A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [90]
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
These Fragments
IN THE TINY Rwandan hilltop airport, which overlooks Lake Kivu and Congo’s hills beyond, I file past security. Zainab, Alice, and Prathiba pull up Congo’s hills beyond, I file past security. Zainab, Alice, and Prathiba pull up and emerge from their car. They will be on my flight to Kigali, the only flight this airport will host today.
Passports stamped.
Fees paid.
Luggage checked.
I wave my final goodbye to Serge and Maurice and proceed to the pale cement waiting room while Zainab and Prathiba navigate their way through the bureaucracy. Alice has already cleared her paperwork and stands alone by the wall, wearing a do-not-disturb look. Instinct tells me to leave her alone—but come on. It’s Alice Walker, fresh out of Congo. I can’t resist. I set my bags down and approach her. With desperate curiosity I ask, “What were your impressions?”
She looks at me, seemingly shocked at my question. “I could not begin . . . It will take months.”
Embarrassed, I slink across the waiting room and find an empty wall. I stand under the TV and face the waiting room, its tattered couches and plastic seats hosting twenty or so bored-looking travelers. I’m already feeling raw and shaky; I’m wired on caffeine and sugar from a lunch of Coke and french fries at the airport snack bar, where Maurice, Serge, and I moped, dreading our imminent goodbye. I asked Serge, who claimed to speak no English, “What will you do when I’m gone?”
Serge grumbled, “Some f——ing job.”
We burst into laughter that ended with the quiet heartbreak you feel when you look into the eyes of someone dear, unsure if you will ever see that person again. Maurice shrugged and said, “We are like orphans.”
Adrenaline woke me at four this morning. With the finish line in view, something was rumbling inside me. Ted called around 4:30 AM to let me know the house sold following a bidding war. Our move-out date is set for three weeks from now.
We drove to Panzi after breakfast to say a last goodbye to Generose. Bonjour’s mom approached me in the parking lot and, with a big hug, told me Bonjour is okay. “Aksanti sana.” Thank you so much.
Later, in the light-filled office with a view of the lake, a Women for Women staff member and I talked about memorials. She said, “We are not like Rwanda. It is not possible here in Congo to leave the dead on display. We bury our dead.”
I know of the genocide memorials she was referring to, though I’d had no time to visit. “I imagine this is why some journalists say Congo doesn’t photograph well,” I said “They’re thinking, Where are the bodies?”
“Exactly,” she says. “If you come across a body, you must bury it, even if you don’t know the person. Otherwise, we believe they will haunt you.”
The conversation went no further; I understood the point. I thought of the foot-square box, the three mini-urns, and the Build-a-Bear that hold my father’s ashes.
Now, standing against the wall in the airport, I scan the couches, noticing the blank stares fixed on the TV above me, the mix of stoic aid workers and African businessmen. I’m hoping the embarrassment doesn’t show in my face. No such luck. Alice reads my expression and approaches to ask, “What were your impressions?”
The question slaps me like an alarm bell sounding during a deep night’s sleep. I scramble for words, but I’m at a loss. My defenses seem to have crept away, abandoning their posts somewhere between my last breakfast on Orchid’s terrace and Generose’s final call to Maurice’s cell phone, which came as we chugged up the smooth, Rwandan road above Lake Kivu. Generose called to announce that she had “fainted from grief ” after we said goodbye.
What are my impressions?
“You see how difficult that is?” Alice asks, rhetorically.
I don’t have impressions. No well-formed ideas, no neat prescriptions. Only fragments, unedited and unfiltered. In my embarrassment, the raw and shaky feeling is giving way to something nameless,