Bridget is the only person I meet in Kyangwali who says she never wants to go back to the Congo. Naturally, I wonder why. Most of the people here are still tied to their homes, even though their homes were burned and abandoned 15 years ago.
But I never find out why she doesn't want to return. Bridget has maybe a 100-word vocabulary of English--still markedly better than my Swahili, obviously, which covers "how are you?" and "fine." But what I manage to glean from our conversations is this: She's 22, left the Congo 5 years ago, and has a four-year-old daughter named Ketti, who is probably the sassiest girl in the camp. (Sass, I find out later, runs in the family.)
This means that Bridget arrived in the camp pregnant and alone at the age of 17.
Now Bridget receives a modest salary to do all the cooking for the Coburwas school--making breakfast and lunch for 97 kids every day over a wood fire. By employing her, Coburwas is not only giving her a way to provide for herself and her child, but hope and a family.
At night, we can hear Bridget's voice piercing through the thin walls where we're staying. "Ket-TIIIIIII!" she yells, her voice jumping up a couple octaves on the last syllable. Ketti emerges, dripping wet and naked from her bucket bath, giggling as she chases one of her ever-present companions around the camp and dodging her mother, who waits with Ketti's pajamas. This happens pretty much every night.
One night I decide I'm going to befriend Bridget. I invite her to sit on my bed and make friendship bracelets with me. Giving instructions turns out to be harder than anticipated: I don't realize until then that she does understand the word "under" or "last." She resorts to doing it her way, then says, "I make food now."
"Can I help you?" I say.
"No, no."
"Yes, yes, I'm coming."
Bridget goes to the food store room (kept under lock and key) and emerges with a tray of rice. She hands it to me and I literally sit staring at it for probably 20 minutes while she bustles around, stoking the fire, shucking corn, washing dishes. Finally she returns and I ask, "What do you want me to do with this?" She takes the tray from me, holds it tightly and tosses the rice about a foot into the air, which reminds me a little of a pizza chef tossing dough. The rice flies up and lands neatly back on the tray with a satisfying rain-on-the-roof sound, while the chaff scatters onto the ground. I think about the bags of already-cleaned rice I normally cook at home. No wonder cooking is a full-time job for most women here. She hands the tray back to me. I hesitate, then try the tiniest toss. The chaff doesn't fly, and I almost drop all the rice into the dirt. Bridget, in the way of most Congolese, just laughs--not maliciously, just in the way you laugh with your friends when they do something dumb and harmless. I laugh too. I get a tiny bowl and take maybe 1/4 cup of rice to try to practice. Maybe I hadn't had enough confidence. I throw it high in the air, and it would have gone on the ground except that Bridget wisely holds the tray beneath to catch it. We laugh hysterically, bent double at the waist, at my ineptness for half an hour. Sometimes you don't need language to bond.
I follow her inside the mud hut where she cooks. Pretty soon she hands me a bunch of tiny onions to peel and chop. How hard could that be? But I have literally never done this without a cutting board before. The knife she uses is broken: The handle is broken, so that the blade swivels dangerously like a switchknife. Bridget, however, is basically an African Iron Chef: She has enough potatoes for 20 people peeled and chopped in about 20 minutes, while I meticulously hammer away on the onions, using my fingernail as much as the knife. I'm having trouble: It's dark out now, and mud huts don't usually feature electric lights. I consider it a successful venture when I finish without chopping off the tip of my thumb.
Pretty soon, I'm asking for Swahili lessons, and Bridget multi-tasks. She tells me the words for corn, firewood, pot, fire, arm, leg, hair, about a dozen others. I only really retain the ones that are cognates with Arabic words I already know. Apparently, Swahili evolved from Arabic, and the words for "tray" and "church" haven't changed.
Dinner, as it always tastes when Bridget has done it, is fabulously good.
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