When I gave up my wonderful forest job from last year and I took on this amazing new position with a humanitarian aid organization, I knew changes would come in all shapes or forms. And it was what I happily embraced too, as I was certainly looking for another challenge in Africa. One thing was bothering me, though: I knew that security rules would be much stricter, and that in many places where we work I would not even be allowed to go anywhere on foot (walking being one of my all-time hobbies and definitely a huge need). I was already beginning to wonder how I would keep in some sort of shape (last year in Rwanda the gorilla hikes were more than sufficient, but now ‘field work’ means being taken by car pretty much everywhere.)
My one big hope was that I’d play lots of basketball on my friends’ private court, by the lake. It is one of the most beautiful houses here in Goma, and the family is just wonderfully hospitable. But the place lies pretty much at the other end of town (not that Goma is that big, but with the potholed road and the traffic jams it takes about 25-30 mins. one way, which is not something I would do every day, especially as it gets dark here around 6.30 p.m.). It is more of a weekend activity now, when basketball is usually followed up by dinner and drinks and other fun things. By the time I have to locate one of my drivers to come pick me up it is usually (very) late at night, so they must think I exercise very professionally (although I always shower and change there, which means I leave the house in sneakers and I come back in cocktail dresses and heels).
Clearly this was not going to be sustainable for my becoming and keeping fit on a regular basis, so I had to look for an alternative. The only well-equipped hotel gym in town is Karibu (i.e. ‘welcome’ in Swahili), which lies even further out on the lake, and which is prohibitively expensive, so that would not do. Luckily, just a few minutes’ walk from our house (a walk we can take only during daytime, of course) we have the luxury of the MONUSCO gym – which I can now access for $20/month, as I belong to an NGO doing humanitarian work in Congo.
Walking there, by the only stretch of lake still open in Goma, is really spectacular, especially as the time coincides pretty much with sunset every late afternoon. I usually get completely fascinated by the ocean-like views and I only look up when the road curves from next to the lake towards ‘centre ville’. There, in an isolated high-rise watch post, the blue helmet of the Uruguayan sentinel shows up from banana leaves. MONUSCO compound starts right there and then expands into lots of boring-looking pre-fabricated white buildings, clearly marked and very well guarded.
The first time I went there (end of July), I was quite worked-up about all the formalities at the entrance and a bit apprehensive about being the one non-regular gym goer among – well - professional soldiers… By now, I have already made ‘friends’ with every single Congolese guard at the entrance -- there are loads, and I am not sure exactly what each of them does other than sitting around, but they all want to seem important when they take my work badge and give me a visitor badge and enter tons of numbers on some check-in book. Of course they are slow, and they make mistakes all the time, but they are endearing, and now they call me up from the road already, “Karibu, Sinziana Maria!”
Once I leave the guards idle behind, I pass into a narrow corridor with a screening machine on the right (that either doesn’t work or that is deemed useless, since I was never asked to go through it). A few meters afterwards I have to cross a garden, where to the left a ton of soldiers always hang out – unfortunately, until now, we have only come to the stage where we mumble something between ‘hi’ and ‘hola’ to each other, and then they stay staring at my back as I make my way to the gym, some 30 meters to the right.
I think ANY gym in the world would ask BIIIG bucks if it had this location: above a terraced garden, with full view on the lake. It is just incredible to hop on a bike there and have this waterway at your feet. I many times let my thoughts run with the waves – so much so that once, after some 30 minutes, I thought I was actually rowing rather than biking. As the sun then sets, and the lake slowly disappears, all that is left to see is our own reflection in the big windows and the blue helmet of the sentinel in the garden corner – now slightly turned from the road towards the gym, to catch a glimpse of the excited action… The other times of the day when I went there - some Saturday mornings when I could not sleep in - I just took the lake in for the whole hour, feeling really lucky and blessed for such a life.
That said, the machines are almost completely run-down (none of them is plugged, so you cannot program anything, and so you just keep going at whatever rhythm you can work yourself into). That means that most people who come over – and who are, as predicted, either professional military or some real fitness freaks – go for the serious weight-lifting and other installations the looks of which totally scared me at the beginning (I should add here that I am SO NOT a gym person, actually, and that I never really went to these things more than a few random times here and there…)
With my Italian colleagues and housemates Viviana and Marco I chose, instead, to join the aerobics classes three times a week – which draw a ton of more regular people, of course. Placide, our instructor, is this really nicely built (how else?) Congolese, whose routine excited me at first, but who seems to be running out of many new ideas (or music tracks) as the weeks go by. I will not complain, though, as I am enjoying my getting (and keeping, hopefully) in shape a lot! Truth be told I kind of limp around (both here and on the basketball court), as I injured an ankle months ago and have not had the wisdom or the patience to tend to it properly.
