Little Jerry and the End

     As I write to you know, I am safe at home in America.  A lot has happened in the last few days and it feels very strange, in many ways, to suddenly be back home in the States.

    My last few days in Impfondo were very bitter sweet.  The sweet part was definitely the end of our dear friend Little Jerry the rooster.  James and I decided that Sunday would be his day of reckoning, which meant that Saturday evening we needed to find him and bring him back to the house.  You see, Little Jerry was a roving sort of rooster who never seemed content to be bound by our meager backyard.  He longed for the company of other chickens, and so naturally made frequent sorties to the patient wards, where patient families kept a lot of chickens to feed their sick family members with.  

     So on this Saturday evening, we headed to the patient wards to find our AWOL chicken.  Sure enough, he was waddling over by the Men's surgery suite (Chirurgie Homme).  As soon as he saw us approach, he began to scamper away.  We followed him at a distance, shepherding him gradually back to our house.  As we got closer to the house, an African man asked us if we were trying to catch the chicken to eat it.  He said he'd give us a hand and he promptly picked up a few hefty stones and began chucking them at Little Jerry.  I suppose they don't play a lot of baseball here and his aim wasn't very accurate, just enough to scare Little Jerry even more.  Jerry dived into some bushes by the chapel.  I jumped in after him, but he managed to slip out before I could catch him.  He took off running and the three of us ran after him, directly back to the patient wards.

    

     By this point, a sizable crowd was beginning to amass in the common area between the patient wards.  I really wish I could have seen this sight from their eyes -- a tall lanky white dude taking off after a chicken at full tilt.  They began shouting and cheering.  Some folks shouted "Mundele! Mundele!" ("white person").  Others shouted "Simbate, Simbate!" ("you won't take him").  Perhaps fueled by their cheers, I was running as fast as I could and steadily gaining on Mr. Jerry.  The other two had ceased pursuit at this point, perhaps to share this humorous scene with the Congolese.  

     I continued to run and Jerry continued to bob and weave.  He ran through one of the shelters where patients' families cook over open fires.  The women feigned attempts to grab him, but he dodged them and continued running.  Then, Little Jerry made his fatal mistake: he ran into the female medicine ward ("Medicine Femme").  The African fellow had caught up by this point and we both rushed in after the chicken.  We closed the doors and the African man dived underneath the bed of an old lady with tropical splenomegaly; in a few seconds he reemerged with Little Jerry's legs firmly bound in his fist.  I quickly tied them up with the rope I had brought, thanked him profusely, and then exited Med Femme to the celebratory cheers of the crowd.  I held the chicken aloft as a trophy and James and I headed back to our house, proud and content.

    The next day, after church, we made an end of Little Jerry.  I read a short article on the internet on butchering a chicken (yes, Google has the answers to all of life's questions) and then proceeded to the backyard with a machete and a stump of wood.  I'll spare you all the finer details of this process and simply say that we relieved Little Jerry of his head, which he wasn't really using anyway and then proceeded to butcher him.  While we were disemboweling him, James had the fantastic idea of deep frying our fine-feathered friend.  He got the oil ready while I finished the butchering.  

     We decided that we needed to cook him a bit before we deep fried him, just to make sure that he was cooked thoroughly (didn't really want any souvenirs other than a great meal).  So we put him in a pressure cooker.  I really didn't know anything about pressure cookers; I understood the general concept of heating water, locking down the lid, and creating a lot of pressure to cook with.  So that's what we did.  After about 15 minutes of cooking, we decided to take him out and put him in the deep fryer which we had jerry-rigged (pun intended).  This, however, proved to be easier said than done.  Like I said, I didn't really know how to use a pressure cooker and I suppose I hadn't really understood the logical consequences of continuously adding heat to a closed system like that.  We had opened the steam valve and tons of steam was pouring out, but we hadn't turned off the flame.  I set about trying to get the lid off.  For some reason, the lid did not budge.  This probably should have made me suspicious and cautious, but it didn't; I decided to muscle it open and I gave it the old Ben Cox heave-ho.  Well, those of you who are physics students can probably guess what happened: the lid shot off and scalding hot water splashed everywhere.  By God's grace, most of it missed me and I only have a small burn on my hand as a souvenir of my stupidity.  I guess I understand now why terrorists like to make bombs out of these things.

