everybody says these things: Last Night in Khongoloti

My last night at Khongolote. Today I talked to the pastor about staying here another week. He said that he needed to talk to his wife about it, but I couldn't foresee any reason why they'd object so I was pretty confident that I'd be accepted. Kote and Miguel came to visit me. Kote was supposed to come yesterday. They both said they were very busy yesterday. Today they had nothing to do though apparently, so they walked here. We took a chapa to the internet cafe. I will miss chapa's very very much when I leave. We took an open chapa (a little two seater Toyota pickup truck) to Benfica. I've ridden open chapas several times since I've been here though they are technically illegal (especially for white people who are specifically targeted by police in hopes of earning a bribe), my favorite so far being the great big lorry, piled high with maize and charcoal and bearing several tethered goats and chickens, that Levi and I rode into Chimoio back in June; but today's experience was novel in its combination of far too-many people in far too rickety a truck on far too treacherous a road. Treacherous might be a bit of a hyperbole, but it was a really bouncy ride. We caught our ride early enough to earn seats around the edge of the bed, but after we took up the last sitting spots the rest of passengers piling in had to stand in the middle, balancing themselves with whatever they could hold on to, which usually happened to be the heads and shoulders of the passengers seated precariously on the edge of the pickup. For most of the trip I found myself leaning as far in as the girth of my fellow standing passengers in the middle allowed, with one hand trying to grip the side of the pickup directly beneath my rear-end while the other had nothing to hold on to except my own knee. There was a lady with a hand on my shoulder and a hand on the should of Kote who was seated next to me, and another lady with her hands on my head (well padded these days with hair that hasn't been cropped for 6 months) and other shoulder. I'm pretty sure they were both flirting with me. The effect of the bumpy road was such that I spent a quarter of the trip in mid-air, and the rest focusing every muscle and balance-related synapse against my two admirers who seemed with every bump and jostle intent upon ejecting me from the vehicle. At the internet cafe I helped Kote and Miguel reset forgotten facebook passwords and we took turns lying to each other about which of the pretty girls in our friend-list have been our girlfriends.
Finding my way back by myself through that 4 mile grid of narrow, crooked, unlabeled streets had me lost for 1/2 hour but I eventually ran into a pastor who knew of the orphanage and happened to be heading for his church which was very near by and conveniently just a little ways beyond. Back at the compound Pastor Kawende told me that in fact there were more visitors coming tomorrow and so I would indeed need to vacate the next day in order to make room for them. The rest of the night, excluding a break for dinner, was spent with the children listening and dancing to Regina Specktor. They were especially fond of Specktor's hit song, Fidelity, which they called 'Ajuda Mai Mai!' (Portuguese for 'Help Mommy') because of its similarity in pronunciation with the bridge's reputation of the phrase "I hear in my mind..." They sang along with perfect unison, 'Ah-zhoo-da my my...'
I will probably miss Khongoloti more than any other place I've been in Africa so far, except maybe the coast. The kids here are unequaled in my experience. I'm not a kid person by any means, but I like these kids, most of them. Jito is often a brat and gets into tantrums that he unleashes against older kids who justly return his blows and accentuate the drama, but he is also small enough that I can toss him nearly 15ft in the air, with an 80% degree of confidence in being able to catch him properly on the way down. Phalish is another brat that refuses to touch the replacement toothbrush he was given upon the occasion of his losing his old one, but he lets me brush his teeth as I pretend to admonish him in Chinese (the children are all convinced that 'Mano Jack' [which is me (mano means 'brother' in the religious sense here)] speaks fluent Chinese. While we work together on the grounds, the children teach me words in Shongana and I, in turn, teach them words in Chinese. They are learning very quickly.) I don't know but that Neide (or Ned as I call him) gets me the worst. Ned simply doesn't belong here. I know that none of the kids belong here, but Ned, Ned doesn't have a depraved synapse in his nervous system. I can't find words that give justice to the fortitude of his countenance. He never ever portrays any of the malicious, sadistic or selfish tendencies that nearly all