The gym has also given me the chance to meet pretty much all the other mzungus in town I had not already met before. We are really not that big a bunch, so ‘gym types’ have already emerged pretty clearly: the power woman, who just paces around with insanely heavy weights; the fighter, who just kicks this boxing bag with a fury and then throws himself to the ground in an incredible sweaty puddle; the do-it-all guy, who seems to be moving among machines at an incredible speed, while displaying his muscles very consciously (and who, just last night, invited me out for dinner, even if we never really said more than ‘hi’ to each other…); the bicycle lady – a Romanian girl, in fact, whom I had befriended on FB but had never met in person, until she recognized my ‘Romanianess’ at the gym, sometime during her one-hour + frantic biking…
In a bizarre way, the fact that I paid for this monthly gym pass makes me feel more grounded in Goma than anything else. Hope it helps the home-like feeling grow, keep my mood happy and body healthy…
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Food Cravings and Woes
Of all the cuisines I have tasted around the world, traditional African cuisine will easily earn the last spot in my book. It is definitely unrefined, mostly heavy, and just about boring altogether, with a few dishes repeated to nausea: brochettes (meat skewers, which when are good are excellent, but one can only have so many brochettes…); samosas (a sort of fried dumplings, filled mostly with minced meat, which, again, are incredibly heavy and tend to get boring after a while); fried fish (a great addition when you live next to the lake); boiled potatoes; fufu (a sort of tasteless porridge, that they make either out of manioc or maize flour); hard boiled corn; creamy soups (which are to be found on all hotel buffets); some undefined veggie-grassy mixes; and other occasional foods that mostly float in reddish palm oil. If and when you want diversity, the few popular places would offer pizzas and pasta, croques monsieur and madame (this last recipe changes all the time, so the element of surprise is always there), and delicious fruits and veggies (which are in abundance, of course, but which for some reason are not at all popular with the locals – one explanation for this that I heard in East Congo goes back to colonial times, when the whites apparently indulged in these things while the blacks developed a strong cultural resistance.)
Overall, though, I should not complain, as both last year in Rwanda and this year in Congo we have had AMAZING house cooks, who have tried to appease the tastes of us difficult mzungus with ‘weird’ things, such as tender meats, clear soups, plenty of fruits and veggies, and delightful quiches and pies and cakes and soufflés, all nicely garnished and incredibly tasty. I have also been quite lucky to live with and around Italians, so high quality pasta, cappuccinos, and the best risottos of my life have been regulars on my diet.
That said, when you end up in a big city such as Kigali or Kinshasa, diverse cuisines are huge draws. Last year, on such occasions, I would splurge on FANTASTIC Chinese and Moroccan, while this summer I discovered the stunning cossa-cossa - the gigantic Congo River prawns that just about feel like heaven (I keep wondering, however, how come Kinshasa has not given in to a sort of African paella, I bet it would be a huge hit over there…)
In any event, this time around, doomed to spend two weeks in that fascinating but ultimately terrible big city, I thought I would at least indulge in whatever crazy food experiences I could get. Forewarned they would cost an arm and a leg, I was happy I would at least get per-diems to offset some of these costs (and started dreaming even more avidly of New York, and its amazing food scene at a fraction of the prices here…)
The first try was a Chinese restaurant, in the company of a Romanian SECU guy. He thought he knew its location by heart (somewhere behind the Greek orthodox church (?!)), but there we could only find a Greek restaurant, where life was in full swing. When we inquired about the Chinese brothers, they pointed to an obscure building, and said “Ils n’ont pas d’electricite!” We were not quite sure whether this was sabotage a la grec, or whether the poor Chinese really didn’t have money to pay for their power bill, but we did get out of there and drove to another Chinese restaurant on the main boulevard.Unfortunately, by the time we got there the cool things on the buffet were mostly gone, and while waiting for the second round of cossa-cossa to come up I stuffed myself with some rather bland sweet-and-sour pork and rice. Luckily, delicious steamed dumplings arrived in the meantime, and I pretty much claimed the whole pot to myself (in repeated trips to the buffet table, under the rather disapproving looks of the unfriendly Chinese serving staff).
