These Local Reptiles Before

“Full Circle” was an interesting, if short novel by Frederick Yamusangie.  Having completed it today, I can now comment that coming-of-age in tier-three city Zaire, would have been a fair bit rougher than that of, say, Harrison, New York, where I sprouted.  Emanuel is ten or so and has moved, (or been moved, by his diplomat father) to the small town of Bulungu on the Kwilu river.  One boy in class doesn’t believe what he has said about precisely who is and this boy beats him, mercilessly after class.  Later, they befriend one another but it isn’t long before Emanuel has to watch this same chum, who has heroically pushed Emanuel aside, is dragged into the river, by a crocodile.  We’ve heard about these local reptiles before this scene. 

I have about six other Congolese novels on the shelf.  The catalyst which had spurred my interest in all things Congo, was an engagement we have with an NGO who are promoting the Good Wood Expo, a fair timber exchange, to be held in Pointe Noir, Republic of the Congo.  I was planning to visit this June, and I bought a dozen or more books on the Congo to ground an understanding of the vast expanse of central Africa.  The engagement was, of course, postponed.  I hope folks in the Congo are OK.  I noted there are a few cases in the Congo and though I hope there won’t be, there will certainly be more.  So if I don’t go this year, I’ll go some other time.  But I may as well enjoy my deeper reading on a topic that is already resonant. 

Sometimes I like to chop up vegetables and chicken and feta cheese and toss it all into a bowl of couscous and generously sprinkle it with pepper and paprika and cumin and bake that dish and call it Mediterranean.  I did that tonight.  Though I cooked the chicken separately and the reviews weren’t bad.  I liked it.  If I’d done it in Beijing, where there is no store-bought hummus available, I’d certainly have made my own and some baba ghanoush as well.  I served humous.  Store-bought humous.  Functional.  Efficient.  But nothing to be proud of. 

Parked my bike at the Walloon church down on Heugenot street today on my bike ride home.  I had it in my mind to photograph some of the gravestones.  We’d walked by them the other day when we had class here but the ladies were repulsed and I didn’t take a very close look.  It isn’t easy to read the stones, but it isn’t hard to imagine the people who lived here, three hundred years back, lowering their dead, gently here, into their final resting place. 

Wednesday 4/01/20