Thoughts from a hotel room in which I'm quite happy as an introvert

Today is the day the team begins to disburse! I’m on my way to Goma with four of the participants to introduce them to the organizations they will work with for the next (almost) two years. Sadly, Serge’s sister-in-law passed away, so I am the sole leader of this crew for a few days. Interestingly, for me, the two North Americans will both begin in Bukavu, so I find myself as the only mzungu (white person) on board the board of around 300 passengers. The countryside is so astoundingly beautiful. We have many pictures already, but I am always inclined to take more, and I’m not even a good photographer! Also, I’m really happy because they’re playing sermons and soccer games on the tv instead of really violent movies.

(Oops, wrote that too soon. They started playing the same violent "white men come rescue Good Africans from Bad Africans" movie that they played on one of the other trips. I went out on the deck and ended up reading Psalm 121 in both English and Swahili with one of the boat's captains. What a life!)

Reflections from the last week of orientation:

-          In discussion with a visitor, she said “You don’t really think about the rule of law until it’s not there”. DR Congo does not have strong rule of law, to say the least. The government is not responsible to the citizens because their funding comes from the outside. This is a problem!

-          I had my first visit to the medical clinic here. After three days of stomach cramps and diarrhea, I decided I might have an amoeba and that requires lab work to confirm. So Mark accompanied me to a sweaty-hot tin shed where they took my vitals, using an old rusty scale and a thermometer that had been wiped with an alcohol swab recently. Thankfully, there are a lot of cognates between French and English, such as “cramps” and “diarrhea”. There were four people doing nothing in the lab and they returned results to the doctor within 20 minutes while Mark and I waited outside. The doc said I had some kind of gastro-infection, not amoeba, and gave me the name of the medicine to buy. I just needed the name, not a prescription for it. Now I’m feeling mostly better! And happy to know that they can handle that kind of thing easily. And it all cost less than $20.

-          On Saturday, I successfully communicated with a parking attendant, and as I left the place on foot, I kept talking to myself in French, saying things like: “I can communicate a little in French! I can speak French! Yes, it’s elementary, but it’s French! I have thought I can speak English and Spanish, but I never thought I would learn French.” And I was very proud of myself. That’s a rare and good feeling for sure! My French has suffered the past month, as I have had zero capacity to focus on language-learning.

-          Saturday afternoon, we played ultimate Frisbee 6 on 6 at one point! Two Seeders who will be based in Bukavu played, as did two Congolese! That’s such a good thing for Mark and me because we can forget about work and everything else. And it’s a great thing to have people other than expats playing because expats are in and out SO much here! The average term with an organization is probably around 6 months, and that would include leaving the country or at least Bukavu a number of times. So it’s really exciting to feel like we’re building a base of consistent players.