The second culinary extravagance started one late weekend evening, by an amazing pool, where I ordered croquettes. I am never quite sure what they are made of (in Romania they would be mashed potato-based, while in Spain I had them ham-based). Of course the Congolese staff had no clue, so I was served these three mysterious little balls for 10 euros (bizarre even that the menu was priced in euros, not dollars, like everything else is in Africa.) From inside the deep-fried coat, some delicious saucy contents reversed onto my plate, and with the obligatory pilly-pilly (chilli) sauce a cote the croquettes were actually very tasty.
We then moved for the main meal, in a posh restaurant, where I just took some over-fried spring rolls and beer, while my friend tasted the Antelope a la Portuguese (?!) -- which resembled veal in some undefined Asian cuisine, apart from the fact that it was drowning in cheap red wine. The African counterpart -- Antelope a la Congolaise -- would have been served, instead, with sauce béarnaise (again, we had to pause and wonder what the connection was?!) In the end it didn’t matter so much, as I was more interested in the Real-Barca game we were there to see, and which, for the …th time, was going to make me supremely happy.
The next interesting food experience was over a business lunch at this Lebanese place called Belle Vue. I assumed it would be ‘just’ a restaurant, but I discovered that in fact it was a whole upscale compound, clearly belonging to some VERY rich people. Apart from several tennis courts, a grand swimming pool, residences and beautiful gardens, the restaurant itself seemed like a castle out of some Middle-East fairytale: a huge banquet hall, with velvet-clad chairs and heavy drapes, where the AC was obviously blasting; some extravagant chandeliers, dropping almost to the marble floors; ceiling-high paintings and carpets, all telling of some heroic tales hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away; and an out-of-this-world staircase, rolling up to the first floor, where huge mirrors dwarfed me … All quite surreal, of course, in the middle of a hot, dusty, traffic-alienating Kinshasa day… The even more surprising thing was the menu: in fact, a fast-food menu dressed up nicely, where some very regular falafel, tabuleh and mint tea were quite cruelly priced, of course…
After all these random meals I was still yearning, though, for THE food: Japanese. Encouraged after an excellent sushi experience in Nairobi, I started scouting for ‘the best Japanese restaurant’ in Kinshasa, and when several people recommended Acachia I knew I had to try it. I sort of overlooked the second part of the recommendation, though – that this fusion place offered much better Korean than Japanese dishes, since, well, the owner was Korean. I also preferred to forget that Korean food was never really my favorite (I only once LOOOOVED it, in NYC of course, when spicy calamari just made it into my heart FOREVER).
In my craving I was quickly joined by another mzungu sort-of-new-in-town, so we decided we would have a wonderful sushi evening ahead of the return Barca-Real game, a mere couple of days after the previous one. As I was the first to arrive, I was received with numerous awkward bows by the entire African staff, yielding to some approximate Asian polite coutumes, and I was taken into the big dining room, where I discovered I was really the first one. The room was decorated with some giant wooden violin-shaped liquor cabinets (reminding me of Mozart kugelns), a large green painting with some unidentifiable exotic birds, and a big plasma TV showing some English Premier League game, all to the tunes of disco music from the 80s. As I was trying to find the perfect table (i.e. away from the AC), I noticed that the entire polite staff had retreated without a trace. I then remembered that the cool thing everyone professed about this place was the table bell – a button which you would press every time you’d like to be served. And which, by God, was the one thing keeping me in the good mood that night.
I pressed that bell many times, for good or just silly reasons, and I loved every single ring. As for the sushi – well, here’s what I actually got: a rainbow roll for $21 (!), which deserved its name to the fullest, as I believe they rolled in it whatever they found in the kitchen. Among them-not-so-sushi-items: kimchi (the fermented Korean veggies); mayo; coconut flakes (which at the beginning I mistook for Parmesan); and another unidentified sweetish brown sauce. The things that DIDN’T come with it: wasabi and ginger... Following the same model, the sweet potato tempura came without any special tempura sauce (whose missing earned another bell ring, and another ‘Il n’y en a pas’ answer). My friend, instead, went for the tiniest maki roll in the world (the pieces were literally as slim as my pinkie finger) and for some Korean dish, which, he vowed, tasted like the most sordid Chinese food he ever had in NYC (and NOT in Chinatown)… Luckily they had LARGE Skol beers (again, very different from the Romanian Skol, but not bad), so it was not a total $60 fiasco… At the end, I felt the urge to ring the bell one last time, and I gave my friend the occasion to address the waitress who showed up quite bewildered by these very demanding customers (we continued being the only ones throughout the evening). “Could you please give the chef our utmost gratitude for this delicious meal,” my friend said, while I was hardly containing my nervous-liberating laugh attack.
