Lake Minisink
Thursday, August 26, 2010
I know I’ve reminisced about my childhood summer vacations and the similarities between Lake Minisink and my life in Rwanda, but I wanted to actually put pen to paper and fully explore the subject.
First, let me start with my house. While I don’t have couches, leather recliners, carpet, dining room chairs plural, multiple beds with real mattresses, television, or a kitchen with oven, stove, and sink with cold running water here in Rwanda, it was still a simple way of living. I remember very fondly my time spent at the lake, weekends or sometimes weeks at a time in the Poconos with Mom-mom and Pop-pop in a quaint little cabin nestled in the woods next to a tiny little lake that no one besides cabin owners had ever heard of. The lake may have been small and by law you weren’t allowed to swim in it, but that didn’t stop us from going in multiple times a day, every day it wasn’t raining or too cold – heck, I went in even when the water was freezing or the rain was coming down as long as there was no lightning. The lake offered recreational activities such as diving off the dock, swimming parallel to the shore down to Slippery Sam, the big, flat, slimy rock that sloped down into the water down next to MacMillan’s’ dock, balancing on old, black rubber tires trying to stand up for a few moments before toppling into the water or just floating on the tires or the fancy floating pool chair or rafts that were like mini mattresses to snooze on out in the water, fun-noodles, diving sticks and rings, scuba masks and snorkels, going out in the row boat or sail boat. But besides recreational uses of the lake, it also had practical purposes such as fishing for sunnies and blue gills to eat for supper and bathing.
Those two activities actually go hand in hand, believe it or not, since sunnies seem to be attracted to soap. Whenever we would lather up, sure enough, some momma who had a nest nearby would come over to nibble your leg. I can remember Pop-pop bathing with just a bar of soap, no need to shampoo those few thin wisps of hair that he would comb over his otherwise bald head. And Mom-mom did need shampoo for her thick, gray curls, the Gray Wolf variety which gave her hair a slight blue tint. She would lather up with the shampoo and soap then paddle out a few yards past the end of the dock where she would float while rinsing the shampoo out of her hair. She would always tell us, “Your Mom-mom may not be able to swim, but she’s a champion floater.” Mom-mom with her tanning oil and SPFs in the single digits, tanning every summer day at the lake and in Florida in the winter, kept her skin a dark shade year-round. So dark in fact that when I was little, I genuinely thought my grandmother was black. Not pure African, but definitely mixed ethnicities. I never would have guessed that she was pure Welsh coming from an entire family line of pasty-pale complexions. I always wondered how it was that she was black while her two kids, my mom and my uncle, were probably the two whitest people I knew. I don’t know how long I went on believing Mom-mom was something other than Caucasian, but it was definitely years before I realized she was naturally as pale as my mother but unlike Mom whose two shades included baking soda white and bright tomato red, Mom-mom was able to tan like no one else I knew. The closest anyone else came to her dark brown tan was my dad who never seemed to burn despite often neglecting sunscreen. Where Mom would go from white to red then peel back to white, Dad would go from white (though not as translucent as Mom), to a pink-brown to a nice brown tan. While Mom-mom sat in her uncovered dock chair tanning, reading romance novels, and drinking cold, unsweet tea, Mom would be in an umbrella-ed chair reading a similar romance novel, and Pop-pop would be snoozing in his chair with visor pulled down over his face and large tanned feet sprawled out in front of him where you could easily see all the dead skin on the bottoms needing to be peeled off, just like the current condition of my own feet from wearing shoes all the time and not having them naturally exfoliated by walking around barefoot out doors.
When we weren’t swimming (or eating our afternoon snack of raisins and a juice box that Mom-mom would pack in her bag for us), my brother and I would play hide-and-go-seek, tag, capture the flag, or some other outdoor game either by ourselves or if we were lucky with the next door neighbor Tommy if his family was at the lake that weekend. Ty also made friends with the other little boys further down the dirt road, but there just weren’t as many girls my age, and I can only recall one that lived way down by Bob and Doris that I ever spent any time with. I think her name was Brianna, but I can’t remember what she looked like or what we would do when we were together. The Woods are the family I remember the most even though they didn’t buy the cabin next door to ours until Ty and I were older, old enough to venture outside the boundaries of our property by ourselves I think. There was Tommy, one year older than me I think, and Lacey, the little adopted Vietnamese girl who was so adorable, not even in school yet. I also vaguely remember some of the couples Mom-mom and Pop-pop had known for years who would all get together for happy hour at each others’ houses. I remember going to these parties sometimes and eating crackers and cheese with a soda while the grown-ups made mixed drinks and chatted about who knows what. There were Bob and Doris, Russ and Sue Samsell, and… I can’t really recall anyone else whether those two couples paired with my grandparents made the core of the group or if there were others I don’t remember. There was Mom’s cousin Rudy who lived there year-round, Lynn Umber whose permanent residence happened to be close to my other grandparents’ home, the Whites with their white cocker spaniel named Tiffany, and others that I can’t remember their names.
