THE RECORD Online

Spring 2002

Letters from Africa

Story and photos by Wes Cannon

On a normal day during the summer before his senior year at Greenville College, Wes Cannon made a list – one that most of us at some point in our lives compose, either in our heads or actually on paper. He outlined the reasons he should accept the invitation from his aunt and uncle, African missionaries Ken and Melli Johnson, to spend a year in the tiny, war-torn country of Burundi. Cannon said his list of “pros” was extensive. Adjacent to these items, of course, were the “cons.” All two of them. “Fear and fear,” he said.

And so it was that Cannon, now a GC graduate with a degree in English and double-minors in religion/philosophy and theatre, left for Africa in September 2000. “It was almost a ‘why not?’ decision,” he said.

Cannon returned to the United States on Sept. 7, 2001. He had spent about 11 months in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, teaching English and helping his uncle and aunt, and another month just touring Europe. During his time in Africa, he chronicled his experiences with poverty, civil war, disease – as well as with beauty, God, life – in the form of regular “mass e-mail” messages to his family and friends back home. Portions of those letters appear on the following pages.

Friday, Sept. 22, 2000
Hello incredible people. I hope you all are doing well and easily delight in sunsets and your coming fall weather and leaves. This morning Ken and Melli said about the encroaching clouds that it shows the rainy season is coming. Also, when it rains – it hasn’t yet in the week I’ve been here – it’ll take the dust and haze from the air and allow us to see the Congo Mountains across the lake, which have only been barely visible. Also, the rain will turn all the brown into green.

I thought I’d describe to you the house and living in this e-mail. Ken and Melli rent from an Englishman named Graham, who has been visiting Burundi for the past few weeks. He’s a cheery old fellow. The ceilings are, oh, nearly 16 or 18 feet tall, really, with white walls. There are large, arched window/doors that span from the dining room through the living room and down the hall for the three bedrooms. These all face the view (we’re on a hill in a ritzy part of town, though not ritzy ourselves) overlooking Bujumbura. No skyscrapers, but some church steeples. There’s a stadium to the right, and the lake (Tanganyika? You see it on a world map) is ahead and stretching to the left. Behind us are more mountains with houses.

We’ve been eating well. Beans and rice, chocolate cake, cookies, pizza. Papaya, avocados, French bread, small bananas. We have pop in bottles. Not really lacking there at all. Spaghetti. It’s all good.

I’m not used to so many people staring at me or to the mosquito bites (I have 11 on my left knee alone), but the bites are getting commonplace more quickly. The doors and windows are always open during the day, which gives a nice feeling of . . . openness :) and a draft.

Tuesday, October 10, 2000
Dear Friends and Family, I’ve been thinking of writing for a while now, but just haven’t been hit with anything. I’m still not hit. It just seems like it’s time. Hello to you all from Bujumbura, Burundi, Africa. Tomorrow marks a month since I left the States, and that seems incredible. I hope peace finds you well, as a friend told me — allowing yourself to be blessed.

I’ve seen a trash heap where goats and a few children scavenge, located next to a market constructed of thick sticks. All the houses have walls protecting them from the streets, and gates you drive your cars through. It’s difficult for me to locate signs or names of places, and street signs are stolen, so I’m glad I don’t have to follow directions. Cars seem so much stronger out here, able to graduate from paved-American-baby-cush-comfort streets and encounter nitty-gritty, actually-use-your-car streets. I’ve seen big army trucks or big Mazda trucks, with circle headlights, Toyota trucks, either of blue-and-rust or green-and-rust colors, with steel and wire gate racks arching over the bed, stacked with so many boxes that the bumper seems to scrape the ground, or loaded with people like the train-cars in the movie Schindler’s List. People use their vehicles here. Every inch of them. I’ve seen flies. I’ve seen men carrying 50 kilograms of rice on their head and heard them speak with voices that could part water without the use of Moses’ staff. I’ve heard people hiss to get your attention, rather than whistle or say “hey.”

