Can you be home and away at the same time? Yes! I feel at home in Gamboula and yet I feel away. This is the nature of life here. And I guess I am okay with that.
As a quick aside, this may be my only post until we return to Berberati on the 17th of February on our way home. We are the only ones out here in Gamboula as of tomorrow so we will not have any way to send email. Darren phones me regulary to remind me how many days I have left and to check on how we are. We leave for Bayanga tomorrow and will spend a week checking on the work there.
We returned home safe yesterday afternoon after three long but good days out in the village. However, we returned to the news that Phillipe, the assistant director of the nursing school, had just died. He has been sick for the past year and had just started TB meds last week. What a shock to the hospital. Our trip went well and it was nice to hang out with Chrysler and Eloi. Sosso was Sosso, the group there existing of just 3 members and they were of course scrambling to find a place for us to stay. We ended up at some kind of hotel place, but with no water and Eloi wanted us to bar ourselves into our room as we all felt a little less than 100
percent secure in the town.
Mbiali has grown some since we were last there, and they have managed to build a new school/church next to the pastor's house. He also built a passage (guest house) except it doesn't have any beds. He said he was expecting us to stay the night there but I am not sure what he was thinking since there was nothing to sleep on. We stayed in Bamba but with the concession that we attend church in Mbiali. The trees look great and the Jackfruits are starting to give the first male flowers. Our evening in Bamba was spent talking about the Baka in Mbiali, the church there and all sorts of things to do with development and how best to do it. The hardest thing was seeing that they really do suffer, the children's bellies are full of worms; they are malnourished but not knowing what to do about it. And also knowing that it would be very easy to start something amongst them and feel like you were doing good when in reality you were destroying the last bit of dignity they had left instead of building them up for the future. It was a very difficult time, but I am so thankful for Chrysler and Eloi and their advice.
As I write this I can hear the guys in the wood shop putting together Phillipe's coffin and mourning cries coming from the hospital. Death must be so unbearable for those it leaves behind.
We ate birthday cookies the night we were in Sosso, after we finished our supper at a local restaurant. Tomorrow we will celebrate with a good lunch of couscous, falafel and hummus before we pack up for another week on the road to Bayanga. As I travel I am learning more and more about the culture here, especially from Eloi, and am having to make choices regarding what role I will play in society here. So the question is, who am I? Thankfully, both he and Chrysler have resigned to calling me just plain old Angela.