Well, here in Bugabo, I have trouble remembering people’s names as well and there is one dog, though it’s not a cocker spaniel and I don’t know who it belongs to, if anyone. I have much fewer neighbors that speak English, the trees here are more often banana trees than woods, and the lake is much bigger here and a little further than a two minute walk away. Though the market and stores here are small and don’t offer a wide selection of food and other household items, at least I have the basics within walking distance. At the cabin there was nothing; both Mr. Z’s supermarket and the large flea market were a decent-length car ride away. However, even if there was no post office for miles, Lake Minisink did have mailboxes along the main road that were within walking or biking distance. The bikes in both locations look the same: old, beat up, one speed, and a basket or small carrier on the back. Though at the lake the carrier was used to transport the mail, here the carrier transports people. Walking and hiking are common in both places, but women don’t carry large loads on their heads in the Poconos, and most people wear “scandalous” attire that would make even my elderly grandmother appear to be a prostitute if she were to wear the same outfits here.
The toilet situation is the same: outhouse by day and porta-john by night. The outhouse at the lake was a bit homier than my very basic latrine that I have here. It was painted, had a window, and even a place to sit in the form of a raised platform with a toilet seat positioned over the hole. I do like how my latrine here has a drain that magically carries my waste away rather than sitting at the bottom of a pit which makes your collection of waste known (by sight and smell) every time to need to use the restroom. Also, Pop-pop had bought a fancy nighttime potty that puts my bucket to shame. I use a simple basin that was once used to soak beans before it became my waste bucket while at the cabin we had a plastic potty contraption that even flushed! Pop-pop had the unlucky chore of cleaning it every morning, but at least it was cleaner than mine which I dump a capful of bleach into every once in a while but never properly clean it.
Heating water is just the same for the most part. Put a pot on the stove and wait until it boils. At the lake we had a kettle that whistled when ready, here I use a pot or just plug in the electric kettle. Though I don’t ever recall taking one, we did have basins at the lake if you wanted a bucket bath. Maybe they were used to soak feet? I really don’t remember. I do remember wondering how we could survive without a microwave. How do we make hot chocolate with milk without nuking it in a Pyrex measuring cup? Now I don’t even think about it. Or having a fridge and freezer either. I don’t buy anything here that needs to be stored in a refrigerator (because not even the shop keeper have fridges here to sell things like yogurt and cheese like they do in bigger towns) and a freezer is now a foreign concept that I’ll have to be reintroduced to upon my return to America. Besides the oven and stove combo at the cabin, the other indoor appliance was the toaster. It was kept in the living/dining room oddly enough, and I can remember Mom-mom using it for her buttered toast in the morning and Pop-pop for his tomato sandwiches at lunch on a regular basis. Here, I just light up the stove and toast my bread in a frying pan. It works.
Garbage is taken care of the same way. Throw food scraps and compost items outside – at the lake Pop-pop would take the scraps out back into the woods to a designated spot where deer, bears, and raccoons would find it in the night, here I just pitch everything into a pile at the edge of my garden and luckily haven’t had to worry about any critters getting into it besides the tuxedo crows since I have an enclosed compound – and burn everything else. You need to do wash? Same here as it was there: get a bucket and some soap, scrub by hand, and hang on the line to dry. The difference being I don’t remember having to do wash at the cabin, usually it was just hanging up wet towels and bathing suits after coming up from the lake.
There was a bit more entertainment at the lake. For starters, I was never there alone. Usually I had Ty there to play with or at least Mom-mom and Pop-pop for company. There were always coloring books, countless decks of playing cards, and the lake to keep me occupied. While I do have playing cards here and had a week where I just couldn’t get enough solitaire, I soon tired of them. And I could get coloring books and crayons sent to me, but they don’t hold the same magic that they did when I was younger. I do have my pastels and a sketch book here, but I haven’t been much motivated to draw. I see one landscape out my back window so once I draw it that’s it, and I don’t have a good pencil or an eraser to sketch pictures from magazines. I do however have my elephants to keep me occupied. That’s something I never thought of at the lake. And just as I cross-stitched there, I brought several projects with me to Rwanda including a fairly large Christmas sheep design. The cabin also had a TV (which apparently many people seem to think I must have simply because I’m white) for evening news. It didn’t get much else since we didn’t have cable, but it was something. With no TV or computer here, I’m restricted to my ancient portable CD player and radio on my newly purchased phone. At least I can catch the world news in English every once in a while now which lets me feel not entirely disconnected from the rest of the world outside my little umudugudu. And now I have access to a computer here even if it lacks internet so I can type away at the keyboard or even just writing in a notebook at home is usually enjoyable.