I’ve seen children with babies strapped to their backs. I’ve seen one hippo. I’ve eaten authentic Chinese food (yesterday). I haven’t seen as many live, decaying bodies as I thought I would. I’ve listened to a beautiful Russian doctor play a “concert” for us when she had us over for lunch. Two nights ago I woke up Ken and Melli asking, “Did you hear that?” when I was awakened by a rooster, recently given to Ken, that crowed like someone choking. I’ve smelled brand-new shoes for sale, brand-new book bags, and I’ve wondered what they were doing in the market with the fish and rotting tomatoes. I’ve been to an American diplomat and send-off at the Ambassador’s house, where the blessings were translated from English to Kirundi, sentence-by-sentence, and I’ve been floored at language. I’ve sat on the porch and heard, carried on the wind from somewhere southwest, Cher singing “Do you believe in life-after-love?”

I’ve wondered what it’s all about, why people cling to life, steal to live, labor to live, kill to live. My brother told me this summer that maybe the point of life, is life. That stuck. Stuck in the thought-land. Received a sticker of “ponder this.” There may be more just said than was just said.

Monday, Oct. 23, 2000
Hey Mass E-Mail Recipients. I’m in Africa. What’s up?

I don’t remember how long it’s been since I last wrote. Maybe two weeks or so. Things are pretty good. Our neighbor directly down the hill from us has been getting his roof re-tiled ever since I arrived here. They’re still not finished. But the guys work there, standing on the roof, and they’re eye-level with me when we eat. And I have plenty of rice and plenty of cold water – cool water if the electricity is off. And there’s just something about someone watching you put a bite in your mouth. Someone who’s been wearing the same tank top every work day that week and last week, and the same pants (you can tell because of the thigh-sized hole in the leg). And I don’t want him to watch me eat, and to look away when I look up at the view of the hill and the lake and the mountains, when I’m snarfing beans and rice because it’s been some, what, five or six hours since I last ate. Maybe because then I can’t deny that some people have more than others, and some people don’t have. And I’m one that has. And to those who have been given much, much will be required. And I’m lazy. And these thoughts don’t come if that man on the roof, watching me eat (if he is and it’s not just my imagination), wasn’t there.

Quit looking at me.

I’m in the car, and you, you on the bicycle, you walking, you, kid, carrying a large bundle of wood on your head – quit looking at me and making me feel rich and selfish. You, at the pool, quit watching me through the fence, diving into the cool water on this saggy-hot day, quit while you watch me, making me feel – feel – rich. Are you licking your lips while you watch me? I don’t have my glasses on. You, you, and you. Can’t you find something else to look at? Are you smiling? What’s funny? Are you pleading of me with your eyes? I make a comment in class about stinking after wearing the same sweaty shirt for two days. Did I just offend? Did I just reveal too much of myself – of a rich culture that doesn’t wear clothes more than once before washing? Ugh. What? What do you see – what do you think when you see me?

I saw a man bathing in the lake this morning. Not swimming – bathing. I wondered if he had soap.

I guess I’m learning. This earth is big.

Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2000
I’m writing because it’s been about two weeks since the last, and also because these e-mails seem to get resonded to. :) I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I received an extension of my Visa through Feb. 12, 2000. Tomorrow I’m going to go try to remedy the mistake with immigration. So I have three more months, where the original two would have finished this Sunday.

And this past week I’ve been put down with Amoebas. My uncle said, basically they’re bugs that live in your stomach. My students chuckled today at class. Although lots of people apparently get it through uncleanliness with bathroom tactics, it’s also for foreigners with unaccustomed stomachs. A UK Tear-Funder, Mark, told me a few Sundays ago that he had amoebas that week, but he thinks everyone should when they come here. He smile, “I think the country is kind of offended if you don’t.” He seems to be cool like that. Who are these people who come to Burundi?

