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1. Courage: As a child and later you often seemed fearless in pursuing your objectives, whether in a game or telling a prejudiced stranger off. This tenacity has been linked with a strong sense of inner direction. You seem never to doubt your objective and then be willing to act.

2. Your inner directedness seems to be leading you to areas of meaning, purpose, and high values. You seem always to be concerned with more than just yourself, indicating a maturity far beyond your years.

Thus I know you will do well in the tasks you set for yourself and I am proud to be your father.

Love,

Dad

As if Dad’s trying to temper me with another parting message, I later find a small collection of mini digital video tapes that have been scattered and lost in a junk drawer. I interviewed my dad on video in his final weeks. When I asked about his work and finding meaning through helping others, he responded, “I don’t think you can be focused on, ‘Oh, gee, I want to make a difference.’ It has to be spontaneous. If it’s not . . . there’s some kind of egotistical thing going on. That’s a red flag. You hope you impact people on the deepest level you are capable of at the time. Sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don’t. You’re trying.”

I WAKE IN MY empty attic-bedroom, three stories up, with windows overlooking the top branches of the two ancient walnut trees that guard my empty Craftsman-style house. Like the rest of the place, my bedroom is void of furnishings, except for some clothes on a rolling rack and the crisp white sheets and comforter that engulf me on a mattress on the floor. I get up, wander downstairs, get a cup of tea, and check my email. There is a message from Eric with the subject line “Seventeen Knifed to Death in Kaniola.”

“I am forwarding you an article about 17 persons who were killed by knives in Kaniola. Do you remember there?”

Yes, Eric, I remember there.

What part of Kaniola? Oh, God. Was it the area I hiked to? Was it people I’ve met?

I burst into tears and cry half the day, scanning the footage, searching my memory, swimming in images of the children who ducked when I pointed the camera at them. The waddling little boy. The grandmother. The boys playing soccer on the hilltop. The three still-innocent girls. Their brother, our guide. The father. Oh God, the father. Is it Christophe? It must be.

I remember—today is Memorial Day.

I’ve spent too many days scribbling down notes—shreds of paper that get lost in stacks and “to sort” boxes—with pleading faces in my head, telling me I promised to continue until the coming of Jesus. As time goes on, I’m all too aware I am slowly becoming another one of those muzungu bullshitters who said they care, who said they’d be back, who said they’d do something. Maybe the problem isn’t me straightening out the story. Maybe it isn’t complete. I have unfinished business.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Missing

UNDER THE WEIGHT of fluorescent lights and jet lag, I watch the unclaimed plastic suitcases make their final rounds on the baggage belt. I’ve combed the pile of bags set to the side, waiting to be claimed, and scoured nearby belts to see if my bag could have maybe, possibly, been put on the wrong cart.

It’s late night in Nairobi, 15 months since I was last in Africa, and time to face facts. The bag is still in England, lost with tens of thousands of others in the abyss of Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 chaos. All the carefully selected presents, my clothes, videotapes, malaria pills, tampons . . . I’m going to Congo with no stuff.

I get in line behind the other British Airways passengers who share my fate, comforting myself by taking stock of what I do have. The essentials: my camera bag, my white three-ring binder, a catalog of photos, printed from video, of every person I passed in Kaniola on the Last Walk.

At least having no stuff breaks the ice as I cross the Congo border, pulling the passport-stamp guy into my little drama. “I have no bags for you to search.”

“You didn’t get your bag?”

“No.”

He