The hidden treasure of this work

April 21st, 2009

My own mother fed me stoicism, a virtue I admire in her and which I have realised is far more than a measure of character – it is a survival tool. Life must be borne in both senses of the phrase and no finer example of stoicism is there than the mother who, as the head of her baby crowned, clicked the fingers of one hand and implored me with her eyes to take the other. Not a peep came out of her as she grimly expelled her new son. Equally silent that day was a young man who, grimacing, bore the antiseptic sting of a two-week old infected gunshot wound and with rapid nodding accepted my apologetic efforts to flex his contracted arm.

The afternoon wore on. The sun was strong and the magnetic pull of the shady waiting room drew an irresistible gaggle together. Such moments are the hidden treasure of this work – the chance to sit on a floor and be hot together, ask questions and accept the answers in the simple manner they are offered. Did they think peace was possible? Yes, but it would take time. How were their fields last time they were there? Dry and robbed. Have many of their neighbours have returned home? Some, but they’ll be back.

I asked one woman how many times she had been displaced. As her lips bubbled out a heavy sigh, her head fell backwards; her shoulders bowed with the weight of memory whilst the back of one hand clapped the palm of the other, the exhausted frustration of endurance. Superfluously, our driver translated: too many times to count.

Thanking them for their good company I wandered off to explore a four-part harmony resonating from the nearby church. Invited to join the local under-fives poking their noses through the blown-out windows, I spent a tearful half hour watching choir practice, which was orchestrated by a wiry man of rigour and high standards. As they swayed and swelled, I marvelled at the depth of their faith; that in the face of such pressing needs as collecting water and conserving as much energy as a piece of sugar cane permits you, this was how they chose to invest their precious daylight hours. As the dancing picked up a pace they tumbled to the ground (including the heavily pregnant back row) and I made out a few words of Swahili: one, friend, peace. They bounced upright. I sought solace for the shame of what I take for granted in the kitchen, which turned out to be the worst place in the world to find it.

The kitchen was actually two buildings, one a traditional mud hut, the other a large shack five planks of wood high with a corrugated metal roof floating on long, high poles. Two women sat on rocks, each with a baby on her back and several children and chickens milling about their feet. To their sides, in smooth motion, their machetes served as vegetable peelers. In blackened, misshapen pots over wood fires hemmed in by stones, hard-retrieved water was on the boil awaiting manioc flour. Eventually, in it goes, and with an apparatus resembling something in between a baseball bat and a punt, they began to stir and beat the manioc into fufu, the heavy, staple carbohydrate of sub-Saharan Africa. My verbs are inadequate. It looks like they are winning a boat race. At this point a third woman arrived with a wodge of firewood on her back twice her volume. Swinging it to the floor, she smiled and picked up her axe.

“I asked one woman how many times she had been displaced. As her lips bubbled out a heavy sigh, her head fell backwards; her shoulders bowed with the weight of memory whilst the back of one hand clapped the palm of the other, the exhausted frustration of endurance. Superfluously, our driver translated: too many times to count”

Some hours later, as we sat playing cards by candlelight, the smooth black faces of the children glistening in every nook and elbow they could prize themselves into, my colleague emerged from the hut with some surprise cans of Coke. I cracked open the ring pull (the sort that actually comes of before a manufacturer relieved us of this gross inconvenience) and acknowledged the imploring faces around me. Usually children in developing countries think big – donnez-moi l’argent!, donnez-moi football!. Here, all it took to make them smile was a ring pull. That’s destitution. (Yes, of course I gave them the whole thing).

On our final morning, suckered to a plastic mattress, I woke to yet more singing. This time it was coming from the mountain beyond the town and was accompanied by the stamping of boots. I sighed, put my MSF gilet over my pyjamas and pottered through the long grass to the latrine. Who knows what a day will bring? To be continued…

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