The US embassy representative

Sunday was a rather interesting day. After going to church we all headed over to the house of someone from the church for a barbeque. It is close to the hospital and almost on the lake (there is a road right next to the lake here) and right next door to the governor's house. We talked for a while and there was the team from Minnesota, the people staying at Maji, and a couple other Americans there, and then the food came out. Oh the food. It was so delicious and so varied. There were multiple kinds of meat and vegetables, rice, potatoes, and bananas, fish, salad, it was great.

About 10 minutes into everyone being at the table with their food two more people arrived. One was a young guy and the other an older guy with a "presence" about him. Before he sat down he said "Hey, my name is _____ and after we're done eating, I'll be introduced to all of you when it's time to mingle."

Um... ok. Someone else had come late too, but they hadn't felt the urge to say anything. Anyways, the food was good, I was talking with some people, and life is good.

Dinner's over and the dessert comes out and the guy with the "presence" says "how bout we all gather around a little bit closer as I want to hear who you are and what you're doing here." Um... ok. We gather around and then he goes "well first I should maybe introduce myself a bit more. I'm ______ from the US embassy in Kinshasa and I've been in the area for a bit with my partner here and we've been assessing the situation and in a little while I'll let you know what's been going on." Sweet, it's someone from the embassy and the US is doing something in North Kivu province and I couldn't wait to hear what it was.

We went around introducing ourselves, and I became more and more convinced that I really didn't want to be there, and I really didn't want to know what was going on. Well, I take that back, I wouldn't mind knowing what was going to be happening, just maybe not from him. After every person who introduced themselves, he had something to say, something "important" and "relevant" to what we were doing there, except it really wasn't helpful at all. We came to the conclusion that given the situation, he would be perfectly content in solitary confinement just talking to himself and hearing his own voice. Maybe we were a bit harsh on him, but it was pretty interesting. By the time we got to me and he had done agriculture in the peace corps and studied agriculture development, I had pretty much decided I really didn't want to talk to him any further than introducing myself, but I'll get more to that later.

So after we are introduced, he talks even more than he usually was and told what he had been doing, traveling around and seeing the area. He had been to different remote places under UN guard and talked to different people, and one of his favorite phrases was "but I really shouldn't tell you about that" and "I could tell you a name, but it wouldn't mean anything to you." He liked his secrets.

The gist of at least a half hour of inflated talk came down to "The US is going to have a presence in North Kivu stationed at Goma."

So for well over an hour he had been building up to this secret, this huge revelation, the answer to all the problems and it boiled down to someone was going to be staying at a hotel in Goma as a US representative. He could have said that in 3 minutes with all the explanation necessary.

After people were breaking up I decided to swallow my pride and talk to the guy. After all, he would probably have some really good advice. Nope, just kidding. He talked about a banana virus that he didn't know about, said he had researched the cassava mosaic virus but never told me anything about it, talked about what people usually ate in the villages which I knew, but didn't really have any suggestions on improving their diets, and it pretty much boiled down to him not really telling me anything of value even though he talked for a long time. It was an interesting day.