Carmen’s funeral

It is nine in the evening, and I have just landed in Pointe-Noire.  It is in this coastal town of the Congo that Carmen died over ten days ago on a Wednesday before sunset.  I have returned from the capital city , Brazzaville, where she was buried this Friday around two in the afternoon.

It was a very long Friday, the funeral having started Thursday here at the public mortuary located next to two majors hospitals and known in French as “La Morgue”.  The military hospital is next door and the A. Sicé, where Carmen died, on the other side

Our school’s staff ordered printed T-shirts with Carmen’s name on them worn by men, while the women made outfits with a black, yellow and white flowery pattern cotton cloth that was worn by all those that waited at the mortuary for the coffin to be released as well as for the other ladies who were waiting for the several buses that came by the school following the hearse on its way to the airport.

The procession came earlier than expected and the hearse could not stay more than five minutes, but it was enough time for all the junior high and high school students to rush to the front gate to greet and wish an “adieu” to Carmen as all the ladies wept while mentioning her name. 

Because of the flight the white coffin had to include within another coffin made out of zinc.  That double coffin made it impossible to open the small window intended to show the deceased face during the special times and places where that is customarly done.

 I flew on a flight just before the one the family had chosen hoping to welcome them all at the Maya Maya airport in Brazzaville.  Due to the construction of a much larger and sophisticated airport by a well-known Chinese company and because the presidential guards where everywhere around awaiting the arrival of the President, I chose instead to wait for the hearse and the family at the public mortuary, the Morgue that is behind the university hospital (known as the CHU).  It is near that mortuary that I ordered on behalf of the school the flower crown with the appropriate golden letters and words arranged on a ribbon and protected by a transparent plastic sheet.  Artificial flower arrangments made by youthful entrepreneurs in the vicinity of cemeteries and mortuaries.

The Brazzaville mortuary, as large as soccer stadium, at four in the afternoon is empty.  Only four policemen were on duty.  The family arrived and the hearse left the coffin for the night.  New rules forbid taking a coffin from the airport to the home and church before burial.  And every segment, every move, requires papers and money.  To the grief and the tears someone in the family has to deal with papers and money constantly.

The wake that started in Pointe-Noire and that lasted one week could only last one night in the home of the family.  An all night vigil with music and musicians had started.  When I arrived that evening there were visitors everywhere inside the house, the gardens and spilling into the street legally blocking traffic in that neighborhood dirt road.

That was Thursday.  Friday started at the same “morgue”, empty at 4 pm, now with hundreds of bereaved Congolese crying, waling, with women dancing around meeting points all awaiting their dead.  It is something to behold.  So many people waiting for the coffins to arrive empty and then waiting for the coffins to be released to the families in nineteen designated areas before the hearses arrive one at a time.  Where I stood awaiting Carmen’s shiny white coffin with handles I was told not to use to lift as they are purely decorative, I saw two tiny coffins lying on the ground by the main entrance for two still born babies, one slightly larger for a child, and three wooden coffins next to a simple pink one.  And around them women crying waving flowers, some carrying large framed photographs of the deceased, and young video filmmakers saving for posterity memories of people in their moments of bereavment.

Before the very elaborate Catholic services held at the Church of St. Francis, the coffin was brought home where eulogies were spoken and friends could be close to Carmen one last time. And after a Church ceremony with more than ten clergymen officiating and a European nun witnessing the ceremony discreetly in the background, and a truly impressive choir that rose to the heavens, and with over two hundred guests present, Carmen was taken to the “Ma Campagne” (“My field”) private cemetery where she was laid to rest as many workers and family members, I included, tried to use two thick cords slightly worn in places to carefully and with difficulty lower the shiny white coffin, before family and I pushed with a shovel some red earth inside the cemented walls,  bidding Carmen a farewell that the Catholic priests conveyed earlier with eloquence and with that magical incense reserved for such occasions that symbolizes to many the soul’s elevation to a seat of glory.

Recycled papers, tiny glasses and used whisky bottles

I wish I could write the history and the art of ngouba packaging and consumption.  Thirty years ago we used to visit the province of Bas-Zaire (now Bas Congo) and spend the day around the town of Inkisi (also known as Kisantu) past Kasangulu, thirty miles from Kinshasa.  Walking on red dirt roads occupied on both sides by countless “boutiques” and stalls, I would look for ngouba any time I was hungry.

