Congo Visa Ordeal and Precious Victory

I had given up hope that this day would actually come, when I would see my passport again…

Although I had been warned that Congo work visa takes weeks to be issued – and I was clearly up for a looong wait – lately I had started to believe in some sort of a bad karma regarding my passport and this whole visa issue. Now, 76 days after I last entered Congo, I finally have this document in my hands again, and I can finally start BREATHING properly.

There are a million and then some reasons why this takes so very long. On paper, the Direction Migration Generale (DGM) in Kinshasa is supposed to issue the $475 work visa in 15 days. In practice, it normally takes at least twice as long, since it has to go to many offices and depends on many bureacrats’ caprices. It didn’t help, of course, that our logs people delayed depositing my passport for more than 10 days after my arrival on July 2 (when they should have done it within 2 days, to avoid an initial fine). As impatient as I was about this back then, I have in the meantime come to terms with the fact that there is always confusion among my colleagues, as to why I am “Kinshasa staff based in Goma”, and that it takes a long time for them to agree on what procedures and codes I should be assigned to.

Anyhow, days after they finally gave my passport to the Kinshasa DGM, I was issued a fancy document stating that I am to pay more than $3,000 fine. The reason? Well, it goes back to my last year’s job, when I had a work visa in Rwanda (since I was based there), and then two six-month-visitor Congo visas issued by the Goma DGM (each of them costing $475). Apparently, though, Kinshasa DGM does not recognize Goma DGM (?!), and their claim was that I therefore worked illegally in Congo all past year. Another frantic episode started, with my former employer issuing explanatory letters and my current employer hiring a lawyer. Nothing helped, of course, especially as the Kinshasa DGM was already smelling the money. In the end they negotiated the fine down to $1,500, and my new NGO did pay up (God bless them, they actually had nothing to do with that…). The only good thing that came out of this: a realization on everyone’s part that in future similar cases the person in question “had better lose their passports” ahead of returning to Congo with a Goma-issued visa, and “start fresh” in Kinshasa (everything is done manually, anyhow, so no computer records will show previous visas)…

However, back to my case -- and another four weeks had lapsed. In the meantime, I had started to get seriously worried: one about my very old grandmother (if something had happened to her I would have been unable to leave this country), but also about my own situation: as Goma offers zero medical care (apart from a MONUSCO emergency point that we are officially NOT authorized to use), in any case of serious illness I would have been stuck here. Not to mention, of course, all the evacuation alerts for security reasons, which would have made my leaving also very difficult, if not impossible. Add to that a daily frustration that had been eating slowly at me: I live just 5 minutes on foot from the Rwanda border, and I was counting on crossing loads, for a more normal life grasp and also to see all my dear friends (and cat) left behind, but every day I had to suck it up and let go of that illusion a little bit more…

As August was also drawing to an end, my impatience was really mounting. Numerous calls and emails remained answered, until last Friday when our rather inept otherwise visa-liaison person called me up with the good news: “The visa is stamped in your passport. But now la guerre commence avec Finance.”

What guerre? Well, it goes, apparently, along these lines: every NGO pays the $475 for each passport deposited, but apparently the DGM finance guy(s) run a bit of a separate business with that cash, counting on the fact that it’ll take weeks before those visas will actually be issued. It was the same now – visa was finally in the passport, but the money to pay for it was nowhere (although it had been deposited on July 15 already). This way, I would have to wait until another file came before the DGM, so that another poor bastard’s passport will be stuck for weeks while THAT money was transferred to my case.

Of course, when you feel like you’re so close the incertitude is even more upsetting. The whole week I fussed around, also because I was supposed to book my obligatory R&R flights for this month (and had heard horror stories of people whose visas had not been issued in time for the R&R, so the passport had to be taken out from the DGM and then resubmitted, for another 3-month ordeal to begin). In this frenzy I even took the risk and bought my flights online yesterday, counting on some miracle (or, rather, on some universal benediction to be bestowed upon me).

And then, this morning, I opened my emails and there it was: the passport had been released last night and already sent on the UN flight to Goma this morning, with some MONUSCO general named Bruno. I rushed down the stairs to ask our liaison guy here to please go find Bruno at the airport when the plane lands and finally retrieve my most longed-for possession ever. I could hardly concentrate all morning, spinning around and smelling the freedom ever closer.

At 14.30 this afternoon I was victoriously holding my barely-legible-by-now-Romanian passport, and ever since then I’ve been feeling on top of the world! It is only now that all those repressed fears actually became real in retrospect (considering that Congo, of ALL places, in not a country you’d like to be stuck for ANY reason, let alone medical or security)…

Almost in disbelief, I am now flipping through the many pages stamped and noticing the following: 1. They issued me a wrong visa which is now ‘annulled’; 2. The current visa is valid until Sept. 2014, so now I really should decide to stay for 3 years in Congo; 3. The visa will actually only be valid if I exit the country within the first three months, otherwise it becomes void (?); 4. The visa needs to be renewed 7 months (?!); 5. There is no picture of mine attached (although I was asked to give 4 to the DGM).

In short – all things that make sense….Tonight, though, I have just one thing on my mind: celebrating!!!! (would love to pop some champagne rose open…). OK, and maybe buying everyone (including all incompetents, it does not matter anymore) lots of drinks. And, maybe, finding Bruno and thanking him for the amazing delivery.

And then, tomorrow, as I will wake up with a heavy head, I will crawl to the border to hop back and forth a few times. Freedom is priceless!

