Mama Congo Turns One!

Mama Congo is One Year Old Today!

To celebrate, here's a walk down memory lane.

Sarah's Top 5: 

#1.  The day Mama Congo launched, I was juggling a bunch of teenagers in Kenya and trying to keep myself from leaking. And thus, my first post: Milk Share: UN Style.

#2.  I really love the image Jill describes here when she found Mama Vida and Mama YouYou raiding the star fruit tree. Role Mamas, indeed. You will never catch me up a tree, which is why I employ someone braver than I.

#3.  Ah yes. Remember that extended breastfeeding debate? It's fun to look back on this post and remember a time when nursing Ani was Mama approved. These days Mama YouYou shakes her head at Ani when she whines to nurse and says, "Tu n'as pas pas honte?!" or "Have you no shame?!" By Congolese standards she's now too old. And really, by this age she should be helping to fetch water and carrying small things on her head.

#4.  I really think these posts by Jill need to go viral. Since baby wearing is all the rage, why not follow this DIY and use just one simple piece of fabric. And, of course, I love the baby model. The photos are so great, one even made our Christmas card. Wear Your Baby: Part 1 and Part Deux: The Front Sling.

#5.  With over 1,000 views, this might be our most viewed and searched-for post. I'm re-posting it here in hopes that Woodward's will see it again and become an official Mama Congo sponsor. (Hey, they commented, which pretty much made our week.) Gripe Water or How We've Kept our Sanity.

Jill's Top 5:

#1.  Here's my first post.  Five months into our Congo tenure, I was still grappling with the fact that being "mama" wasn't so unique anymore.



#2.  Sarah's simple story of some bridesmaid dresses received a primetime-worthy twist when the Congolese military got involved:

#3.  This post got a lot of attention - and rightfully so.  It was the beginning of Mama Congo's adventures in Congolese childbirth:




#4.  I remember laughing until I cried while adding photos to Sarah's Whac-A-Mole post.  Best line ever:

That was some expert parenting you just witnessed. Did you see those moves about 7 hours in when these kids were seconds away from simultaneous meltdowns and we balanced 4 meal trays, 2 babies and 5 petit sachets of French cheese on our laps?"

#5.  And, for my last pick, I'm having a really hard time deciding between two radically different posts: Nude Pumps or How to Be Devastated.  I'm going to go with the depressing one, though.  Working on that piece felt like therapy and evolved into one of the best little essays I've ever written.  I'm wondering if I can somehow use it for grad school applications...  

So.  Happy Day, Mama Congo!  Hip Hip Hooray!

Long live the Pink Arrow.

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How to be Devastated

When death happens I am either professional or polite.  

Sometimes, I know what to do because I am the nurse who directs the bereaved. Or, I don't know what to do because I am just a sad friend.  This is how to grieve in America. The professionals tell us what to do and how to be.  Friends are awkward and polite.  Death is terrifying.  It is quiet.  It is to be overcome.

We don't know how to be devastated.

I mean, who does?

Well, maybe the Congolese.  Or at least they have a script that explains what to do.

Before I continue, I think about this excerpt from Binyavanga Wainaina's piece, "How to Write About Africa":

Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

I am going to write about death in Africa.  I am going to mention a Mama.  But, I am not the hero.  I am the confused person trying to figure out if I should smile kindly or cry softly.

Before Sarah and I went to visit Laure after Jean Baptiste's death, I talked to people.  I talked to all of the cultural consultants I rely on to not be offended by my absurd questions.  These people being Mama Vida, Mama YouYou, Tchic, and Evelyne.  I said, "I feel so sad.  But how should I act?  What do I do?"  And they all said, "Just be sad. It's not hard.  Why are you so worried?"

Then, separately, they each gave me the exact same instructions for what to expect after someone dies.

There will be an initial visit to the house.  You will shake hands.  You will sit.  Then, there may be a wake.  If you are Congolese, you absolutely must go.  If you are a foreigner, everyone understands that Westerners don't like dead bodies and you need only stay ten minutes.  Following, there will be a funeral.  In the morning if it is a child.  In the evening if it is an adult.  You may sing in church.  You may march messily through the streets, thrusting photos of the dead one in the faces of the people you pass. You will play happily with the children who don't understand.  You will hold the wife who is destroyed.  It is not hard.  These are easy things to do.

How to be devastated.

There is a script.  So, even at the moment when you find yourself panicking about the social appropriateness of your tears, you can just look around the room to see what everyone else is doing.  And go through the motions.  You sit.  You shake hands. You sit.  

A social script carries the awkward friend through confusion.  It gives a widow something to do in the hollow days after losing her love.  It forces family and friends to gather and support and take care of the kids.  Tchic told me that at most funerals he's been to, the peanut and hard-boiled egg sellers come when they hear the keening and singing, and people buy and they eat.  Funerals need food.

I find this matter-of-fact approach to death both deeply disturbing and seriously comforting.  I tried to tell Tchic how upsetting it was to hear that there is a specific time of day to bury children and everyone knows this.  Children dying is not a significant part of my worldview.  It is an everyday occurrence for Kinshasa.

On the other hand, a collective knowledge about the details of life and death is incredibly helpful.  People sometimes need just know what to do.  A woman giving birth often needs guidance in the last minutes of labor - when she is sure she can't do it.  I think it is the same for those who are grieving.  The brain stops working.

If you don't have a script, you are completely lost. 

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