This is Africa and Other Stereotypes

This is what the translator does while
the doctor is making notes--photos with happy kids

Did you know that Africa is not a country? I hope so because it seems to be something that many people haven’t figured out yet. Those are the people who think life in Africa is grass-roofed mud huts and starving children.  Somewhere Bono is singing and warlords are fighting and a UN convoy full of white saviors is carrying unwanted food generously donated to flood the markets in Africa with cheap grain. Some of that really is my life, and I wish the market midnight music thumpers preferred Bono to Celine Dion, but he hasn’t donated any sunglasses or free digital music to the peoples of Mundri yet, as far as I know.  But even as we fight the stereotypes that malign the lives of the people in the country of Africa, that whole “This is Africa” comment still comes.  Khawajas living in Africa (including myself on rare occasions) say it to encourage ourselves that our lives aren’t inconvenient, just adventurous.  And visiting khawajas say it with awe, a bit of trepidation, and a sigh of relief that they’re going home after a few days. But even Africans from various countries across the continent will say it with a small shrug of apology, a throb of pride and a dash of smugness—“This is Africa, and you weaklings who are not from here will never get it and we will watch you flame out and run home crying, and it will be hilarious.” Rememberthe guys who fixed our tire with a rope and then patted me on the head saying,“You are a khawaja, you don’t know about these things, but we are African. Weknow about these things”? That is one example.

The car. Bars added to hold long pipes. Bars not properly
welded to vehicle. Bars bounce and bang loudly,
making the ride even more exciting.

Anyway, there is a point to this rambling. I had a “This is Africa” day the other day that I will eventually get around to telling you about.  I don’t usually call out Africa on days when things get exciting because I am loyal to my continent Asia, which can also get exciting, and I don’t think Africa should always get the credit for crazy times. And I didn’t call my day a “This is Africa” day either—actually an African friend of mine did. I’m just agreeing for the purpose of this blog post title.

The day started out dreary and rainy—not at all like the day Simba’s dad held him up over the cliff and yelled, “AHHHHHHHH CHI BAMBA!” or whatever it was. The thing was, I had specifically asked God to give me a dry hot day to drive to Karika over notoriously bad roads, so I felt personally affronted by His refusal to grant my wish. I also felt personally affronted that Repent did not show up at 8am, as we agreed, when he had been doing it all week for the other khawajas. Usually, I don’t care if we leave on time. But today we had to get to Karika (a 2 hour drive away) to help with translation for a medical clinic. Along the way, we had some of our own work to do, checking out some hand pumps we drilled in the area, and talking to communities about our up-coming visit. We needed to stop in 4 places AND visit Repent’s mom. We decided that since we had driven the motorcycle the day before to Mbara (a 2+ hour drive on the bike one way), that Repent should have a rest and we would find alternate means of transportation. I agreed to ask someone if I could borrow his car, but I was pretty sure that he would say ‘no’ and we would have to find another way to hitch a ride with someone else. But the guy said ‘yes,’ which meant that I had to drive because Repent doesn’t know how.

Waiting for Repent

Here’s the thing: I do not love driving. As I have said before, I will pretty muchlet anyone else who wants to drive take the wheel, from my 86 year old grandfather, legendary deer murderer, to my 8 months pregnant sister.  I also do not love driving manual transmission because I am lazy and I like to be able to stick one foot up on the dashboard while the other one mans the gas and brake. And finally, there is a huge responsibility that falls on the shoulders of the person who is driving a large expensive piece of equipment like a car, especially if that vehicle is not actually yours. I just knew I was going to be THAT girl—the one that got the car stuck in the mud for a month, thereby securing her reputation as untrustworthy and a terrible driver (since we are talking about stereotypes and women are supposed to be bad drivers). Incidentally I did once get my car stuck in the snow while I was in grad school because I thought that it was just a beautiful myth that one could get stuck in the snow. All I ever knew about snow I learned from cartoons and when I found out that you can’t make a giant snowman by rolling a piece of snow down a hill, I thought that all the other stuff I’d heard about snow (how you can make it into ice cream, squish it into a snowball, get one’s car stuck in a heaps of it that was shoveled off the driveway so as not to get one's car stuck in it, etc) was all part of that beautiful myth. But it is true that one can get one’s car stuck in snow. Fortunately for me, the kindly neighborhood mailman dug me out. Then he asked me out for coffee, and I said yes because seriously, he spent an hour digging my car out, and that was very kind. So I spent an hour having coffee with him and not laughing when he started off our conversation by talking about aliens and the art of spray-painting cars. Anyway, that totally paid off my debt to him.

