abandoned

the humid jungle night. green cloaked in black. the electric resonance of buzzing insects fills the darkness. the whole airspace seems to be shaking in anticipation.

something approaching.

a massive dark form, unseen and slumbering, nearly blends into the night. it’s presence is betrayed by a secret it holds deep inside its bowels. the rumbling; the groaning of the planet. a mile up in the sky, the dull orange glow of lava is reflected in a sliced stratus layer. the gates of hell. bubbling molten magma waits patiently for its moment of glory. a planet planning to rid itself of a virus that digs and drills and paves and pollutes everything.

an undetected green snake slithers through the vines, searching for a meal. dense jungle canopy chokes out the starlight. the mamba cuts through the jungle blindly, curving around trees and feeling it’s way through the environment. it comes to a clearing and pauses. cutting straight through the bush is a red-brown ribbon of gravel and dirt flowing down from the north; descending from the jungled flanks of volcanoes that sleep with one eye open.

man. he never curves around his environment.

the road is quiet.

a tremor. it quickly decays back into silence; swallowed whole by the damp blackness. even the moon is hiding.

a sound.

another tremor?

no.

yes.

the distant sound of boots crunching on gravel, increasing in intensity. gathering force. the mamba pauses, flicking its tongue, testing for movement in the darkness. weary of crossing out of the jungle, across this open scar. its tongue registers a miniscule temperature increase in the air. danger.

the tremors build and transfer from tarmac into tummy, vibrating the entire snake’s length. it stealthily slides back into the trees; away from the road. pauses. tenses. waits. unsure of what it should do. then: a midnight flash flood through a quiet canyon of trees. 8,000 boots on 4,000 men stream synchronized down the crunchy road. squish squish. one two. left right.

soldiers in camouflage file past: black cloaked in green. starlight dimly glints off metallic weapons. this is what it sees at the conclusion of a 100,000-year journey through the universe: a green snake remaining silent and still for the rest of the night.



******



lines of refugees carrying their only possessions stream into goma town; displaced from their quiet, impoverished existences. nomads of history.

i wonder: what would i do? would i stay to defend my shack and family, or flee with them; abandoning all possessions and hope into the hole, into the vacuum, into the void of limitless human evil and madness?

compounds and vehicles hijacked. markets looted in desperation. 800 u.n. and 20,000 congolese soldiers overrun by 4,000 of nkunda’s men. his is the finest trained force in central africa.

laurent nkunda’s army stops at goma and declares a cease-fire; demanding talks with the government. a fragile, hair-trigger peace is perched precariously on a high ledge; the slightest puff of wind would send it falling to shatter into a million pieces.

nkunda is upset about many things. one of them is the new $9 billion set of deals with the chinese for congo’s vast mineral wealth. china will send chinamen to build roads, dams, mines, infrastructure. china will get minerals to manufacture more shiny plastic shit for our uncontained wal-mart epidemic.

just hours before the rebels arrived and encircled ville du goma, the airserv ex-pats evacuated. they drove through the rutted roads to the airport; around piles of burning tires and boulders pushed into the street. past crowds yelling and weeping; the waves of humanity rolling in and crashing on the sharp black volcanic rocks of goma town. plowing through a river of faces overcome with grief. the dams holding back tears had broken. a sea of hearts flooded with hopelessness.

the masses. in their eyes burned one silent question: why are you abandoning us?

people were throwing rocks at u.n. soldiers in their blue helmets, screaming in swahili and french: why are you leaving us again?!?

the u.n.: useless notion.

our rampers, local airserv employees, see all the pilots piling into the planes. edmond approaches and asks:

“are you going to leave us behind?”

i see none of this. i am 600 miles to the south, in lubumbashi, just returning from r&r when the fighting breaks out.

they tell me i am to take a caravan up to entebbe for maintenance: a 7 hour flight, stopping along the way in bukavu, just 40 miles south of goma.

i get fuel in bukavu and depart enroute to entebbe. the airspace is quiet. no control. goma slides into view under my left wing. a late afternoon sunshine is glinting off the sea of shantytown tin roofs, igniting them white-hot like a welder's torch in perfect sweeping time with my groundspeed.

from 13,500 feet, things appear quiet and peaceful. a light sleepy haze in the valley, some puffy feather-white clouds of sulphur dioxide steaming out of nyiragongo. the quiet road from the north that leads into town is empty. this blood-red ribbon of dirt yesterday was an artery for refugees and rebels both.

burning through the daze.

my airplane floats over a sea of quiet desperation. i fly about 5 miles east of town to remain outside the reach of RPG's or small arms fire. the airplane is clearly marked as humanitarian, but i’m not willing to wager my life for a closer look. although a cease-fire has been declared, the tension is at the critical limit; like a steel cable stretched to it’s design load. one more ounce will be the flash-point. the catalyst. igniting, exploding, releasing the potential energy of the atom; the restrained masses freed.

i weave my craft around small pockets of precipitation, maintaining visual flight conditions and slipping past the row of tall volcanoes hidden in the clouds. a gentle acid rain falls on the decaying mud and stick huts; the plastic tarps or rusted tin corrugations deflecting some of it. trickling, oozing into, changing the nature of. into the soul. rotting from the inside out.

i once read somewhere that peace is just a temporary ceasefire while everyone reloads.

i’m not sure why we aren’t there or at least somewhere nearby goma providing air support and evacuation. bukavu and kigali are only 30 minute flights from goma. entebbe is an hour and a half. we are supposed to be the last ones out, not the first.

so far more than 1,000,000 people have fled from their homes. i sit on a comfortable hotel bed in entebbe typing and doing nothing to help these people.

the t.v. shows images of goma. my home. the look on the faces of those we left behind.

i look to the sky and silently scream: why have you left us?