It was definitely time to get out of there and change venues for the game. A new Congolese friend suggested we meet at Bingo, this massive fast-food/shisha-smoke-filled betting alley, where they had Coronas and ice cream! Wow, two other treats that I had missed dearly! Not sure, though, what process these had also gone through, as the Corona tasted NOTHING like THE Corona, and the ice-cream was just frozen colorful icicles… Luckily Messi saved the night again – how else? – and all food woes were immediately put behind us.
The very last night in Kinshasa I gave croquettes another try, at Opoeta, and they were again delicious, although very different from the previous ones (but of course!). Also, as my Romanian friend was indulging in little frog legs, I decided it was finally time to break that last food taboo – and I absolutely LOVED them!!! Together with the surprisingly good moelleux that my hotel Sultani serves, and which I ordered pretty much every night, these were definitely the highlight of the Kinshasa food spree I had - only relatively successfully - embarked on.
Overall, though, I should not complain, as both last year in Rwanda and this year in Congo we have had AMAZING house cooks, who have tried to appease the tastes of us difficult mzungus with ‘weird’ things, such as tender meats, clear soups, plenty of fruits and veggies, and delightful quiches and pies and cakes and soufflés, all nicely garnished and incredibly tasty. I have also been quite lucky to live with and around Italians, so high quality pasta, cappuccinos, and the best risottos of my life have been regulars on my diet.
That said, when you end up in a big city such as Kigali or Kinshasa, diverse cuisines are huge draws. Last year, on such occasions, I would splurge on FANTASTIC Chinese and Moroccan, while this summer I discovered the stunning cossa-cossa - the gigantic Congo River prawns that just about feel like heaven (I keep wondering, however, how come Kinshasa has not given in to a sort of African paella, I bet it would be a huge hit over there…)
In any event, this time around, doomed to spend two weeks in that fascinating but ultimately terrible big city, I thought I would at least indulge in whatever crazy food experiences I could get. Forewarned they would cost an arm and a leg, I was happy I would at least get per-diems to offset some of these costs (and started dreaming even more avidly of New York, and its amazing food scene at a fraction of the prices here…)
The first try was a Chinese restaurant, in the company of a Romanian SECU guy. He thought he knew its location by heart (somewhere behind the Greek orthodox church (?!)), but there we could only find a Greek restaurant, where life was in full swing. When we inquired about the Chinese brothers, they pointed to an obscure building, and said “Ils n’ont pas d’electricite!” We were not quite sure whether this was sabotage a la grec, or whether the poor Chinese really didn’t have money to pay for their power bill, but we did get out of there and drove to another Chinese restaurant on the main boulevard.Unfortunately, by the time we got there the cool things on the buffet were mostly gone, and while waiting for the second round of cossa-cossa to come up I stuffed myself with some rather bland sweet-and-sour pork and rice. Luckily, delicious steamed dumplings arrived in the meantime, and I pretty much claimed the whole pot to myself (in repeated trips to the buffet table, under the rather disapproving looks of the unfriendly Chinese serving staff).
The second culinary extravagance started one late weekend evening, by an amazing pool, where I ordered croquettes. I am never quite sure what they are made of (in Romania they would be mashed potato-based, while in Spain I had them ham-based). Of course the Congolese staff had no clue, so I was served these three mysterious little balls for 10 euros (bizarre even that the menu was priced in euros, not dollars, like everything else is in Africa.) From inside the deep-fried coat, some delicious saucy contents reversed onto my plate, and with the obligatory pilly-pilly (chilli) sauce a cote the croquettes were actually very tasty.
We then moved for the main meal, in a posh restaurant, where I just took some over-fried spring rolls and beer, while my friend tasted the Antelope a la Portuguese (?!) -- which resembled veal in some undefined Asian cuisine, apart from the fact that it was drowning in cheap red wine. The African counterpart -- Antelope a la Congolaise -- would have been served, instead, with sauce béarnaise (again, we had to pause and wonder what the connection was?!) In the end it didn’t matter so much, as I was more interested in the Real-Barca game we were there to see, and which, for the …th time, was going to make me supremely happy.
The next interesting food experience was over a business lunch at this Lebanese place called Belle Vue. I assumed it would be ‘just’ a restaurant, but I discovered that in fact it was a whole upscale compound, clearly belonging to some VERY rich people. Apart from several tennis courts, a grand swimming pool, residences and beautiful gardens, the restaurant itself seemed like a castle out of some Middle-East fairytale: a huge banquet hall, with velvet-clad chairs and heavy drapes, where the AC was obviously blasting; some extravagant chandeliers, dropping almost to the marble floors; ceiling-high paintings and carpets, all telling of some heroic tales hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away; and an out-of-this-world staircase, rolling up to the first floor, where huge mirrors dwarfed me … All quite surreal, of course, in the middle of a hot, dusty, traffic-alienating Kinshasa day… The even more surprising thing was the menu: in fact, a fast-food menu dressed up nicely, where some very regular falafel, tabuleh and mint tea were quite cruelly priced, of course…
After all these random meals I was still yearning, though, for THE food: Japanese. Encouraged after an excellent sushi experience in Nairobi, I started scouting for ‘the best Japanese restaurant’ in Kinshasa, and when several people recommended Acachia I knew I had to try it. I sort of overlooked the second part of the recommendation, though – that this fusion place offered much better Korean than Japanese dishes, since, well, the owner was Korean. I also preferred to forget that Korean food was never really my favorite (I only once LOOOOVED it, in NYC of course, when spicy calamari just made it into my heart FOREVER).
In my craving I was quickly joined by another mzungu sort-of-new-in-town, so we decided we would have a wonderful sushi evening ahead of the return Barca-Real game, a mere couple of days after the previous one. As I was the first to arrive, I was received with numerous awkward bows by the entire African staff, yielding to some approximate Asian polite coutumes, and I was taken into the big dining room, where I discovered I was really the first one. The room was decorated with some giant wooden violin-shaped liquor cabinets (reminding me of Mozart kugelns), a large green painting with some unidentifiable exotic birds, and a big plasma TV showing some English Premier League game, all to the tunes of disco music from the 80s. As I was trying to find the perfect table (i.e. away from the AC), I noticed that the entire polite staff had retreated without a trace. I then remembered that the cool thing everyone professed about this place was the table bell – a button which you would press every time you’d like to be served. And which, by God, was the one thing keeping me in the good mood that night.
I pressed that bell many times, for good or just silly reasons, and I loved every single ring. As for the sushi – well, here’s what I actually got: a rainbow roll for $21 (!), which deserved its name to the fullest, as I believe they rolled in it whatever they found in the kitchen. Among them-not-so-sushi-items: kimchi (the fermented Korean veggies); mayo; coconut flakes (which at the beginning I mistook for Parmesan); and another unidentified sweetish brown sauce. The things that DIDN’T come with it: wasabi and ginger... Following the same model, the sweet potato tempura came without any special tempura sauce (whose missing earned another bell ring, and another ‘Il n’y en a pas’ answer). My friend, instead, went for the tiniest maki roll in the world (the pieces were literally as slim as my pinkie finger) and for some Korean dish, which, he vowed, tasted like the most sordid Chinese food he ever had in NYC (and NOT in Chinatown)… Luckily they had LARGE Skol beers (again, very different from the Romanian Skol, but not bad), so it was not a total $60 fiasco… At the end, I felt the urge to ring the bell one last time, and I gave my friend the occasion to address the waitress who showed up quite bewildered by these very demanding customers (we continued being the only ones throughout the evening). “Could you please give the chef our utmost gratitude for this delicious meal,” my friend said, while I was hardly containing my nervous-liberating laugh attack.
It was definitely time to get out of there and change venues for the game. A new Congolese friend suggested we meet at Bingo, this massive fast-food/shisha-smoke-filled betting alley, where they had Coronas and ice cream! Wow, two other treats that I had missed dearly! Not sure, though, what process these had also gone through, as the Corona tasted NOTHING like THE Corona, and the ice-cream was just frozen colorful icicles… Luckily Messi saved the night again – how else? – and all food woes were immediately put behind us.
The very last night in Kinshasa I gave croquettes another try, at Opoeta, and they were again delicious, although very different from the previous ones (but of course!). Also, as my Romanian friend was indulging in little frog legs, I decided it was finally time to break that last food taboo – and I absolutely LOVED them!!! Together with the surprisingly good moelleux that my hotel Sultani serves, and which I ordered pretty much every night, these were definitely the highlight of the Kinshasa food spree I had - only relatively successfully - embarked on.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Spicing Up the Dusty Life
Across this mega-country, between Goma and Kinshasa, and the craziest 10 days at work so far, a couple of random episodes certainly stand out.
THE PARTY. Goma is famous for its party scene, especially in the summer, when all the cool Congolese and metisses descend upon town from whatever fancy places around the world they live in. This August would be no exception, and last couple of weeks’ buzz was all about this legendary annual party, ‘which you MUST go to’, if only just to see the place. From the outside, of course, it was no more than a horrible gate, wrapped in barbed wire, on the most unassuming, lava damaged street I had ever been on, but once we penetrated the walls the stylish mystique began to unveil. First, we had to drive for a few minutes through this mesmerizing park (the classic park idea, which in Africa is not really translated into practice anywhere), and then start on foot on a long row of steps down towards the lawn and the water. WHAT A PLACE! It is sooo hard to reconcile a property like this with the derelict plage du people, which is just down the lake, and where poverty and filth are thriving. Here, we were all of a sudden thrown into the Hamptons-like water front, with a cozy pool, a dance floor, a huge lawn, and, of course, a very rocky, inviting beach on Lake Kivu (the largest I had seen on either this or the Rwandan side). With the barbeque and open bar in full swing until dawn, and some of the most beautiful people I have ever hung out with, it was certainly the night to remember…
However, as much as the place was fabulous, to me the story behind it was even more captivating. The Belgian owners - apparently the most successful businesspeople in town – had bought this place for almost nothing from the family of another Belgian owner – who was so extravagant, that he was flying his private jet drunk all over East Congo, until he managed to crash into the lake never to be found again. In more recent times – i.e. this year – the property has, however, changed hands again, as apparently the president’s wife spotted it while on a trip to Goma and decided it would be hers for the modest price tag of $5 million. I am certainly curious now what the next party there will look like (assuming I will be THAT important to ever be invited back :D)
THE MOVIE. One of the things you have to forego when you come to this part of the world is going to the movies. Surely, movie evenings are organized on a regular basis, on cool screens in nice gardens, but the whole movie theater experience as we know it from back home is not a given here. That is why I was totally taken with the suggestion of a new friend I made in Kinshasa to go to the movies on Sunday at 3 p.m. When she only picked me up at 3.15 I was wondering what had gone wrong, but then she explained there was a twist (or rather several twists) to this ‘2nd floor underground’ theater as well: advertised only online, so that they would not pay taxes, it would basically suggest a time and a movie, but then be open to any kinds of changes desired by the audience. Since the two of us and another two friends WERE the audience, we had no trouble showing up almost at 4 p.m., buy the $10 a piece ticket, and then be served Arthur in French – which none of us found amusing in the slightest… When we inquired what else would be available – well, they pretty much had every movie on the planet, all dubbed in French, so we had to make do with the only choice in English – The Adjustment Bureau. Cool Matt Damon provided our entertainment for the hot afternoon,in what would be THE movie memory of DRC in 2011.
We then chilled on another amazing property, watching the sunset by a fabulous pool, over expensive G&Ts and even more expensive croquettes, constantly warming up for the Real-Barca game late evening (which we watched in a hip restaurant, while trying out ‘Antelope a la Portuguese’?!). If only Kinshasa were not as dusty and just exhausting altogether this could certainly have been a slice of life in any big city I have ever visited before.
THE PARTY. Goma is famous for its party scene, especially in the summer, when all the cool Congolese and metisses descend upon town from whatever fancy places around the world they live in. This August would be no exception, and last couple of weeks’ buzz was all about this legendary annual party, ‘which you MUST go to’, if only just to see the place. From the outside, of course, it was no more than a horrible gate, wrapped in barbed wire, on the most unassuming, lava damaged street I had ever been on, but once we penetrated the walls the stylish mystique began to unveil. First, we had to drive for a few minutes through this mesmerizing park (the classic park idea, which in Africa is not really translated into practice anywhere), and then start on foot on a long row of steps down towards the lawn and the water. WHAT A PLACE! It is sooo hard to reconcile a property like this with the derelict plage du people, which is just down the lake, and where poverty and filth are thriving. Here, we were all of a sudden thrown into the Hamptons-like water front, with a cozy pool, a dance floor, a huge lawn, and, of course, a very rocky, inviting beach on Lake Kivu (the largest I had seen on either this or the Rwandan side). With the barbeque and open bar in full swing until dawn, and some of the most beautiful people I have ever hung out with, it was certainly the night to remember…
However, as much as the place was fabulous, to me the story behind it was even more captivating. The Belgian owners - apparently the most successful businesspeople in town – had bought this place for almost nothing from the family of another Belgian owner – who was so extravagant, that he was flying his private jet drunk all over East Congo, until he managed to crash into the lake never to be found again. In more recent times – i.e. this year – the property has, however, changed hands again, as apparently the president’s wife spotted it while on a trip to Goma and decided it would be hers for the modest price tag of $5 million. I am certainly curious now what the next party there will look like (assuming I will be THAT important to ever be invited back :D)
