It was a dark fever of a night, the kind with tremendous dreams that wake only to shivering cold sweats and the 5 AM call to prayer.  Consciousness unwillingly suspends itself for hours on end beneath one hundred degrees of self-revulsion, of seething blood and flesh and gall, of wickedness. I am buried. There is no memory. There is no time. Only a distant crescendo of some monotonous dirge. It wails as I teeter-totter on the cusp of reality. And some weight, ominous and unseen, is pressing down. I feel it on my chest. In my chest. I push back, but have no arms. And my running legs, they are made of sand and syrup and all things gelatinous and slow. I can’t recall how this all began, but the unwelcome urgency of the moment seems familiar. Subtle rotten nostalgia.

I am resurfacing now. And there is shouting in the room. Monochromatic bursts that steadily prove themselves as independent of the dirge. The recurring dream, the one I thought I had expelled in the third grade, is finally behind me. So recent and vivid, but fading. And I choose not to explore the final moments of it’s grip. It is better not to dwell here. To understand or decode their meaning. To delve is to compromise escape, so only broad themes and heavy breaths remain as I resume consciousness.

I feel my fingers. I feel toes. I am distracted by the shouting. I am tangled helplessly in my mosquito bed net. Yes, there is shouting and that shouting is loud. And I hate shouting. Sean is sleeping and snoring and shouting with spite. He lies immobile. Unwakeable. The tenacious slumber only he can muster. It is a blessing and a curse. I struggle for him to stop, but soon it becomes clear that I am the one who shouts, not he. I blabber and blunder. I am spinning. He does not speak. He lies immobile. Unwakeable. None of this is making any sense. I am not alone. My voice falls, robbing a dissonant harmonic from the mosque next door. Its dutiful melody encroaches on our bedroom. Covering me in my mosquito net tangle. Covering his still figure in the next bunk.

I calm and listen, in wonder, at the humble masses who share this message beyond our walls. Do they understand the call? I certainly do not. The vocalist has decided that mid-throat is an ideal position to hold his microphone. For the sake of mass communication this seems unreasonable. Syllables articulate themselves prematurely and are perfectly indistinguishable to the naked ear. They gargle and yelp in the way that is blandly monotone…I tremble between fever and chill and close eyes, giving myself back to the night.

The need is undeniable. He looks at it. I smile politely and mumble, incorrectly, the only french word I know that is appropriate for mature conversation. The woman in line behind me is still pressing her baby’s head into my elbow. Again I shuffle sideways, but she is persistent, always tracking. Why? This can’t be comfortable. Babies have soft heads. 

He looks deeper. Surely, the document is illegible. Next time I need a hard surface to write on. His face is buried in it.

The customs officer detaches his gaze from my exit form to stare down from behind iron bars that seperate us. Red drops something else in the dirt behind me. Thank God. I borrow the opportunity to collect myself, distancing elbow from malleable baby face, and bend down to retrieve the fallen hat from the dirt. My throat is uncomfortably dry. As I stand the officer returns my stamped passport.

Dusk is a warm blanket. And its covers are quickly drawn across the brief corridor between Rwanda and DR Congo, compressing air already thick with dust and shaky expectations. We begin to march toward Goma. Rolling suitcases are not ideal.

Only a few hours have elapsed since our arrival on this continent.  It was just before 7 am that we began our descent into Nairobi, landing heavily on African soil and stopping just shy of runway’s end. Touched down. Grounded in a new culture. And Nobody even clapped. It seemed so ordinary. So everyday. There should have been clapping.

With shifty eyes I climbed down the tarmac to the runway.  Even at an early hour the air was burning with the smoke of trashpiles and thick with the humidity of red African clay. We knew so little of what we were stepping into, but it just seemed so, so…normal.

Now, only 100 yards from Congo, I do not know what to expect.

I remember how in the airport I found simple thrills amidst the rushing, hurry up and wait, mentality of modern traveler’s security. Fortunately it was not remotely comparable to LAX, Denver, or O’hare.

We had plenty of time. Time to test a recently acquired infatuation with the idea of toilets below the equator. They flush backward. Counter-clockwise. Somehow this is hilaious..or, at least, was hilarious. Until I realized we would probably be pooping in holes for the duration of our trip. And holes don’t flush.

I was also disappointed to learn that toilets in the Nairobi airport don’t swirl to flush at all; rather, there is a jolt of water and then things are simply sucked downward, like Luigi, into a bottomless pipe. I waited in line for 10 minutes to see that. The only positive in the whole experience was my discovery that stalls in Nairobi bear the beacon of “engaged” when in use. This is far superior to the typical “occupied” of an American Port-o-Jon.

Now that we stand in the middle of No Man’s Land, the buffer between order and chaos, childish thrills of morning seem inconsequencial. 

50 yards behind us is Rwanda, a land of a thousand hills and stunning natural beauty. The small country is roughly the size of Massachusetts. And marked by impeccable order, with every mountainside terraced to create space for additional homes and farmland. Because of overcrowding, order and efficiency are necessities for survival.

50 yards ahead is the Democratic Republic of Congo, a massive country the size of western Europe, but with less than 200 km of paved road. It is home to the largest war in the world today. As we approach the streets of Goma, it is plain to see that entropy has paid it’s toll on this town. The roads are unkept and people in the streets surrounding the border checkpoint look destitute, even from afar.

How strange it is that 100 yards marks such a significant impact on economic opportunity and cultural psychology. I have witnessed similar barriers stateside - San Diego and Tijuana, Johnson and Wyndotte County (Kansas), etc. - but this feels different.

At the Congolese border we walk toward the custom area. A blue-clad guard, flirting with a woman on a rustic park bench, stands at attention and shouts for us to halt. First in French. Then broken English. We exchange a nervous greeting and he leads us upward, to his superiors. The communication disconnect is immediately obvious.

A senior officer recieves our passports and proceeds to ask a few questions. He is a BIG man. A refrigerator. I glance behind him and notice a fat Congolese man with two pairs of women’s heels on his desk. He is meticulous. He is a the supervisor. I note how he compares the heels carefully. First the white pair. Then the black pair. He stares pensively out the window, engaged in important inner-discussion. Powerful decisions must be made. White pair, or black pair? His eyes lock on mine. Busted. Both of us. What happens now?..will I leverage the social faux paus to our advantage? probably not.

Fat supervisor calmly slides the heels into a desk drawer and summons the refigerator man for a brief conference. Again in French. Note to self: Learn French.

The refigerator man returns. It is his “order” that we leave the country and comply with certain terms before returning. Our other option is to be arrested. This also sounds appealing. So we consider.

We turn and stumble with rolling suitcases back into Rwanda. Rolling suitcases are not ideal.