In my normal routine, when I get sick and tired, and I feel I’m not doing anything, I start questioning why. What am I doing out here, what would I be doing if I were there? This time, rather than just waiting it out, waiting for the sickness and why questions to dissipate, although I didn’t get an answer to the “why,” I did get some pleasant diversion, articulated very clearly in a three-word sentence: I need God. I need God because I need meaning. I’m not questioning the sentence on any grounds, philosophical, theological, etc., like I very often do. I’m accepting it as fact. Because, as guys I painted with this summer would say, “It’s neither here nor there.” I still don’t know why they said it, but, if it’s not here, in Burundi, thinking about this, it’s there, in the U.S., thinking about it. Travel the world, I can’t escape the void I carry in me.

Monday, November 27, 2000
Happy Thanksgiving! I had almost forgotten it was coming around. There’s no hubbub here. We all celebrated yesterday with the Burundi International Christian Fellowship (BICF)—the Americans among us treating the rest. It was good to have pumpkin pie.

I was thinking about writing this letter a week ago when there was some action up in the hills, the direction toward the President’s residence. We heard later that two rebels and two soldiers were killed. At times, I’d heard some bullets further off, some heavy artillery, but nothing like this. For precaution, (the girls were already in bed, I was on my way), Ken turned off the lights and we stood in the hallway, away from the glass, behind the wall. We just listened. Ken said it was far off. It sounded close. I guess I don’t know how loud guns are. First, it was a peck. Then, a rat-tat. And it escalated into some booms and Morse code gunfire. (There was some communication going on anyway, in some language.) In our house up high in all the ceilings are screens to let in the air and keep out the mosquitoes. The house is open all through the day until 6pm, when the mosquitoes start dancing. Through these screens we listened to the sounds. I thought it sounded like they were getting closer, until they were in the neighbor’s yard on our right. Ken said no. A guy in the BICF said that he could see tracer bullets going over his house (though he might have been talking of another night). So we listened in the dark. Ken said it might have just been the rebels flexing their muscles, showing how close they’ve gotten to the capital. If it was that loud from where we are, it must have been louder up the hill, and I bet everyone down the hill heard it too.

It’s funny to be here, going into the kitchen to get some water, and hear heavy artillery off in the distance. Lunch is being prepared, and soft booms waft through the open doors, carried on the same breeze that smells of the beans and rice in the next room. And you simply wonder: “I wonder if that one killed anyone.” “I wonder if someone just died in that one.” “I’m standing on a white tiled floor, thinking about friends back home, and I’m listening to a sound that could mean maybe some people lost their lives.” It’s not like the movies.

So there we were, standing in the dark, listening to a symphony of bullets, and it makes me wonder how those sounds could change a person. What if, every night, that was the lullaby? I don’t always hear stuff at night sometimes when I’m sleeping because of a whirring ceiling fan. What if I didn’t have it? How would I be changed listening to bullets every night? What thoughts would I think? Would I have a clearer picture of important things? Would I adapt? I don’t know. I haven’t had to do it. Just that one night. Would I always be afraid of just grow to not even care? When there would be nights with no bullets, which would be abnormal, would that make me sit up and think “what’s going on? It’s too quiet,” in the same way that bullets now make me wonder what’s going on?

I noticed how, in a way, this one night was normal. It didn’t cause mortal fright, or mortal concern. Maybe, again, it’s detachment. Shock? I don’t know. Maybe life always seems normal when you’re in it. Maybe it’s only before or afterwards that you think it’s not. Pre-imagination or hindsight. I don’t know what I’m saying really. Maybe on the verge.

Alright. I’m done ramblin’. I love your e-mails and wish I could talk to you in person. I love you.

P.S. It looks like I’m over my amoebas. (In Kermit the Frog’s voice, Yaaaaaayyy!)

Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000
There seem to be soldiers everywhere. You see them whenever you go anywhere.

Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001
Hey Mom and Dad, and anyone else listening, greetings from Kenya! I’m near Mombasa – Happy New Year. Today Ken and I left the African Sea Lodge on the Kenya coast (Melli and the four cousins left last Friday, to return to Bujumbura), and now Ken and I are staying at a missionary guest house, also on the coast. I’ve spent about a week and a half in almost a camp-like setting, vacationing, having a holiday, playing ping-pong, and lots of volleyball. It was fun to fraternize with people from all over the world – Iceland, Finland, Germany, small unheard-of countries in Africa, probably Israel, France, England, all over – and I’m playing volleyball with them and communicating in French. It was a luxury hotel, and you drive through poverty to get there. A strange juxtaposition. And I’ve been thinking how to do it – how to be aware of the poverty and still be able to relax at a luxury hotel with a clean conscience – and I think the only possible way, is to be thankful. All other avenues are blocked with guilt. It’s still a seed of a thought. I’m thankful for the time there.

My Uncle Ken and I are now in the process of receiving vehicles from the States, at the port here. Lots of paperwork, and I’m in the dark of it all, really. But I went around Mombasa today with Ken, and was quite comfortable. Besides the left-hand driving, it felt a lot like Chicago, and we bought some groceries at something like a Sam’s Club (African equivalent), and that was a weird juxtaposition too. Seeing Sunmaid raisins for sale. The vehicles come in on the 12th (it was supposed to have been the 6th), so Ken says it looks like we’ll be here for two weeks before we drive back to Bujumbura, through Uganda and Rwanda. 2000 kilometers. And my Aunt Melli wants for me to see a game park too, so that’ll be neat.

Saturday, Feb. 3, 2001
Hey y’all! I’m back in Bujumbura as of noon-ish today. Back from the one-month adventure to mostly Kenya. The trip went off without a hitch, once it got started. Working through Grandpa, my Uncle Ken got some “Carnet de Passage” forms – for the motorcycle and one for the van we picked up at the port. These documents are good to have if you ever find yourself receiving personal goods in an African country and/or moving transit through countries. We went through undisturbed, except for the occasional police check – we were probably about 11 for 25 being stopped. And at all three border crossings, no one even checked through the “effects personales” in the van (consisting of Christmas presents from grandparents and blankets for mothers at the mission, among other things – like Teriyaki flavor food powder, which only my mom could have thought of. :)

I’m tired, maybe exhausted, which would explain the vague confusion floating over me. If you were to ask me “confusion about what?” I think I’d respond, “Exactly.” In one week – we left last Friday – with my Uncle Ken on the bike and myself in the van, we drove 1,5000 or so miles of east Africa, from the Indian Ocean coast at Mombasa, Kenya, through Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. The first stretch was pothole alley, and I was hoping Ken wouldn’t be too mad if I destroyed the van, or maybe mildly bent the axles, punctured all four tires at once, or scraped the underside until every vehicle liquid was bleeding. It was pretty discouraging, and also pretty amazing what a car can go through. Grating sounds . . . “ah-ah,” as the Africans her would say for “aye-yiye-aye.” But once we passed Jinja, Uganda, it was more or less a thousand miles of car commercial – winding roads in green, mountain altitude; tall trees and shadows and leaves; windows down and hair blown. Not what I thought Africa to be. I more imagined, I guess, tan prairies as far as you could see, not mountain after mountain, with banana trees and farm plots, looking like a vertical checkerboard stretched over the next mountain.

I look at a world map and see how far my uncle and I moved, and it BLOWS MY MIND how many people I saw in that space. I didn’t see them all. But I saw waves of them. So many people, at the market – so many people walking in some fat snake formation, heads bobbing up and down, bodies indistinguishable. People on bikes, people crammed in trucks, buses, “matatus.” All of them with eyes and hands and stomachs. Children. Spider-web-like clothing. Everywhere. This world must be STUFFED with people, because I haven’t even seen a glimpse of five more continents, having only seen glimpses of two. I watched heads turn as they saw my uncle on the bike (bright orange helmet and matching vest, sometimes standing because of a sore backside), perhaps people who had never before seen a motorcycle, awed, and I wondered if I was seeing naked amazement on their faces, an emotion that triggered something in me too.

What does it mean? (Rhetorical.) I don’t know. Just that the world is big. Bigger. Who can fathom?

Saturday, Feb. 10, 2001
Hello again to all of you so soon.

