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Commentary
*In May 1981, I received my master’s degree
in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. A year
later still impoverished, I was teaching composition and literature to freshmen and
sophomores on an adjunct basis at the University of the District
of Columbia, Connecticut Avenue campus. I was making preparation
to go to Africa with the Peace Corps. During this period, I was
living in the basement of Cecelia Fleming, a sometime
girlfriend.
The following summer, I spent ten weeks in
Zaire. I flew from Philadelphia to New York, from there to Paris
Airport, then to Lagos, and then to Kinshasha. We changed
planes. Air Zaire flew us to Bujumbura in Burundi; then a small
plane took us back into Zaire, to an air field (Goma) near Bukavu. It
was the longest air trip I had ever taken before or since, about
twenty hours. I do not like flying and I was exhausted. Most of
my time was spent in Bukavu, by Lake Kivu. This was the area in
which Rwanda refugees retreated after the holocaust conducted by
Hutus against the Tutsi people in the 1990s.
While in Bukavu, I passed through Rwanda to
get to the village of Luberizi. I stayed there several days. I
saw a giant tractor left by Communist China. Their intent was to
create rice farming in the area by damming the river named after
the village. But according to reports the Chief of the village
misplaced funds and the project came to nothing. The village was
exceedingly poor and bare-breasted women carried water on their
heads from about a half-mile away.
In Bukavu, I was often mistaken for a Tutsi
because I was tall with a high forehead. At a checkpoint between
Rwanda and Zaire, I had to insist that I was an America. The
response was "Incroyable!"
That August, I returned to
Virginia with malaria still in my body. I delayed in taking the
Aralen and my glands began to swell. On going to the doctor in
small-town Jarratt, this physician, who thought because of my
recently acquired accent that I was an African, frightened me with a
pre-diagnosis of Hodgkins disease. I decided for myself that he
didn't know what he was talking about, calmed down, and decided
to take the Aralen as instructed. After I took
the pills eight days in a row, the swellings disappeared and I
have not been troubled since. The only residue of my trip is
continual sinusitis, which came originally from the red dust of
Zaire. After I recuperated from my trip I returned to Washington
and stayed for awhile with Cecelia and then moved to a room in
Northeast Washington. My housemates included a fellow from
Senegal and one from Chicago. I taught a class in the English
departments of the universities of Maryland and the District of
Columbia. |
