Why I study Latin in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo

Notes from an African Journal (May, 2004)

by Rick Dietrich

Why, Rick? Why in every spare minute do you pick up your Latin book and work through the exercises? Is it a way to stay in touch with the West? (Note the capital "W.") Do you think you can escape the heat? Or, be honest. Is it a way to escape from the group you're traveling with?

Or is it some of all of that? Confess!

Why confess? What is there to repent of? Is it against God's law to want to read Horace in the original? Is it wrong to want to be cool, or at least distracted from the heat? Is it a sin to be an introvert? To this introvert, his group of fellow travelers from the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley is definitely not one awful person after another. It is only one person after another like any person after another, meaning that each is really wonderful, although each is also right about nearly everything. For doesn't each of us tend to know what is right, and not only for himself or herself but for the entire world?

I suppose I could repent of being a contrarian . . . if we all did. For if A thinks we can work our way to heaven, B will be certain to remind him that we are saved by grace alone. And if the B thinks everyone is good, because she is good, C will counter that no one is good: we're all totally depraved. Finally, if U decide prophetic anger is sufficient for the day, I will want to acknowledge that anger is powerful but not as powerful as grace. Maybe it's good for me to escape into my Latin and avoid joining yet another argument no one can win.

But I also study Latin, because I for one know I cannot leave the West behind. Even if I wanted to, I could not see Africa with African eyes. (There's a cliché. But statements become clichés, because they are true.) Moreover, I know today that if I had been here in 1890, I would have been the worst kind of colonialist-not violent, I hope, but nevertheless pridefully certain that we should bring these, our new children, into the grand century approaching. And if I had been a missionary here during the mission hey-day, the fifties and sixties of that grand century, I would have been the worst sort of paternalist, wondering when these children would ever learn. (Is there grace sufficient to cover all that?)

So, today, I wonder if we ought just to leave these poor people alone. They have been willing across the years to let us live or die in Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, Marx or Adam Smith. Cannot we let them live and die according to their own lights and darknesses?

Consider the matter of "infrastructure." This is something we do talk, even argue, about. There is no doubt that Kananga, where we are now, was once a lovely city with wide boulevards, beautiful white-painted buildings with grand entrance halls and large, cool rooms with working ceiling fans. With lovely, formal gardens. With paved roads. In other words, Kananga was beautiful-in Western terms.

We miss that beauty, because we can see its remnants. But we also know that beauty is impractical; so, instead-because we are Americans and, therefore, pragmatists-we talk now about how we might help "these people" create, or restore, a proper infrastructure. These poor roads we try to drive on now: Even on the best of them, the pavement is falling away. Soon the potholes will fill with dust, the dust will wash into ruts. They will become practically undriveable.

But how many people, besides us, drive? And asphalt, smooth and black and hot, is not at all what's needed for walking, especially in bare feet. In fact, as the paved roads disintegrate, dirt paths emerge, much kinder to walk on.

Or, so it seems to me. But, again, I'm blind and cannot see. Am I also deaf? That means, "Can I hear our new friends here?" How do I respond to the questions they ask of me, to what they ask from me? How will I know that they are not simply asking me, asking us, for what they expect we will give? There's something of a history of that, as I understand it. They ask us, because they are the asker, for what we want to give. Then, they will make us mad, because they will use part of what they get for something else as well.

Thus endeth the lesson, "not with a bang but a whimper," to quote Eliot, not as an example but a caution, not in an answer but confusion. Welcome to the Congo. Or my Congo.