The deed is done. I’m legit in Burundi until May 11 of this year, as of this afternoon. My Aunt Melli commented of how fast that was – three days. I started the process on Tuesday, got the Visa on Friday. Apparently around here, that’s fast. I kind of knew it would happen.

Friday, March 2, 2001
To all of you I love, hello from Bujumbura! I keep thinking things are opportune to update you – rest assured, that’s not always the reason I e-mail. Here’s the lowdown. All of us are okay. There’s been lots of fighting since Sunday. Mostly on Sunday, sporadic the rest, and a close dump of it two nights ago and some this morning.

No one really knows what’s going on, or whether anything has “stabilized.” I’m withheld from understanding how close it really is. One of our workers has a house in the attacked area, that he had to abandon with his five kids. Other people have family. There have been 30 people killed, but the number is expected to be higher.

I guess it’s similar to after the fire in my dorm (Kinney Hall) a few years back, though not. Don’t know what to think or how to feel about it, and look to other people for clues. I realized two nights ago that I have no frame of reference for what’s going on. At that time, about 10:30 p.m., there began some heavy fighting up the hill from us, guns and mortars. I have no experience from the States to relate with all this. The guns began, sounding like a string of firecrackers, and we quickly shut off the TV and all the lights to the house. The girls were sleeping already, and Ken and Melli and I got in the hall, which is on the downhill side of the house, and waited. I don’t know how close it was, but it did sound close, like it was from the neighbor’s, across the street. The closest kind of analogy I can come up with is this. In the movies, we watch things about war like Saving Private Ryan, and it looks real, but we know it’s fake (all the while representing reality). The only difference here (given I’m also not viewing the violence, only listening) is that here it seems fake, but we know it’s real. It’s a hard synthesis. While in the hall I thought: am I really afraid right now? Would you please just stop? What is really going on? It sounded like fireworks.

Tuesday, April 3, 2001
Hello hello to all of you loved ones. What is going on with you, my friends? I’m in Bujumbura, Burundi, still and again. It’s kind of a mellow day. Since I last e-mailed, whenever it was, the fighting has lessened considerably, I’ve nearly drowned in the Nile, and my pesky amoeba-like friends have returned to my innards (I had a new test yesterday). However, the mosquito-like disease is not accompanying them this time.

So, the fighting. The president went out to the mission and they sent all the people home. And all over the city, the 53,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons – not the same as refugees, who leave their countries) have returned home. We’ve heard stories, though, that the houses were looted and left without doors, windows, roofs, and, if applicable, fridges. The mission is clear, and they’ve even been told not to take people in, if there should be a next time, which I don’t understand. Now, there’s the occasional rat-tat-tat or man-made thunder, some last Saturday and a few yesterday. We’re removed from it, though, basically.

Three weeks ago I took another trip to Uganda with some friends. Simon is an evangelical preacher guy who was going out there to preach and take a holiday, and he invited me to come and balance out the guy-girl ratio with two lady nurses, one German and one Swiss. It was a good time.

The Saturday before we came back, we went white-water rafting, at the same place even where Ken and I came through Mombasa in January. Bujagali Falls. This was much more intense than the last time I rafted in Colorado. An all-day trip, we flipped and floated and talked. I was amazed at the bonding ability of language in my raft. There were a Scottish brother and sister, and English gal, American me, German Regina, and our guide from “Oz,” which he explained was Australia when I asked. Everyone’s accents were different, but it was neat that we could all communicate.

I sat in the front, and the trip was terrific. One time, just floating, playing in the whirlpools that spun you around, one of them sucked me under and held me underwater much longer than I preferred or thought I could stand, which shook me up, or force-fed me Respect, and I had some trouble sleeping that night remembering it. But, cliché-esque, it reminded me again that each day is free, it doesn’t cost anything to wake up or to breathe, and that, if I think I could have blinked out that day in the Nile, that means every day since then, including today, and tomorrow if it comes, is bonus. These are freebies.

Last updated: March 19, 2002