Ngouba here ngouba there symbolized for me a face of Africa I felt comfortable with.  Seeing ngouba in a town or a village made me feel at home. I could relate to the omnipresent ngouba, the familiar African peanut everyone could afford.

The central African ngouba, natural or roasted, shelled or unshelled do not taste the same as the one purchased in the United States superbly packaged, roasted and salted in the best looking shelves of the best looking supermarkets. Our ngouba is a unit of time, a time lived with very little prosperity.

There are many kinds of ngouba, a variety of places one usually sees ngouba being served and consumed, several types of sellers selling these “arachides” as they are often called in French, and many sorts of packaging of these same peanuts. 

The unshelled peanuts ones are natural, roasted or boiled.  The pleasure is in the pealing.  If you shell them and roast them, you can leave the reddish “skin”, or you can remove it.  Once toasted they can be placed in bottles, without salt or with salt.  The aristocratic kind gets sugarcoated. 

During lunchtime they are consumed in offices, and more often than not in bars.  Home consumption is not as popular. Young sellers walk the streets for hours with the offerings in large enamel trays, stopping when called, while hundreds of stalls in many corners offer all the varieties being prepared daily.

The packaging varies from the recycled whisky bottles filled to the brim with salted or unsalted ngouba for one thousand francs cfa, served by “pouring” them in cupped hands and sometimes in one single cupped hand with appreciative smiles during feasts, weddings or other types of gathering.

Sellers sell small and larger quantities in paper cones made from newspapers or printed computer paper from discarded and “recycled” private and public sector institutions.  They make good reading if any one bothers to spend time to read them in public. Sometimes you can see numbers and calculations and even purchase orders, or listings of all sorts,  once the last peanut is gone and the paper unfolds.

One can even buy those nuts in tiny quantities in tiny liquor glasses offered for pennies, or in tight miniature bundles tightly packed in a transparent thin plastic sheet, to be extracted diligently using your teeth to loosen those ngouba pearls that keep reminding us of the small joys of daily life under some African skies.

Carmen

Hard to pack sadness, anger and unbelief in black on white.  She was a young, happy go lucky pre-school teacher with extra long necklaces and cute hats worn every other day, a French accent reminiscent of that France she knew as a child, who spoke fast, laughed a lot, smiled most of the time, full of emotions, fun to be around and much more.  She died the day before yesterday in a hospital bed before sunset, in the company of three lady visitors, of unknown reasons, or maybe just reasons one may never know.

All she needed to do, some thought, was to go on a serious diet for her own good, but with asthma and other health problems only her doctor father knew, she managed to live a simple life alone, with an old aunt or a cousin close by.   The bus rides early in the morning and the long waiting hours at the bus station in the evenings were added aggravations. The three-year olds loved her as she taught them mornings and afternoons, helped them during their  lunchtime meals and kept an eye on them during noon naps.

The day she passed away she was told to go in a cab somewhere in town for further tests.  Rudimentary hospital conditions with crowded shared rooms, which included simple beds with no sheets and two fans probably brought in by family members to help her breathe, made it impossible to receive the medical attention some would expect, including access to oxygen around the clock, and instant intensive care if needed.  

Was it because of the busyness of the place, the scarcity of health care staff, the rudimentary state of things, misdiagnosis or neglect that she lost her life?  Be that as it may, you do want to cross your fingers and pray God not to be seriously ill when you have to fight for your life, alone, with very modest means, in the middle of a no-woman’s land.

As the days of mourning continue, and the plastic chairs often placed in the street across the humble shared dwellings welcome hundreds of friends and colleagues who spend long nights to the sounds of religious songs, chatting and reminiscing until the buses come for the procession to her resting place, I find it hard to pack collective sadness, and the “wish things had turned out so differently if we just knew something awful was in the making” into this last paragraph.

The tank and the jeep

Vague memories of small wars (VMSW) (part I)

In the heart of continent A. where a cool collected country lies, with a big river, with a bend in it, running along part of its border, there was a time in an earlier century when for weeks on end the constant firing of bullets (as heard from the balcony of the former embassy of a former eastern country known for its well-placed r) sounded like supersonic birds.

