones debates, because I have about as much of a chance at being right, as does anybody else. Even Marcello.

Important to note that this personal development or discovery or epiphany is not necessarily location-specific. I'm sure the lovely breeze of North Kivu has done me good, but I think most credit needs to go to all the amazingly weird people I've met here. Again, I don't think that North Kivu is the only place to meet amazingly weird people. We are everywhere. I'm just particularly lucky about this specific set of weirdos, because they are, just like The Animal Parties, happily aware of their own weirdness. And embrace it.

These lovely weirdos have - if unknowingly – helped me a lot in my learning to let go exercise.  I've counted 7 (seven!) flatmates in the last two years, and all of them have been a blessing - one way or another. The movie nights have almost completely changed its audience, but it hasn't changed its nature - depressing and disturbing movies (almost) every Tuesday. 

I am a rather clingy, please-don't-leave-me, together forever kinda girl. It is known. But my Goma-weirdos come and go faster than I could change my hair colour, and there is nothing I can do about it. And this, ultimately, is a great lesson. Not to say I have been a model student all along, but somewhere in the past two years I learned to appreciate the moments we have, and mope a little less over the ones we can no longer have. 

There are more specific lessons I've benefited from as well. One of the many great things about my line of work is that I get to meet all kinds of professions. And since they think they depend on me (they don't), they tend to be a little more sociable. I get to ask questions, and learn about what they do – and they do some really cool stuff, and come from places I never heard of before (and definitely couldn't have placed on a map), and have very different life experiences. And a story. Everybody has a story!

I love stories. And cheese. I get them both here. What else can I ask for?

From Goma, with pis and love

http://hellomagyarok.hu/post-it/from-goma-with-piss-and-love

 

Visiting gorillas

The news were grim that Saturday morning: they talked about machine guns, explosions, slaughter in a concert hall.

In our closed-in conflict zone life it didn't make a practical difference. My flatmate (seasoned readers by now know that the number, origin, profession and personality of my flatmates change frequently and regularly) took me out for breakfast – probably out of guilt for leaving us and moving back to the other life. To a world where one can find concert halls, and choose from more than one place to go out for breakfast.

In Goma, choices are a little scarce, so it was obvious that we go to "The" Bakery for coffee and croissant.

Upon entering the room, I unexpectedly burst out in a proper teenage girl gone crazy monologue:

"OMG it is really Him! I can't believe he's really here! Can we sit next to their table so I can secretly stare at him?"

We could. We did, even though the flatmate still had absolutely no clue as to who "he" is. We struggled through the usual long and painful process of ordering, and all he could make me say was that I have to immediately text the girls that "he" is here. The fact that one of the girls jumped into her car and drove to the scene made him all the more confused.

One of Goma's favourite celebrity is probably unknown outside North-Kivu, apart from the conservationist and hardcore nature-loving communities, where Emmanuel de Merode may be known. The anthropologist and conservationist, originally from a Belgian aristocrate family, is the Chief Warden of the Virunga National Park since 2008. In that quality, he is saviour of the mountain gorillas and all other animals living in the park – and, occasionally, subject to teenage crush of expat-girls.

By Martin Friedrich Jauck - http://de.rodovid.org/wk/Person:785090, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32273787

Of course, he isn't the only one who does an incredible, admirable job in the park. The Virunga, just as the entire region, has been home to civil wars and many complex and complicated armed conflicts, for decades; from poachers to rebels many groups want and try to benefit from the natural resources of the region. Being a ranger in the Virunga is a dangerous job: during the years, more than 140 of them have died in different clashes, often protecting the civilian populations. That the park is open to visitors again since October 2014, is a result of their persistent hard work.

So is the fact that I could visit the mountain gorillas. It was a visit for real, they were at home, in their natural habitat, munching on the leaves, while our group was standing in the rain, listening to the rangers odd guttural sounds, which aims to tell the gorillas that we are friends, there is nothing to be afraid of.

Was it for those grunts, that they didn't really care about us, I don't know. In any case, they weren't bothered by the four of us standing around in raincoats, wearing surgical masks, with only the sounds of our cameras and our sighs.

They didn't know that we got up at dawn, have been driving through the bumpy roads of Norht-Kivu, where the visitors are always accompanied by at least one armed escort – I was entertaining the smiling Claire with my limited swahili vocabulary. The gorillas weren't interested in the story of us climbing upwards in the jungle for a good two hours to meet them. At least we had the same opinion about the cold rain: the chief silverback was sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, visibly not being impressed by the weather. The smallest baby was hiding in his mom's arms from the cold and the rain, and was peeking out from there. He was the only one paying any attention to us at all.

