Pentecost Sunday afternoon

After mass, we walked down the hill to Joseph's "house". This day we walked in, and I had to use the bathroom; and I could not bite my tongue any longer. The place was absolutely filthy, and and just generally unlivable. As Kyle interjected as I yelled at Joseph, "it is worse than Appalachia"

I tried cleaning with what Joe had available, which was basically nothing. Some old dirty rags and some powder soap. So we walked down to the town looking for drinking glasses, toilet paper holder, wall hangers and a bucket. We did find the glasses and the toilet paper holder. The holder, was a bar around which you could put the tp. The owner of the shop told us that not once in the 20 some odd years that he had been there had anyone asked what that funny thing on the wall was. Which was a good thing because the owner himself had no idea what it was. He gave it to us for free. We also bought some more cloth ktangas to hang on the wall

We went back to Joe's apartment and started cleaning with hot water and powder soap. I sent Cadie and Jill an email asking for them to send cleaning supplies (ajax, sponges, windex etc). Also, I blew out Joe's electric tea kettle by making so much hot water (no hot water in this household!). Joe had also been making his green loose leaf tea (which I had sent from China in April) directly in the electric kettle. YUK! In the memorial tape, one of his students mentioned the tea, and how he had asked Joe what kind of tea it was. Joseph had told the students that he had picked it off the tree in his backyard. I guess that was an easier explanation than saying his mother had sent it from China.

During this time his next door neighbor came over to borrow something from Joseph. He had been paying her to clean house for him; I spoke seriously with her about the lack of cleanliness -but she did not speak english.

He wrote an email later to Cadie saying he did not understand why I was so upset, everything was fine. Later that night, and in his journals, he did admit that one morning he woke up and found a rat swimming in his sink waste bucket (no drains for the running water anywhere but the bathroom). He had to kill the rat by holding it under water with a broom stick.

The picture is of Joe's backyard. He had put a fence up the year before to try to keep some privacy, but it had fallen down. When I asked him where his garbage was he pointed to the door, and said just throw it out there. The chickens eat the organic, and once a month he would burn everything out back. This is how the whole village took care of their garbage!

Friends

This past weekend I spent in Andover Mass. with two friends from grammar school and a friend from high school. We were Girl Scouts together. We had all become close in high school and remained so through our young adulthood, parenting, and now. There are others in this group that live too far away, but you are still with us.

We have been through a lot of shit together ... this is not the first death of a child. We eat, we talk, we laugh, we hug. In our fiftieth year, three of us did the Westchester triathlon together. Joseph called these women his aunts, and he loved to spend time with them and to analyze them as if they were his own parents. They are true friends.

Sunday June 1, 2009

I think my dates are off - everything in Africa was not as it should be. We woke up on Sunday in time to attend the Pentecost Sunday Mass at the church. The mass was outside in the "green" across from the church. It was a mass, a little reminiscent of the 1960's U.S. catholic services with a lot of participation of the local choir, clapping hands and dancing through the service - but in Africa. We stood in the back (always the American-Irish Catholic culture) under a tree (it is hot in Africa, even in winter) and watched the town children right in front of us as they obediently sat through a long church service. One of the children had a t shirt with a picture of Che Guerra on it (the clothing of African children is often from bundles of clothing available for very cheap in African markets. Joseph had loved the t shirts found right after the 2007 super bowl season that proclaimed New England Patriots Super Bowl Champs 19-1. One of the townspeople wore a t shirt "Proud Parent of a SUNY Geneseo Student". It is somewhat akin to those kids who get tattoos of Chinese or Japanese characters.)

Anyway, it turns out that the kids were so good (and a little antsy) because right after the mass, the church hands out frozen ice pops - and in a town with very little electricity, this is a big deal!

That night at dinner Ray kept telling our host how impressed he was with the feeling of the mass, how it was so different from the mass at home. Our host looked at Ray and said, "I can tell you are not Catholic, but your children and wife are. They stood at the right time, sat at the right time and spoke at the right time - you did not do any of that. The mass you attended is the same mass that is said all over the world on Sunday - if you are Catholic, you understand that." I believe that Ray was feeling a little out of sorts and the simple routine of the mass was helping to ground him, as it did for Joseph and he attended mass every weekend that he was in the village. Religion does have its purposes.