News Only For the Un-Affected

I want to hear BBC.

Or France24

Because we are in the middle of it: the international news. Smack-dab in the middle and have no news other than what is happening in the street outside, or what we hear on the radio, or what little leaks into the exclamations of far-away parents and friends - 'Hear things are bad there!'

What things? we ask.

What there? What bad??

Perhaps I want BBC now, of all times, merely because I may be going back into it (that other world, of international news, of pundits, of reactions and reality TV shows) soon, and I feel the need to re-orient myself.

Or perhaps because the news of the world is now colliding with our news here: elections in Congo, results in the coming days and everyone (or perhaps not?) is focused on it and we don't even know anything. Sitting in the middle of it and can't get information. Classic weirdness. Same in Haiti. News only for those who are not affected, not for those in the middle of it and so we are even more like polar bears behind the glass: researchers watching, and forming conclusions, and the bears just going about their business: worried why everyone is staring at them.

But today is St. Nicholaus in Holland. A more important event for those among us than the election results which, so far are avoiding us, unlike the date: 5 December. Celebration! And although this town on the river is perhaps lacking in celebratory spirit, still the date is important to certain of those in our group, who are currently absent (out in the field but due home later today); which gives us a chance.

The doctor (not Dutch) suggests getting treats to put in shoes, writing a poem for them all, tucking that in there, too. For this is apparently how it is meant to happen, or we have been told.

Gingersnap cookies. A man with a long white beard who brings gifts for children. But it is completely different from Christmas. Christmas, says our Dutch friend, is about Jesus. With a glare. Of course.

We stand corrected.

So this is how we brought joy home. First took a walk outside, breathing fresh. Then gazed out in companionship at a lake that looked stormy, on a shore that was only windy, and calm.

Then we turned towards the shop, to complete our gifting expedition. And there, the exquisite pleasure of picking out tiny gifts: butterscotch candies, a cheap plastic mirror with a cheap paper photo, is it Holland? Switzerland? Japanese cherry blossom festival?, five marbles as a boy gift, a bottle of pink glycerine to soothe the feet, lollipops and packets of 8 biscuits with a creepy baby photo, stylized.

We counted out the franc amounts with the wrinkled grandmama; piles of 100 for each candies, adding the 300 here, the 250 there, calculating as we went, like sitting at the kitchen table after dinner and working through the homework with a patient relative. Old wooden countertop general store, her handing the squawking baby through the window to arms reaching from outside, from the light of the sunshine, where we, too, would shortly go. Surrounded by children, pockets weighed down by sweets, playing a role we do not even know, outside of that of Kindness, Consideration, Fun.

For my own birthday the team made a cake out of stroopwafels. Stuck a candle in the middle of the circle of circles. Bought me vanilla sugar powder and the last of the chocolate biscuits that are made in Lusaka (imagine traveling here from there, which is still next door, but a far door), that I so love, even though they look like dog treats.

For St. Nick we wrote a poem. About how far he had to come to find them, the Dutch among us, and how tired were his horses, and how rickety the boat that brought them here, down the Congo river. It was sweet, even to me. We got as much out of doing it - laughing at our terrible rhyming, at sneaking into rooms to leave the treats - as we hope they did out of receiving it.

In the midst of all the chaos, the scrambling early morning packing, the muddy clothes, the arguments and frustrations, yet still we enjoy this chance: to celebrate the gift of making much of something, and someone, merely for the external joy of it.