Most left fast.  When the last tank came by, on its way to the landing strip, the last two members of the last family on the last street by the cathedral, rushed through the black gate to enter the tank (the one with the invisible hexagon on a piece of metal) through its back hatch. The birds on that day kept singing as bullets of all sizes kept up the persistent tensions of little known small wars.

Within days a jeep with a tiny invisible pentagon glued to a side door came to collect the neighbor’s papers and asked the remaining inhabitant (“come this is going to be long”) to join them in an honest retreat.  All he could tell the nice folk armed to the teeth dressed to kill “I am a poor fellow holding the fort with scared Irish setters, could you hand me over the remaining canned meat balls so I could count them and cut them in four pieces as long as the excitement lasts”.

The young night watchman sensing that all hell was being unleashed took the running shoes of the gone young inhabitant and some of his music and left through the same black metal gate to meet a fate unknown (is he still singing in an unknown band dreaming of spending his life in Paris sur Seine?)

All the poor fellow could think of was how to be and behave in unexpected times of upheaval even when forced to count meat balls by their fourths.  And all the setters could do, after the tank and the jeep had disappeared at the end of the semi-palatial dirt road, was to walk up and down the phony marble stairs of a former embassy, incapable or ashamed of barking at youngsters with guns in a town with no hope.

And this “triste” vignette ends in a “foot” note.  If we dare borrow their “vignettes” they borrow our “foot” (the owners of Versailles that is).  In lonely days of dangerous fireworks with no “foot” (football to the French, soccer that is) “loot” instead became that summer the sport of the day.  So from more than one balcony across a no man’s land, a witness could hear hammers hammering walls, thus kicking days of happy loot.

The Irish plastic chair

Ireland 1985

Snap shots of Ireland won’t tell the story.  Lush, green, pristine, welcoming, ethereal and the music, all is a good thing.  Yet lands, languages and customs evolve, nothing stays static, never been back since then, my loss!  But back in 1985 four memories crystallized Ireland in one man’s mind. 

Forget airport landing in Shanon a year thereafter.  There was a ferry linking the suburb of Goodwick in Fishguard, Wales, to Rosslare in Ireland.  In Rosslare there was a “wooden” train (or was it?) that took you to Waterford, where famous crystals are made.  The train and the crystal were entry points into the perceived Irish spirit. 

But then came the dog show.

Before technology entered into lands and lives, there were dogs being celebrated in Irish fields.

Contests of large and small canine creatures, groomed and trained before proud owners and fair judges, were taking place in a verdant suburb.  Such a display of beauty and agility was something to behold.

And yet the most amazing thing, irrelevant to the festivities, was the light rain, the first of the repeated drizzles that punctuate daily life.  All the reserved white plastic chairs were wet. Nowhere to sit for unexpected “guests” .  And out of nowhere a little girl in a white dress accompanied by her parents came up to me, as she noticed a puzzled and lost look in my face and said in the language of poets of yesteryear: “May I wipe the chair for you”. 

Of all the little girls in the whole wide world, how many little girls, do you know, would have said those seven basic words? It may be unfair to state, simplified to the extreme, but that scene, to me, is part of the soul of Ireland.

Horn-honking days by the equator

(My little girl and my little boy have pushed me over the cliff of words.  Were it not for them, now serious adults living in airplanes, I would not have penned a word.  So in honor of my family, as a person over the hill, overlooking a cliff or two, I will be writing from time to time a bloggy, defined by no dictionary as a one paragraph blurb dealing with a point of no return)

During most hot Saturday afternoons in the rainy season along the main boulevard, every couple of hours, horn-honking cars drive away from the railway station with cameramen dangling from cab windows, towards expensive honky-tonks, in a noisy procession, to partake in elaborate wedding ceremonies, hours after official morning vows.  Years after bottles and gifts, horns never honk anywhere near honky-tonks when things get tough and the singers stop singing. By then the haves and the have-nots have long forgotten fidelity and have opted for multiplicity (these are exceptional cases mind you) as the surest means to enjoy the best remaining fruits that life has to offer (women were thus being pictured by eminent professors of business schools in an earlier century).

Gems

Three uncommon gems with roots and hearts linked to Persia, Africa and Ukraine (divine attachments if you ask me) were walking under the shade of an alley of ancient trees (oaks?) on their way to the neighborhood athenaeum discussing the days when Athena spoke to her friends about wisdom before people diluted the word, and about crafts when there were no factories, and they couldn’t stop laughing as they reminisced about the good old days.

