sweep down early

This is a serious post.

WANTED: One canoeing companion, male OR female, previous rowing experience required, prior Africa background mandatory, crocodile-avoidance and fishing expertise preferred, knowledge of African vermin helpful, Portuguese and/or local dialect very useful. Trip will commence just past the Cahora Bassa dam, follow the entire length of the Zambezi River through Mozambique, and end – in glory and fireworks – at the Indian Ocean. We’ll know because there’ll be big waves and the water will be salty. Tiresome babblers need not apply.

I have been planning this trip in my head for months and months. More accurately, I have been planning it for two decades, but the exact geography was never firmly in place back at 8 or 9 years old. But now I live here, someday I will leave, and before I do, I want to do something wonderful. I want to canoe the length of the Zambezi River in Mozambique, for days and days, for weeks, until it is done and only the thick mist of a briny dawn on the edge of an inarticulate continent fills my nostrils. Sara daydreamed about it first, lightheartedly, a twinkle in her eyes on an exuberant day. How easily we throw around aspirations! It was seed flung on good soil. In me, it took root.

Just the packing list can obsess an hour-long walk, wandering as I do solitary and engrossed in a long list of tricky logistical considerations. They are not insurmountable. If I don’t go, it will only be because I did not find a suitable companion for the journey. It seems so impossible to find one that I am actually a bit hopeful, because I am attempting prayer, petitioning one into existence, and I do believe in foolish wonders. Once I was in Ghana, at 17 years old, and for one reason or other hadn’t washed my hair in a couple of days. I was  toady with West African sweat and grime. The water tank at the guest house was broken or empty – you cannot imagine how depressing dryness can be - so there were no bucket baths to be had. Then my slender, free-spirited friend Jasmine and I stood together under a star-punctured night sky, in a courtyard fragrant with frangipani and moonlight, both of us laughing, silly and sincere, and we asked God for water. I am not making this up: we then tried the pipe and it suddenly shuddered and coughed and water burst out of the faucet. It lasted only long enough for us to run for shampoo and wash our hair, then it flipped off, dry. Sure, it could have been coincidence, merely the last tank with water... but how dull a view!



Here’s all we will need: an aluminum canoe (or made of anything, just not wood, see title of blog above), two paddles, one small fogao (iron Mozambican grill), one frying pan, two tin cups, two spoons, one sharp knife. Small sack of charcoal to get us started, a kilo of rice, some cooking oil, curry powder and salt. A water purifier, one small first aid kit. One tanktop and one long sleeve shirt, one pair of shorts and one capulana skirt, 3 pairs of underwear. One book per person – I plan to bring good, funny poetry, maybe Billy Collins. A tent. Sleeping bags or blankets. Fishing poles, that will cover all three meals per day. A hat. A headlamp. One map of Mozambique. Depending on the time of year, rain gear. Camera optional, but if brought, only a cheap one. For luxury, binoculars. Six bars of sultry dark chocolate, hidden and wrapped twice in Ziplock bags. One bar of soap, all-purpose. One razor. Think how easy it will be to shave my legs in a canoe. The water’s just right there at my fingertips! Zit medication: optional.

And here’s the magic clincher, the extraordinary key to the whole wonderland: one live chicken. (Feet tied, stuffed between our gear in the middle.)



Here’s how the chicken thing will work: We’re going to need to ask people if we may camp on their land every night, because there will be small communities all along the way. They are going to let us do this, and will even be excited about us being there, because that’s how awesome Mozambicans are, especially rural folks. However, we’ll still want to thank them for their hospitality. So we’ll give them a chicken, with a warm smile and much gratitude. Before we shove off the following foggy morning, we’ll buy another live chicken off their neighbor, to be used at the next homestead down the river, of course!

So we only need enough money to get us through a month’s worth of chickens, for purchasing basic necessities like rice and tea, and for momentous opportunities to grab a ice cold Coke when passing through bigger towns. Mmmmm… (Really, depite being a multinational company taking over the world, in Africa Coca-Cola is practically a public service. I don’t like soda that much, but every so often, a cold Coke is incomparable.)



The fear of robbery will be much diminished by the fact we have almost nothing with us.

Yes. Crocodiles are plenteous in the Zambezi. We’ll have to be careful.

We will surely see hippos. And that will be a wonderful, deep-belly laugh of wonder.

The sights will always be changing as we float lazily with the current, leaning back and our feet up or while maintaining a steady, natural rhythm of paddling. There’s no reason to talk much. The beauty of this Earth will just submerge into us on a cellular level, binding with our DNA, igniting into our souls with a white flash. We don’t need to talk about it. The grace of Africa is.



I’ve given this a lot of thought. A passing perusal this evening through a friend’s book left face-up on her bookshelf confirms it for the 10,000th time.

I know it will be hard. Yes.

WANTED: One canoeing companion.

I’m serious.

***

"Here is something I found to be true: You don’t start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:

I’ll tell you how the sun rose
A ribbon at a time…

It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were…and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is that your story will be about changing, about getting something born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."

-Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller