Today is World Women's Day. And word is out that DOCS is the
place to find women. everyone from amnesty international to local
women’s church groups have come to visit; those like the former
making reports and taking pictures and those of like the later praying
for the women and singing; the red cross will feed everyone a big meal,
maybe fish or meat though we haven’t mentioned it to get
anyone’s hopes up.
I spent the early morning Saturday working with a counselor to fill in the holes
of some women’s stories. And it hurt. Even the simplest and most
straightforward are horrendous to think about, but certain stories, the
way they are told, the details they’ve left out and are now being
filled in, or the fact that it is certain women, who I’ve fallen
particularly in love with here, who suffered these terrible things, can
catch me off my guard and bring me to tears again, typing away at my
little computer.
And that rawness came with me when I went around with these women’s
groups on their visits to the tents and wards. Everyone here seems to
have a preacher in them; I’ve seen the DOCS driver lead the
funeral service, after driving out the truck with the body; the
administrative assistant holding services in the church after work hours;
students at a school start a lesson with a ardent prayer. (Even the
teaching style of many of the teachers I’ve met here borders on
sermon-like, in presence and delivery, not subject.) And these visitors
were no exception. The entered the tents calling out to the women,
letting them know that they were here to support them in their pain,
strengthen them in their healing, and be with them as the community of
god’s children.
And they did come together - to pray and sing and support eachother:
forty women in tent, both visitors and patients, some whose feebleness
seemed heightened to me by the comparison. I rarely see the women cry
here, even when they are talking about their experiences to a counselor
or lying in bed, post-op, without any of the bevy of painkillers
we’d be taking in the same situation back home. And yet today was
full of quiet tears, covered, and maybe thus allowed, by the fervent
prayer coming from everyone in the room; arms outstretched to the sky or
covering one’s face, some crowded up together and holding hands,
which is where I would snuggle in, others lying down in their beds, being
alone for a moment in a crowded room. Long prayers but overall the
moments short-lived, when considered against the scale of their
experiences, pain, suffering, and loss. And then the next song would
begin and by its end, there wasn’t a women left whose face still
had its privacy. They don’t show their suffering - sometimes
tiredness or listlessness, of course their very real physical pain and,
even then, only when it becomes extreme, but, for the vast majority, I
have been greeted every single day with easy smiles.
No lesson for today because of all the celebrations, but all I wanted to
do was be close - to sit with them on their beds, entertaining each other
with jokes, broken language games, song lessons, and reading the letters
the advanced students had written me for homework. Sitting here late at
night, I almost want to go back and sleep there. Maybe I’m feeling
my own version of what draws my sweet performer to follow his art: making
a day-job out of sharing his creativity, his talent, himself with other
people because he is paid back in the joy it brings to others; when they
laugh for a straight three hours, leave realizing they’ve let go of
what ever was troubling them that day, or are inspired towards their own
creativity and energy. It heals; it’s simple; it feels right; and,
more and more, it’s beginning to feel worthy of my taking it
seriously, as seriously as I take the “real work” I do here.
Two months of slow realization and what I can now say I want to do with
my days, in addition to creating this school project for the future, is
to spend my present with these women and their kids, just making them
happy as they sit around this hospital, slowly healing and waiting for
what will come next. It’s not that they need it; I don’t
know how not to generalize that the people here (Congolese, Africans?)
are the most joyful of any group I have ever met. I learn from them what
joy is, what open-hearted feels like, but with that, I think, is growing
a desire to share that back. My teaching, organizing programs, gathering
stories is all hopelessly overshadowed by how much I love to see and feel
them happy and want to do anything that makes them so.
“learning about yourself is always in the present and knowledge is
always in the past, and as most of us live in the past and are satisfied
with the past, knowledge becomes extraordinarily important to us. That
is why we worship the erudite, the clever, the cunning. But if you are
learning all the time, learning every minute, learning by watching and
listening, learning by seeing and doing, then you will find that learning
is a constant movement without the past.”
Krishanamurti
Hard to articulate but this describes my life here, in many ways,
relative to my life at home. I’d stick future in with his thoughts
on the past and it would sum up the slim sliver of a present I usually
live in back home. And maybe why, feeling myself relaxing in my
ambitions to “work hard” and “get things
accomplished,” it doesn’t feel like I’m losing any of
my love of being productive or engaged.