children, even the most well brought-up, have to learn to out-grow later in life. He is happy and content all of the time, except of course when he falls victim to one of the other children's violent pranks, which usually includes a slap to the back of the head, a firm kick to the rear or an unprovoked snatching of whatever might presently be holding his attention. In these cases he admonishes his assailant in the cutest possible terms, and after taking whatever immediate course of retribution might me available to him (usually nothing) he returns to being engrossed in the beauty of life around him. He often has to seek the refuge of isolation in far areas of the yard as some of the kids find his unguarded ways too tempting to resist provocation (To be fair to the others, fighting is easily the premiere source of entertainment at the center and all such provocation is as much an invitation to engage in the fun as it is an expression of egotistical dominance. Neide himself is not one to shy away from a good melee, though more often than not he ends up at the bottom of the fray) I observe him when I can, emerged in the wonderful little world that he lives in, peaceful and content but never dull. Happiness as I can not even imagine. Oh that I could know, but I am sure that I never shall. For Ned, life itself is good, every moment (when he is not being antagonized) is a good moment, it’s also somehow new and fresh for him. How? How has he so easily achieved what I have spent the last 5 years trying to know? Sometimes he notices me observing him. He looks at me and smiles, aware of being observed but not self-consciously suspicious of or even concerned with what I might be thinking about him. I always hope that he will invite me into his world with him, introduce me to life as it is or should be or can be I don't know. I hope that he will let me stay with him in this better world and that all that I have ever desired will present itself to me with perfect sufficiency and I can say 'Thank you Ned, I've found what I've been looking for'. But Ned doesn't share his world with me. He knows better. He is not distant by any means. He gets along with the other kids gleefully when they are not being sinister. He doesn't hesitate to be a buddy to the bratty Phalish (though the latter is often one of his tormentors) when all the other boys are teasing him for crying over a toothbrush. But only Ned can see what he sees. The rest of us are stuck in our frustratingly Newtonian worlds where only proper application of force and manipulation can achieve anything. And perhaps its better that way. I'd hate to see what I or anyone else would do with Ned's world if we had the chance. I just wish we could take all the Neds in the world and ship them to the same carefully preserved place, like an island or a national park. Then the rest of us could travel there on our vacation time to see the exotic species of Happy Human Beings. I would apply for a job as a park ranger and stringently enforce the "Please do not slap, kick, or in anyway abuse/provoke the Happy People" signs. I should also mention that Ned is also ill. Bethany suspects that he might have aids (his parents died of aids) and he seems to be perpetually with a cold or cough or something. His nose is always running and he is always sniffling. My Happy People Park would have an excellent healthcare system.

Antonio is one of the other kids that I would like to send to my Happy Human Reservation. He is 11 and a bit small for his age and he takes endless flak from his compatriots for being so unguardedly himself, but he never takes it to heart. The kid glows and makes fun of himself right along with the others. If he were in America he would be the coolest kid on the planet because he has the best sense of humor and the most becoming personality, but here in Mozambique, at the orphanage, he is near the bottom of the pack because he does not possess the will to dominate. Who the fuck set up this world up? I have some serious bones to pick. How on Earth did God neglect to create the Happy Family Robinson Island? Antonio and Ned deserve to live in an awesome treehouse with perfect parents on a gorgeous island with other exotic creatures. Somebody seriously fucked up and it wasn't Antonio or Ned so to hell with original sin. I guess it was me wasn't it? That's what we all both want and don't want to believe. It was me. It was me. We all both want and don't want to be selfish. We all both want and don't want all the responsibility, all the blame, all the power. It’s what we all want and don't want. We all want and don't want to be Jesus. The human dichotomy is not all or nothing, its all and nothing. Give up your life so that you can have life. This tension and our awareness of it defines us as human beings. We are everything and we are not.

Antonio