     After doctoring up my hand a bit, we chopped up the chicken and made chicken fingers which we then breaded in Cayenne pepper and seasoned salt and dumped into the deep fryer.  James and I crossed our fingers; we had undertaken a lot of cooking experiments while we were here, most of which had turned out decently, but we were definitely venturing out into uncharted waters with this whole chicken thing.  Thankfully, the chicken turned out amazing; I'm sure its taste was greatly enhanced by how hungry we were, but I still consider it one of the best meals I've ever had. 

    Monday morning, I left for the airport with the Samoutous, the family that recently started an eye clinic at the hospital and who are travelling to Brazzaville and then to Gabon to visit family.  Leaving Impfondo was very difficult.  I felt like I had just become at home there and already was being stripped away.  I would have liked to stay much longer.  I guess I'll have to come back...

    The airport was a bit of a circus.  Coming to Africa, I had prepared myself for corrupt officials and inefficiency.  Thankfully, most of the time I was there, I did not experience any of this.  Monday at the airport, however, was another story.  We put our luggage on carts and joined the throng of Africans all jostling their way into an excuse for a line (the word "scrum", for those of you who play rugby, seems far more appropriate).  Eventually we made our way to a series of tables where police officers were going through bags to be checked.  I hoisted up my green backpack and opened it up for him to see. I showed him my clothes, my toiletries, and my few souvenirs.  He was just about to finish and close up my backpack when he saw the gleam of metal from my machete which was buried at the bottom of my bag.  He got excited.  He yanked out my machete and held it in the air, waving it around and making everyone within arms reach quite nervous.  Henri Samoutou, the eye surgeon, tried to talk to him and explain that since this was going in my checked luggage, it really wasn't a danger.  But the officer would hear none of it and began tearing every single thing out of my backpack.  I really didn't care about the machete, but was starting to get annoyed at how incompetent this guy was and how long it was taking to go through this check station.  Thankfully Henri is a very calm and collected man and he quietly went to go get the supervising officer who came over, told off the younger officer, and gave me my machete back.

    Our trip back to Brazzaville was very uneventful.  I was glad that I got to spend three days in Brazzaville with the Samoutous; not only was their knowledge of the city and of the language extremely useful, but they are a delightful family whom I enjoyed getting to know better.  During the day, Henri and his wife Joyce had appointments with government officials, so I stayed in Hotel Bravo with their kids and babysat.  They had a lot of fun playing with "Uncle Ben" and I did too.

    On Wednesday, I decided to make myself useful and fix things that were broken around the house.  On the top of my list were the bathroom door that kept getting stuck and the sink which was chronically leaking.  The door was easy enough; I got a wood planer from the tool box and shaved off a quarter inch or so.  Good as new.  The sink was another story.  I really have no experience in plumbing, but for some reason (masculine hubris, no doubt), I was pretty confident I could figure out what was wrong and fix it. I tried tightening a few of the attachments, but it was still leaking pretty good.  Then I saw that the faucet itself had a crack in it and needed to be replaced.  Thankfully there was a spare one, but in order to do exchange them, I needed to shut off the water main.  I looked around the building for the valve, but didn't find it, so I went to go ask Raul, one of the guards, where it was.  Unfortunately, my French plumbing vocabulary was essentially nonexistent, so I just led him into the bathroom so he could see the problem for himself.  He shut off the water and the two of us commenced to fixing the sink.  Of course, my lack of French and his lack of English made our efforts of teamwork very difficult and very amusing.  Thankfully, through charades and small words, we were able to figure things out.  After wrestling with the sink for a good hour or so, we finally had it operational and leak free.  Non petite travail, as he said.

    My travels Wednesday and Thursday were thankfully uneventful as well and I arrived safely in Cincinnati, where I was met by my eager parents.  It's good to be back in the US, it really is, but I miss the Congo terribly.  I'm still getting over the culture shock of coming from a place that has so little to a place that has so much.  Not sure if that's a shock I'll ever get over or that I should get over.  God has shown me a lot in Congo and has given me a lot of answers to questions I've been asking, but He has also given me just as many questions.  I know that I am certainly not the same person I was when I left, which is a good thing and is all part of his plan of sanctification.  I look forward to following the rest of the path He's set before me.

In faith,

Ben