All bloggers need an audience.  Within the immensity of the www world I, for one, am blessed.  Of all my southern commentators living in the great state of the redwoods, by the beach, and the home of funky coffee houses, three gems shine across the Atlantic.   The three by then had stopped for coffee after their visit to the neighborhood athenaeum.  Of course there are more gems, but how am I to know?

They are descendents of great heroines, humble in all dealings, and gifted in science, literature and art.  They will recognize themselves by the initials of their first names.  M, E and V spell medieval, vehement and Vermont, as they reflect history and strength, and are busy building the golden age. 

In the realm of the spirit they move with the ease of angels in the firmament.  Their moves and their words are recorded by the eternal computer who never misses the least intention, nor the least heartbeat when spent in the kingdom of optimism. 

Lucky blogger he is, the one who is heard by kind minds, sincere hearts, and forgiving intellects.  And beyond the good fortune of one, doesn’t it strike you as odd and sad that with the millions of blogs and sites created out in space, and the billions of words written (and spoken) daily in dozens of tongues, that there can still be room for something other than non-stop celebrations of the human spirit?

Rosebank under African skies

(P. and K. will forgive me for the piece but I’ll be the first volunteer to live in outer space if the space station looks anything like Rosebank.  Actually if P. and K. were not around Rosebank, Rosebank will be neither as beautiful as a rose, nor as promising as a bank).

I may have made mention in past ages and past pages of the topic of addictions, however my attachment to Rosebank mall, more so actually than the larger Rosebank neighborhood within Sandton  (Johannesburg, South Africa), is an attachment of a specific nature, begging to be forgiven.

Malls are a reality that we all live with.  I’d rather walk a narrow tortuous street with side alleys, dark in some corners, with store windows of the movie-set sort, and mysterious boutiques driven by bored,impatient and colorful personalities, than to walk through a neon-lit complex larger than life with gigantic parking in the outskirts of most cities.  However when it comes to Rosebank, the mall that is, the force of habit has transfigured the place into something that it isn’t to most: a refuge,a home, and a park for business-lie strolls with built-in protection from would-be muggers.

This not being a travel guide I’ll risk your displeasure by being subjectively precise in some lines and vague and esoteric in others.   At point blank I will state that our beautiful dinosaur is a multi-faceted creature, with : 1 (the Zone), 2 (the Firs) 3 (a gallery) 4 (a large mall attachment) 5 (a walkway under the stars) and 6 (an African market that extends on weekends into a gigantic car park for its ritualistic Sunday market), six (at least) components or facets or faces that “look” nothing like each other.  Walking from 1 to 2, and 2 to 3 etc. is like walking from France to Germany, and from Germany to Luxembourg, or from Luxembourg to Switzerland assuming they had common borders (please check a map to correct me).

It would take a book to describe and narrate the dynamics of that world.  If distilled I come up with the comfort of a café lounge of a famous hotel where American celebrities spend time when visiting orphanages they sponsor with joy, to a falafel joint you chance upon on your way to either the “nouveau” film house with the intelligent flicks and architecture film festival and its cousins, or to the standard blockbuster theater that covers the rest of the world’s movie production, including Asian masterpieces for fans hungry for romance and blood.

The clothing and the shoes and the perfumes galore adorning dozens of boutiques, imports of the expensive kind, constitute the standard fare, but if you stick to south African creations you will have to continue shopping and window-shopping every hour on the hour, so colorful are the creations, till Sunday comes around (what breakfasts the country offers !) when everyone under the sun exhibits and sells in stalls of touching warmth, crafts, soaps, and wooden and metal marvels to decorate your abodes.

I for one love to walk for miles back and forth, sitting and sipping a coffee here and a tea there, and going from one movie to the next with transit time spent in the used bookstore, and the “exclusive” collection of books in two malls, with a stopover in the well-stocked camera shop before calling it quits in the school supply store honestly positioned in the first floor of the gallery or in the coin collector’s heaven a stone’s throw away. Sad indeed that everyone goes home early!

And whenever I have earned enough rands that year I may linger in front of the aristocratic jewelry displays of dozens of south African jewelers working in gold, silver, platinum and pearls, looking for an elusive bargain in the high end of her offerings, before I walk into the Australian leather goods store that is now memory as the Firs has received an expensive face lift and sent some poor souls to other space stations.

