UPDATE FROM LOTTE 1
Location: Kinshasa - Congo-Kinshasa - Africa
Ambassador: OMSK OMSK
Kinshasa 27 June 2010
Learning how to walk
A constant sticking awareness of clothes, shoes, arms and fingers. It's warm in my body. Out the door. Into the world. Everywhere people talking about me. Good afternoon white woman! Move on, be brave, crack jokes. I try to find a posture. Straight up, shuffling, light-footed, open, gruff, goal-directed, lingering. Bonjour mouhindu, le noir, I return the smile. If I am white, they are black. It's that simple.
Not just the color of my skin, but also the rhythm of my walk, the tempo of my feet, expose that I am white. Their directedness betrays me. ‘Tu marche comme un commandant', is called out to me in rue banana. What I do is march.
Went out on slippers instead of boots today. The powdery sand slows my step. I can only move slowly and push along shuffling. Dragging the shoes behind me. Strolling along I am lost in the rhythm of the city. A straight, determined line would resist the surroundings and the time. Being in a hurry does not exist and being on time is pointless. I let myself be carried by a stream of hectic inertia. Screaming the city crawls forward. In an attempt to be without destination I go towards Saint Therese.
I familiarize myself with the speech, the negotiation. I speak loud, direct and compelling. Immediately, maintenant, now. Here it seems you must forever beg and whine. I think I must put pressure on all things that move slow, indistinct and sluggish. But maybe this is not true. Perhaps I can meet this world with more tranquility. Can I be vulnerable, unknowing and doubting. Like I feel.
On the balcony above the roofs. Corrugated iron and stone. How wonderful the wind. The voice of a neighbor. Children in the distance. Someone sweeping the floor. An excited conversation. Two men somewhere else. Everything is audible. Suddenly there's singing. A bird. I love the things passing by. Snatches, a breeze, fragments of conversation, a thought. Only parts of the whole. A piece of the things. Just like I am here present and won't be later. The smell of food.
We disperse ourselves throughout the house. Ank upstairs. Anoek and Rachid downstairs. Fierman in the garden, reading. Bart and Rianne discuss the budgets. Daan fries himself an egg. Work on, write, paint. The neighbor's music booms. Playing children, everywhere. We have not been outside today. Stay in. The shelter. Relative rest. Close together. There has been talk about weekends away. Out of the city. A swimming pool. The body restless here. With a constant input of everything you do not know yet and often don't want to know. As if we only yesterday dared to think, say, express. That it is difficult. Being here. A great need to stay close to yourself. Not to forget who you are. Lying on a mattress under the mosquito-net in a warm room. Voices, music, penetrating sound. Not wanting the house to be a fort. Confused by high walls, barbed wire and guards. And yet always the door locked. We have retreated. Today. This afternoon. Each our own room, our own work. This is who I am. Looking for the small cracks in thoughts and thinking, fine lines on paper. Anoek enters the room smiling. ‘May I borrow that book?' she whispers. ‘Sure.' She sneaks out on her toes. Supremely happy, because silence momentarily surrounds our work. Two ants walk across the tiled floor. Daan, on bare feet, writes in the small book. I did not know it could be so wonderful to concentrate.
‘Did you forget dear?' Stooped and in deep thought I move through the streets. Daan must remind me again to walk up straight. When he straightens my back it feels as if I fall backwards. A small boy walks by, a box of eggs on his head.
Lotte
