sunday in sindara

do you know the way to sindara? if you do, then you wouldn’t wear a white tank top and white hooded sweater like me. you wouldn’t have labored four hours washing, setting, drying, and styling transiently flawless hair. lol. i thought it was beautiful in an antique photo kind of way. the rusty color that tinged the roadside foliage. i didn’t realize i was looking into my future. you see, after you head south from lambaréné and pass tchad, it’s all over. the road that is. there is no more. you get a dirt path with the characteristic iron-laden red soil. well, after some time on this dirt path, you begin to notice that your white shirt is not so white anymore and your face looks like a one-sided foundation mismatch nightmare. you have to keep the windows down in the taxi or you’ll suffocate from the heat. and thusly, my friends, is how we made our way to sindara.
once we get there, though, the notion of beauty returns. sindara is the opposite of sin. its claim to fame is a catholic mission, l’église des trois epis. rachel, olivier, and i met up with sophie and benoit (more hospital folk) for a 30-40 minute walk to see the waterfalls. there was a lot of water and a little falls. i drew pictures in the coarse grain sand, chatted with sophie, and extracted the huge ant with its fangs enmeshed in my pant leg while the others played some soccer. one of the mission guys was nice enough to cook us up a speedy meal since there was nowhere to get a hot plate of food. our new mission friends made a paparazzi of themselves in sending us off in a hale of camera flashes, god’s blessings, and requests for emailed pics. after the day’s events, it was actually comforting to come back to brochettes and d’jino (“grapefruit” soda) at la référence in lambaréné.