But to come back to South Sudan and driving and mud—one can also get deeply stuck in the mud. And the last time I’d been on the road to Karika, we’d had to turn back because there was a giant hole in one side of the road and a truck stuck on the other side of the road.

“How long have you been stuck here?” kindly inquired Moga of the EAM drilling team.

“36 days,” said the sad truck driver stuck in the ground like Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel.

A true life portrait of a
truck driver in Karika.

So between snow, alien-loving mailmen, and Mike Mulligan in the hole, I was nervous about driving the road to Karika. And it did not help my fragile nerves that Repent was late.

We finally hit the road around 9am, bouncing, banging, splashing.  I had initially put my seatbelt on because I heard that story about how Princess Diana would be alive today if she had worn hers, and her driver was probably way more skilled at his job than I am at mine and I’m also very princess-like. But every time I hit a bump, the seatbelt locked and 5 bumps in (approximately 28 seconds in the drive) I decided that the risk of me choking to death on the seatbelt was greater than the risk of me crashing into reckless paparazzi, and took it off. Then I had to suffer through a minute of seatbelt alarm bells, but I won the battle of wills with the car’s inner safety monitor (a useless little prig, just like safety monitors almost always are).  Then whenever I hit a bump, I would fly up in the air with my short little leg stumps kicking the air, flailing around, trying to find the clutch. In this manner we managed to reach our destination at the medical clinic in Karika.

Kid with malaria who fell asleep in my
arms while the doc was getting his stats.
I tried to wake him up to make him
drink, but he was comfy.

I could probably tell you a lot of stories about translating for medical clinics, but it has all melted into a blur of “What sickness is troubling you? Do you have diarrhea? Have you been vomiting? Do you have fever and night sweats?” By the end of 10 days, I was tired and delirious and falling asleep to the rhythm of “her chest pain is worse when she is eating but she is not having diarrhea only headaches and night sweats” and dreaming of translations from English to Juba Arabic and back again. The last day my translation skills involved me telling someone to go ahead and drink the water bottle the doctor gave you because she put blood in it and it will help you. Of course, I meant ‘medicine’ and not ‘blood’ and was alerted to that fact by the look of horror in the patient’s eyes. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that I can diagnose malaria, reflux, UTIs and migraines now. But I didn’t get to do any of the exciting stuff like digging spiders out of children’s ears or drilling a tiny hole through a toenail to drain out pus. So we will move on back to the driving part of the story.

Bonus photo: Malaria boy's bro and sister wanted to take
a fun photo with the khawaja to celebrate this occasion,
and because if your brother is miserable, that is always hilarious.
Siblings are the worst.

New baby

I had always planned to leave the clinic early because Repent and I had to do some of our own work on the way back.  Repent’s mother came by for her visit to the doctors and then we agreed to take her home. I thought that would be a quick “drop off and hug goodbye” scenario, but I was wrong. She had cooked food for her boy and we also had to come see the new grandbaby (Repent’s niece). We oohed and ahhed an appropriate amount of time and then she served us up a nice meal of bugs and blob. I ate a small amount as quickly as possible and then spent the rest of my energy telling Repent to hurry because we had to get back on the road! He is good at ignoring me, though, so he just finished calmly, hugged his mother, and headed back to the car.

“Wait,” called Mama. She ran out of her house carrying an opaque jar full of something. “Here. You take this honey. You are not married and you are like a daughter to me. So this is for you.”

Quick reader poll: Does that speech plus the gift mean that

Tasty bugs. Said my nephew:
"I would NEVER eat that."
I ate it.

A)   She feels sorry for me for being unmarried at my advanced age, so here’s some honey to make me feel better?

Or

B)   She is concerned that I am unmarried so here is some honey that will help me catch a man?

 Anyway, it is really good honey with hardly any bug pieces in it at all.

We started to head back to get our work done, but had to stop off back at the clinic to pick up something and drop it somewhere else. Then when we got to Somewhere Else, we had to go back to the clinic for something else and then back and this repeated several times until I yelled at Lexon, “I AM NOT A DRIVER AND WE HAVE THIS CAR BECAUSE WE HAVE WORK TO DO FOR REAL AND WE HAVE TO DO IT BEFORE DARK.” That worked when I promised to go back to the clinic one more time to tell the head nurse that she had to shut down NOW and get on the road because it is a dangerous road to drive on because mud, inclement weather, Dinkas and their car had no headlights. I also told a few other people while Lexon squeezed my hand gratefully for helping him out by yelling at khawajas, something he felt bad doing because they were his guests (also, he doesn’t really yell at people much, but yelling is one of my skillz).

First driving selfie by Repent. He's learning.

Finally we get on down the road. Remembering my vow to help out stranded travelers any time I have a car, in honor of the people who have helped me out when I’m stranded, I was a very generous driver, and kept offering to take people on down the road. Repent did not love this, but he agreed to let me stop to pick up pedestrians because we stopped right by some boys selling a petrified leg of goat that he wanted to buy.

Road to a hand pump. Note the mangos and the angle of the car.
Authentic. It's just like you were there with us.

We kept heading down the road—me, Repent, Leg of Goat, passengers, and 3 mangoes, which Repent cut up for us to eat while driving. I only dropped one piece in the floor, but I ate it anyway after Repent fished it back up for me. Dirt is full of healthy minerals here.

He's a fast learner.

Finally we dropped everyone off and had finished all our work stops but one near to Mundri. We decided to have fun and take some videos of us in the car. *Calm down, Mom.* Repent did all the videography, I was carefully driving with hands at “10 and on the shifter thingo.”  We were laughing at something in one of the videos, when I noticed a strange hissing sound. I shushed Repent and the video to make sure of the sound, and we decided to stop and try to determine the source of the sound. Fortunately, it turned out to be quite easy, which was convenient because while I did take autoshop in high school, another one of my skillz is to trick teachers into letting students watch videos during class, and we spent most our time watching old VHS tapes (yes, whatever, I’m older than you) of Junkyard Wars. That was pretty legit because our other class-time option was working on junk cars that weren’t likely to ever transport people or objects ever again. 

Repent was mesmerized by the sight a a girl changing a tire.

But it turns out I had punctured a tire probably by hitting a hidden rock in one of the deep mud ponds I’d driven through. But guess what—my dad taught me how to change a tire a long time ago (thanks, Dad!), and yes, it’s pretty intuitive, but maybe not for people who haven’t grown up with cars. While I was climbing around the back of the truck unscrewing the spare tire, Repent was digging around behind the Leg of Goat looking for the jack. He found it, and the hook to turn it, but he didn’t find the handle that screws on to the hook, allowing you to turn the hook and raise the jack. If you have never changed the tire on a Land Cruiser truck, you may have no idea what I’m talking about, and that doesn’t matter at all. But once I’d finally heaved the tire over the side to Repent, I found him hunched over under the car trying to turn the jack with his fingers. I laughed at him, and he went off to find a tree to pee on while I found the other piece and jacked up the car and then started unscrewing the bolts. He came back in time to finish turning the jack (he was so excited to learn how) and then film me changing the rest of the tire. Girl power! But then I did use a little boy power to let him heave the flat tire up into the back of the truck. I maintain that I could have done this if I had been alone and had to do it, but I know how sensitive men are about being involved in stereotypical “man’s work,” so I wanted to include him.

I took this photo (I've had years of practice),
but I love two things about it the most:
1. Repent's face
2. Repent turning the jack with his fingers.

Oh Repent...

I could totally have lifted that tire in the
air with one arm.

We made it back to Mundri just before dark, covered in mud and car goo. I was met by the medical team buying ingredients to make a mango pie, which I’d told them I had done in the past. Since it was one of the ladies’ birthdays, they wanted to make it to surprise here, but since I am the only one with an oven that doesn’t run on coals that they didn’t know how to light, I was going to be the one to make it anyway. So I buckled down for some stereotypical women’s work, baked that pie AND some brownies too. And it was a happy birthday for the 4 people who managed to stay awake for the pie. And as for me, I got accolades, which you know is something I like, and the only reason why I ever cook for other people.

So there you go—late start, rain storms, muddy roads, leg of goat, free truck rides, punctured tire, mango pie. This is Africa. Or anyway -- this is Mundri-to-Karika, Mundri West County, Western Equatoria State, South Sudan, Africa, Planet Earth.

Francis, Enoch and Data eating mango cobbler because
I was too tired after the birthday pie for a photo.
And  the cobbler recipe is courtesy of Emily Genius Seymour.
She texted it to me while waiting for her son to be born.
She is that awesome.

EMILY IS THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD!