Congo Mozaique

I am resurfacing to the blog after a week in the Congolese middle-of-nowhere, with almost no internet access, a pretty bad food poisoning episode, and a plane to Goma canceled yesterday because of the fog.

Traveling between Butembo and Kasugho (or rather Katoyu, the small village where we care for the four orphaned gorillas) is always an adventure. Both ways, our mighty jeep narrowly and very luckily managed to by-pass a ton of trucks completely stuck (it’s been raining pretty badly) and also make its way through deep mud-ditches, ponds and rivers that appeared from nowhere. Quite impressive George, our driver, actually! After this trip, I do not want to hear any more discussions and complaints about bad roads in Europe or elsewhere outside Africa!

While in Katoyu, and before the food poisoning accident, I decided to spend a night out (we usually just cram into the kitchen and then retreat to our small, damp quarters and watch DVDs). Luckily we have a new vet now, Cyprian, from Kenya, who is very quiet during the day but who likes his upbeat evenings, so we left the house and traveled through the village to the pub. Now, Romanians, please imagine this: a mud-hut called Trianon (!), advertised by a poster of a gorilla wearing sun-glasses, where you meet a history teacher who would just not shut up about Mobutu and Ceausescu, and where your Ugandan beer companions are former Rwandan rebels-now-turned Congolese soldiers, who carry around rockets and rocket launchers. Deep breath, indeed! The whole thing really beat any possible surreal scenario!!! All the more so, considering that during the day I had interviewed tons of women who had given me their horrific stories about rape by rebels and soldiers. Enough crammed in a day to give you nightmares for a lifetime. Unfortunately, this is how Congo works: everything is RAW, and no-one has any time to over-analyze anything, because tomorrow you just have to find a way and move on with the roughest of the rough life imaginable, grind some manioc flour for your daily cassava bread, and just pray no flood or rebels or disease befall you. Again and again and again...

On the bright side: this week I saw for the first time how pineapple grows (and no, it’s not in a tree…) and I also for the first time used the machete in the field to cut myself some sugar cane – which, btw, has a SPLENDID, refreshing taste! I also took a field course in botany – so I now can identify most of the plants that grow around (including the kenkina (OK, have no idea how to spell that), from which they make the quinine to treat malaria (good to know there is a large stock of this plant in Congo).

Since I walked up and down the hills between villages until my knees were at break-point, I also managed to draw hordes of kids around. Well, most of them just come up and scream ‘mzungu’ from the top of their lungs, and when you turn to them they just burst into tears and start running away. Now I also know why: apparently, since the Belgian colonial times, parents would scare their children by telling them “if you are not nice the mzungu will come and take you away!” (Cum era bancul ala cu ‘ceasul 9 a sosit, omul negru a venit?’) Here I am, the ‘omul negru’ in Africa!!! Luckily there’s always “Carlos” – our 2-year-old-neighbor, who just drops everything when he sees us coming over and grabs our hand and just does not let go. He is beyond cute, and I would adopt him today! I am almost ashamed that I have such sturdy boots and he is bare-footed, and his little tiny feet are feeling all those rough stones, and yet he is running at my speed and smiling the whole time!!!

So yes, I am, at this point, beyond exhausted, and I feel like I could sleep for a week. Then again, when every single day is a God-given opportunity to get to know this fascinating country, who has any time to sleep?!?!