THE MOVIE. One of the things you have to forego when you come to this part of the world is going to the movies. Surely, movie evenings are organized on a regular basis, on cool screens in nice gardens, but the whole movie theater experience as we know it from back home is not a given here. That is why I was totally taken with the suggestion of a new friend I made in Kinshasa to go to the movies on Sunday at 3 p.m. When she only picked me up at 3.15 I was wondering what had gone wrong, but then she explained there was a twist (or rather several twists) to this ‘2nd floor underground’ theater as well: advertised only online, so that they would not pay taxes, it would basically suggest a time and a movie, but then be open to any kinds of changes desired by the audience. Since the two of us and another two friends WERE the audience, we had no trouble showing up almost at 4 p.m., buy the $10 a piece ticket, and then be served Arthur in French – which none of us found amusing in the slightest… When we inquired what else would be available – well, they pretty much had every movie on the planet, all dubbed in French, so we had to make do with the only choice in English – The Adjustment Bureau. Cool Matt Damon provided our entertainment for the hot afternoon,in what would be THE movie memory of DRC in 2011.
We then chilled on another amazing property, watching the sunset by a fabulous pool, over expensive G&Ts and even more expensive croquettes, constantly warming up for the Real-Barca game late evening (which we watched in a hip restaurant, while trying out ‘Antelope a la Portuguese’?!). If only Kinshasa were not as dusty and just exhausting altogether this could certainly have been a slice of life in any big city I have ever visited before.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
First Curfew
After a month to the day in the DRC I finally went to my first field assignment - one that did not involve hanging out with VIPs in luxury hotels, but that was to include visits to remote sites in the North Kivu Province to see how the programs are actually acted out. My adrenaline was certainly mounting, building on an already high doses, due to the brilliant long weekend that I had spent half playing basketball half indulging in great foods and beers – all by the side of the beautiful lake, mostly in the company of the enchanting metisse Congolese.
So come Tuesday morning, rested and certainly curious, I joined our party of five and took off from Goma at about 10 a.m., in a convoy of two Land Rovers. The road north – which meanders through and next to the mighty Virunga National Park - used to be goudron in some better ages, but is now just one DEEP pot-hole after another. Yet, as it counts as the ‘main road’, it is quite heavily trafficked, as well as patrolled by the army up and down. The one thing you do not want – to be stuck behind some other vehicle, as the dust is really just overwhelming. We advanced however quite steadily for some 70kms., during which the biggest problem was losing phone reception in a couple of spots.
The most remarkable thing of the day, actually – passing through a Centre de Brassage at Rumangabo – where men of different armed groups (there are SO many in this region) now and then come to be integrated into the regular army (the barriers delineating ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ armed people are quite blurry on many occasions, as slip-ups are certainly not uncommon). However, this center seemed like quite the established place – with dozens of living blocks (from the Belgian times, of course), where the military have brought their extensive families and now live in VERY large groups. Yesterday no one had any issues with us passing by the instruction camps (?!), so we continued on to ‘our’ villages, to visit local health centers.
It is one of those things that will just stick to your mind forever – the maternity and the post partum rooms. And, by God, if I had to give birth in one of those places I would definitely forfeit having children forever (of course, not an option for your regular Congolese woman…) We actually stumbled upon a whole pregnant-women gathering, and they were all so happy, and the small babies up on their backs so cute, that one could almost be mislead about the kinds of lives these people live…
Zigzagging through incredibly beautiful landscape we spent a few hours in different communities, only with a small break in the meantime, to have lunch at our beautiful house (yes, another beautiful house…) When we finally arrived to our regional office I found an email immediately requesting me to Kinshasa – so frantic calls back and forth resulted in a compromise: I would go early next week, and in the meantime take it sort of easy with my field work and go crazy with preparing materials for this mega-event coming up in Kinshasa.
The greatest part of the day was still to come though: the first curfew of my life. Scary and exciting at the same time, it conjured in my mind memories of a distant past in Romania, when all of us were gathered home, in the long winter evenings, without electricity. I came home on foot at 6, but since everyone else was still out and the only key to the house with someone else, I hung out with the guards among pomme-granate trees, learning some Swahili and giving solicited advice, in French, on contraception, to a guy who has 9 kids and would like to stop there...