We also quickly understood that the gorilla families don't get the same briefing as the tourists. We were told by the rangers to not go any closer than 7 meters, to not make eye contact with the chief because he will consider it as a challenge, and to avoid sudden movements. Some of the younger black-back males had a rather flexible interpretation of 7 meters and started approaching us if he felt like it, so we had to wonder whether keeping the distance or avoiding sudden movements is more important. The chief looked at us time and again, while munching his leaves and branches; then we tried to pretend we weren't watching him.

The most memorable part of this trip wasn't the size of the grown up gorillas, or that my hands were freezing at 3000 meters; not even the knowledge that we are watching a species that is extremely endangered – there are about 800 of them in the world, most of them living in the natural parks of DRC, Rwanda and Uganda. From the moment we met I couldn't stop thinking that although they may be sitting here in the jungle, eating leaves all day, but their features and behaviour is very human. The mom dropped on her back and laughed out loud, the chief was pouting at the rain, the kids were jumping around, wrestling, or fighting over the food.

And our departure went just as unnoticed as our arrival earlier. They went on with their usual daily activities, while we completed our descent, shivering, to the rangers' post. There we were welcomed with hot tea, blankets, big safari tent as seen in adventure movies, table set for lunch, and a gorgeous view over some other peaks of the Virunga range.

The park also operates a few lodges equipped with all commodities in the middle of the jungle – their prices are also quite remarkable. Benefiting from the relatively calmer times, they started offering different excursions in the region: besides the gorillas and the Nyiragongo volcano, they set up a tented camp on one of the tiny islands on Lake Kivu. Partially thanks to these improvements, the Virunga is recommended by no other than The New York Times as one of the tourist attractions of 2016.

This is good for promotion, it's probably an honour, maybe hope, but also an illusion: for the average tourist, this is still an extremely far, expensive, and dangerous trip. Besides, if anybody can, they shouldn't visit this region because The New York Times says so. Rather because nature, vegetation and animals alike, can been seen here in a state that is rare and can only be found in a few places in the world. "Undisturbed" sounds like a deeply ironic adjective here, yet it carries some truth.

And then, as a teaser, there is always the possibility of running into the Chief Warden in The Bakery!

Makes the people come together

One way to know it's summer now here is to notice that all major football (European-style football) tournaments are organized around this time of the year. Last January DRC was in the semi-finals of the Africa Cup (and we didn't have internet, for political reasons), this year it's something called African Nations' Championchips, meaning that only players who play in their national league qualify. Something like a Euro Cup where Christiano Ronaldo can't play.

And this year it's organized by Rwanda, and they were in the same qualifier group with DRC, and the first leg was played here in Gisenyi (the first town on the Rwandan side of the border; on a nicer day it can be seen from the canteen), and even the border was open until 10 pm (instead of 6).

The last qualifiers were this past Saturday, with no else than the semifinal at stake. Our tv doesn't really have channels these days (we used to have Al-Jazeera and some local gospelly thing), but we didn't quite need it: critical masses were watching it at the petrol station across the street, and in (and outside) of a pub just down by the roundabout, and were loudly expressing their feelings when DRC scored. And then when DRC won! Fiesta was on, just like last year, cars, motorbikes, flags, people, up and down the boulevard. Our guard came upstairs to tell us that one of the cars has the lights left on, and when we congratulated him, he basically melted into a puddle.

The semifinal was on Wednesday, and they won again, extra time and penalty shootout and all that jazz, so Sunday is the final, root for the Lépoards!

Side note: it's interesting also because it makes one wonder how much it is possible to identify with the country we live in, and whether it depends on time, or something else. If I was still living in Luxembourg, would I rather write „we won”? I still talk about the Grand Duke's family as if I know them personally (well, I was present twice when they waved from the balcony, that should count, no?), but is it just a question of getting used to? Clearly, I can't really identify or sympathize with the current president of DRC, but I mainly like Xavier Bettel because we've both been bonnevoisins, (and because he initiated and pushed through the law about same sex marriage), but I don't exactly follow his policies. When I was living in Angers in 2007, and people around me often referred to Sarkozy as „your president”, I always kindly reminded them that he's about as much of a Hungarian citizen as I am a French, and, besides, they voted for him, not me, so... start with the man in the mirror.

(The other way to know it's summer is that the days are longer. One certainly notices the sun setting and six instead of half past five.)