Esengo - Partie I

In Lingala, Esengo means joy. Esengo is my newest name, given to me by my host mother in Maluku, Maman Yvete. She didn't know this, but Joy is also my mother's middle name.

I got back from my second stay in Maluku on Monday night. I had arrived Thursday morning and immediately left with Maman Yvete to see the other women of ALFEMADEC who were, as always, sitting under their tree in front of Maman Eugenie's apartment building and preparing pondu for the evening meal. Their welcome was warm and different this time. Instead of simply lightly shaking my hand, they slapped it hard and kissed me three times, once on either cheek. This is a greeting I've only seen extended to close family and friends. There was another woman there who I had only met once briefly during my first stay whom I greeted last. After the kisses, she said in Lingala the equivalent of 'ah, yes, we accept you.' What a feeling.

Thursday afternoon we went back down to Maess, the community in which we had distributed the Vitamin A. We went to one of the homes of a group of young mothers ALFEMADEC works with, along with four other young girls from Mongengenge (the community where the ALFEM women live) to make chikwangue. Like fufu, chikwangue is a dish made with manioc flour eaten with almost every meal along with pondu. Either fufu or chikwangue comprise up to 80% of many people's daily caloric intake.



We all gathered under a tree in the yard - where so many women's activities take place - and mixed and kneaded the flour with water, rolled it into portions, then wrapped it in leaves and string to boil in a big pot over an open fire. This is me attempting to tie the string. We all had a big laugh at my expense. Good times had by all.

Thursday evening, my host father Papa Benjamin and Maman Yvete took me to a friend's home to sit with her awhile and have her explain her work to me. She is one of the ALFEM mamans and, as so many women do, serves her community by preparing food. Five to six days a week she prepares a lunch of fish, fufu or chikwangue, and pondu for a couple hundred employees at a local factory. She begins to prepare the following day's meal around six every evening - after she's fed her own family - and finishes for the night around ten or eleven. The following morning she's usually up at 3:30 to begin thawing the fish frozen the previous night and cooking the pondu and manioc dish (that's right- the previous night's four or five hours of work was simply reading the food to be cooked). She leaves the house by 6:30, drops the lunch off at the factory and returns no later than 7:30 to buy the breakfast of white bread for her family and send them off to work and school. Then she cleans the house and does the washing, and by around noon begins preparing her family's evening meal. At six that evening she starts all over again.

We sat with her a while and talked while she worked, and when she took a break we filed into the living room to sit with her husband. He bought us some beer - in Maluku people were constantly buying me beer, even at 11 in the morning; it's quite the treat at 1,500 to 2,500 francs a pop - and he impressed me with his English language skills. We laughed at most of my Lingala and they began asking me how my experience of Congo has been so far. This is a question that I'm asked often. "How do you find my country?" It's a question that I have a difficult time answering concisely.

How do I "find" Congo?

I find it fascinating, too marvelous to understand. My head is constantly spinning and my senses are always on overdrive; almost as though they are being assaulted, but not in a bad way. Congolese people are so friendly and hospitable and eager to both teach and learn from me (although I still can't imagine what I could possibly have to teach them, other than the fact that in Canada it gets colder than their freezers). Jusgt sitting in the presence of the women of Maluku, not speaking but just listening to their busy Lingala chatter and lively expressions, I've developed new understandings of the world as others experience it that will take me years to process to the point of articulation. This country's desparity and beauty is embodied in its people's every breath. It is rough, rugged, and raw. It is astoundingly honest and humble. It is mind-bogglingly complex. I love this country.

That's not what I said. Hehe.

I just tell people that I love it and it's hot and formidable. Then they laugh, and then I laugh, and they say ça vas, merçi, and I say ça vas, merçi. But people are always laughing at me, and I have nothing to do but laugh along. Have I ever learned to laugh at myself! I think my last Facebook status update was something to the tune of 'Megan has had enough embarrassing, character building moments in the past six weeks to build a whole new personality.' And that is why they named me Esengo last Thursday night. They said that my presence and my laughter have brought joy to their community. So of course I started beaming and choking back tears. Then they started laughing, and I started laughing. And then I told them that Joy is my mother's second name, and they exclaimed their surprise and said that it was meant to be, and I smiled and laughed, and they smiled and laughed.