At 6.30 we all got into the house, barred all doors, and prepared for a long evening, calling in with the radio room every so often to report that there is nothing to report. However, in all honesty, I was expecting something a tad more dramatic, but this curfew was actually just one fun, big evening, with colleagues from Italy, El Salvador, France and Guinea: an impromptu gym on our beautiful terrace (where I toned my muscles, aggravated an ankle twisted over the weekend and further injured my right knee), some Amstel sessions complemented with some Congo-style Spanish tortilla, a long chat with my Italian colleague (he is my house mate in Goma as well, but somehow we had to come all the way here to actually bond), and a fascinating Burkina Faso soap opera on TV (on which occasion I found out the VERY important fact that someone from that country is called a Burkinabé).
At 9.40 p.m. it felt like we had partied for weeks already, so I took to my small, cozy room, and sheltered under my very sexy blue mosquito net. With ear plugs on I slept all through the night – so I would have even been unaware of guns shots around -- which are apparently a common occurrence here, and therefore a main reason for our curfews…
So come Tuesday morning, rested and certainly curious, I joined our party of five and took off from Goma at about 10 a.m., in a convoy of two Land Rovers. The road north – which meanders through and next to the mighty Virunga National Park - used to be goudron in some better ages, but is now just one DEEP pot-hole after another. Yet, as it counts as the ‘main road’, it is quite heavily trafficked, as well as patrolled by the army up and down. The one thing you do not want – to be stuck behind some other vehicle, as the dust is really just overwhelming. We advanced however quite steadily for some 70kms., during which the biggest problem was losing phone reception in a couple of spots.
The most remarkable thing of the day, actually – passing through a Centre de Brassage at Rumangabo – where men of different armed groups (there are SO many in this region) now and then come to be integrated into the regular army (the barriers delineating ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ armed people are quite blurry on many occasions, as slip-ups are certainly not uncommon). However, this center seemed like quite the established place – with dozens of living blocks (from the Belgian times, of course), where the military have brought their extensive families and now live in VERY large groups. Yesterday no one had any issues with us passing by the instruction camps (?!), so we continued on to ‘our’ villages, to visit local health centers.
It is one of those things that will just stick to your mind forever – the maternity and the post partum rooms. And, by God, if I had to give birth in one of those places I would definitely forfeit having children forever (of course, not an option for your regular Congolese woman…) We actually stumbled upon a whole pregnant-women gathering, and they were all so happy, and the small babies up on their backs so cute, that one could almost be mislead about the kinds of lives these people live…
Zigzagging through incredibly beautiful landscape we spent a few hours in different communities, only with a small break in the meantime, to have lunch at our beautiful house (yes, another beautiful house…) When we finally arrived to our regional office I found an email immediately requesting me to Kinshasa – so frantic calls back and forth resulted in a compromise: I would go early next week, and in the meantime take it sort of easy with my field work and go crazy with preparing materials for this mega-event coming up in Kinshasa.
The greatest part of the day was still to come though: the first curfew of my life. Scary and exciting at the same time, it conjured in my mind memories of a distant past in Romania, when all of us were gathered home, in the long winter evenings, without electricity. I came home on foot at 6, but since everyone else was still out and the only key to the house with someone else, I hung out with the guards among pomme-granate trees, learning some Swahili and giving solicited advice, in French, on contraception, to a guy who has 9 kids and would like to stop there...
At 6.30 we all got into the house, barred all doors, and prepared for a long evening, calling in with the radio room every so often to report that there is nothing to report. However, in all honesty, I was expecting something a tad more dramatic, but this curfew was actually just one fun, big evening, with colleagues from Italy, El Salvador, France and Guinea: an impromptu gym on our beautiful terrace (where I toned my muscles, aggravated an ankle twisted over the weekend and further injured my right knee), some Amstel sessions complemented with some Congo-style Spanish tortilla, a long chat with my Italian colleague (he is my house mate in Goma as well, but somehow we had to come all the way here to actually bond), and a fascinating Burkina Faso soap opera on TV (on which occasion I found out the VERY important fact that someone from that country is called a Burkinabé).
At 9.40 p.m. it felt like we had partied for weeks already, so I took to my small, cozy room, and sheltered under my very sexy blue mosquito net. With ear plugs on I slept all through the night – so I would have even been unaware of guns shots around -- which are apparently a common occurrence here, and therefore a main reason for our curfews…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)