In no other space-station will you gaze on artists with painted faces frozen in poses moveable when a coin drops in a cash hat by the feet of the talented pantomimist. Nowhere else will you witness the “promeneurs” crisscrossing the mall in an endless celebration of the real fun of the mere luck of existing under African skies.

But the mall will remain an island within the larger picture of continental bleakness.

Things Italian beyond ravioli

After bongiorno and ciao, and the offspring of signori pasta, the obvious spaghetti, ravioli, pizza, tortellini, penne, lasagna, cannelloni, visitors to Italy look for things specifically Italian.  I for one in the last two years when entering by road felt “bienvenuti” in a dizzy way as I counted close to 200 tunnels from the French border to Genova, a freeway along the coast line. Dizzy from not always seeing the light at the end of the tunnels, but excited about the prospects of “being” in Italy.  Just pronouncing the name is enough.

I have always thought of Italy as a rather expensive land, judging by breakfast fare, at the time when the Lira was running the country.  Now with euros the whole continent may not be a bargain.  Beyond the cost of living for a visitor, “nationals” have no choice but to adapt of course, the interesting question, vis à vis France for instance, is what makes Italy different from France, aside from the language.  What is Italian about Italy.

The unmistakable European touch, still there always in spite of the  horrendous destruction of cities during the second world war, are its buildings, narrow streets (so one walks), smaller things (so you feel a certain coziness), tons of people (so you feel warm), public transportation (so you get rid of your car), and the togetherness of closely knit communities (so you are jealous).  From this perspective wherever you go in Europe you are basically in a “union” with the above traits, a common denominator, sharing coins and bills, and speaking very different languages.

The “American factor” kicks in though in most places because of the “landscaping” of all things modern, from the fast food joints, malls and other big commercial names, to the English as a language that most cherish for obvious reasons.

So back to Italy’s personality. What I cherish are the vivid conversations, the tightness of groups, the walking together in old streets, the gestures, the expressions, the off orange, off yellow façades of most “row” houses, the “duomo” which doesn’t sound like a cathedral but in fact it is, and all the elegant ladies riding their bikes casually in Parma at least. And the ham if you are not vegetarian. This not being a tourist guide will skip the thousands of monuments and sights that boggle the mind.

So what is left beyond warmth, togetherness, facades, duomos, elegance, bicycles and pasta? Probably the Italian language itself,  and world urbanization slowly replacing old structures, as the old fails to be saved.  I pray Venice never goes.

French things

Everyone knows that the French are known for their kisses, windows, telephones, heals, toasts, chalks, chops, bulldogs, horns, pastries, dressings, cancans, leaves and fries.  Beyond the mundane and the obvious, most fans of things French will insist on wine and cheese. There are countless other “things”, if fairness was called in to be a fair judge, that justify the love for the land even if the welcome at borders is oftentimes of the unpleasant strand.

In the vast range of things French this short sheet will touch with every bit of  subjectivity  and remnants of poetic aspirations on anything faintly resembling pure charm that makes for indelible imprints.  Categories are allowed. Village names, cities, streets and monuments need not be mentioned in four paragraphs.

“La liste commence”.  Tree positioning as an art form across the land, within towns and, in-between them, and as you carefully approach them without getting a ticket in the mail. Closely linked, please add to that basket of things of beauty that sell well every single country road you could lay your eyes on.  Ah the landscapes!, so long as you don’t get within a mile of the tolls adorning the super freeways.  And the coastlines that have remained non-commercial in spite of the invasions.

The idea of the French railway system, the train stations when your eyes are closed as the crowds get in the way of the architecture, and the sounds when announcements are made through loudspeakers anywhere in the land, with the exception of the security ones threatening the immediate destruction of abandoned bags full of mementos, a tooth brush, and toys for the kids (hopefully).

The villages if you can ignore the stares. The flee-markets wherever they might be. The old phone cards, no longer in use. The legendary newspapers and the written and spoken word, alongside the documentary tradition and the French curiosity of things distant.  Authors and artists as far back as the eye can see, to be celebrated with an honest pastry followed in due time with a home-made soup wherever home-cooking remains a viable tradition.  Will leave culinary commentaries to the experts on elusive aromas and concepts.

And vive les artisans (they shall be named in due time) and French-made handiwork before it is slaughtered!