Kalemie Blues

I am writing this in the ‘waiting room’ at Kalemie MONUSCO Airport, where I am waiting for the only weekly flight out to stop by at some point today and get me to Goma. As I approached the gate this morning, the guard quickly showed up to check my name on the list. He actually had a few lists tucked in one folder, as Thursday seems to be the magic day here: all rare flights from and to all directions converge in Kalemie so that passengers can swap planes. The guard flipped through all the lists, but he somehow only found one Suzanne and one Charlize, and I kept trying to convince him that I was neither. When he was just about ready to dictate I should go back, I caught glimpse of a tiny table at the bottom of one of the lists. There, in all majesty, stood my name! Surprisingly, too, there were no mistakes!!! (Last two times I flew to and from Kinshasa, I was recorded as Silviana-Maria – with no family name – and on the way back Sinziana Demain – which prompted comments after comments when they finally caught on). This time – wow – I was there, with all my three names all spelled out correctly. I was really happy for some 5 seconds, until I discovered how I was registered under nationality: Italian. Why and how come – totally beyond me. I guess someone might have just guessed my nationality according to the sounding of my name… Oh well, I could live with that, and so could the guard, so here I was granted passage in this open-air barrack. Not before I was informed that I would be the only passenger to board here (hopefully not the only passenger on the plane, though…) These flights usually go in circles- i.e. Goma-Kalemie-Kindu-Bukavu-Goma, so I am thinking more stranded people in all these places would join my flying adventure today.

As MONUSCO-Benin contingent soldiers are crowding the area, and one NGO and UN car after another comes by Tanganyika Lake shore and then through the gravel yard to drop off other passengers, I am already getting the blues for this place, where I now spent one full week. Maybe it is just the element of total surprise that I experienced here, or maybe the great feeling of normality (which I have not found anywhere else in Congo) that got to me, but I REALLY, REALLY had a great time in this God forsaken place. Of course, the fact that I lived in a beautiful house right on the lake, AND that I could take loooong walks on the beach, made this week very special indeed.

The one “big challenge” I experienced: finding a place to swim without having hundreds of people congregate around or follow me in the water (mzungus are a rarity around here, and even more so girls in bikinis, I would imagine). Even at 6 a.m. (during the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen at the beach), or at 6 p.m. (as darkness falls abruptly), the beach is usually swamped: fishermen with all sorts of tools (including mosquito nets for the tiny prey); people washing themselves or tons of clothes; kids playing in the very shallow water; women loading massive sand sacks and then swiftly balancing them on their heads to walk all the way into town; boys coming with the yellow plastic containers to get water for all household necessities (including drinking, of course…) It really is one of those places where the Lake gives life and death at the same time, considering all the many diseases that get carried back and forth through this “good-for-all” water…

Of course the week was not just fun-in-the-sun, but mainly incredibly intense field work. Inland, I visited scores of villages and talked to tens of people about every single aspect of their lives: family, education, health, development… I visited school and clinics, mills and markets. For the first time in my life I saw cholera emergency camps set up (no patients, though, at this time … a surge is expected soon, once the rainy season begins). Also for the first time ever I was in a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs), coming mostly from the neighboring provinces where rebels and army alike constantly threaten and destroy people’s lives. It was one of the harshest moments I have ever experienced, witnessing all the misery, disease, poverty and hopelessness…

As my life constantly balances between the lowest of the low, in the world’s most backward country, and the ultimate luxury I am actually bestowed upon, I cannot be thankful enough for seeing and living it all. Kalemie was by no means an exception. A completely astonishing week now comes to the end, and I can say this much: I have never been happier and more fulfilled in my new job than now!

The Pearl of Tanganyika

I will definitely remember the first fall days of 2011 by this most full of surprises visit I have embarked on in Congo: the nearly forgotten town of Kalemie. Back in colonial times, the Belgians had named it “The Pearl of Tanganyika”, since its strategic location - pretty much half way down Africa’s deepest lake – made it an invaluable resource. They built up a very important harbor here, where the trains with precious ores from Zambia (then Rhodesia) and Lubumbashi (the largest Congo city in this province, Katanga), were swiftly exchanging with merchandise coming by boat from Tanzania. A traffic hub it would have been, in today’s terms… Only that its present certainly does not live up to its illustrious past.

Not that Kalemie has had a positive history all throughout. Even before the Belgians arrived, the Arabs were wreaking havoc here with their slave trade. Then Livingstone and later on Stanley used Kalemie as a strategic base for their expeditions – the latter of which eventually led to the brutal colonization of Congo. At all times, however, this lake-shore town was well known and had its clearly marked spot on the map.

Today, following the total collapse of the Congolese state at all levels and the many wars and rebellions plaguing this country, Kalemie is a no-name. Further up East, where I am based, every property houses an NGO, but here, as the situation is now ‘calm’, not even the humanitarian workers crowd to establish their presence. MONUSCO also, with a battalion of Beninois, has a much smaller mission and mandate than in other parts of Congo. Kalemie, if anything, is marked only as a stop-over on UN flights from Goma or Bukavu to Lubumbashi.

My self-awarded mission here, of a forced 7-days due to the rare flights in-and-out, was therefore something of a conundrum. We have a lot of programs in the region, and my main interest was going to be education around the beginning of the new school year, but beyond that I was anticipating a bit of a bore. Little did I know that this place was going to take me by complete surprise – in the BEST way possible.

Already from the airport, driving the 6 kms. into town, I felt like I had landed not in a different province but in a different country. Surely, the scenery was completely special – the type of Vama Veche in Romania crossed with Monterrico in Guatemala, if I could combine two past experiences on different continents to define a place in Africa… Or, in another way -- the type of climate and easy-goingness that you can ONLY find in seaside/lakeside places. But it was something else that completely shook me. It took me a few hours to put my finger on it, but then I finally grasped it: it was a sense of NORMALITY, which I had not experienced anywhere else in this mad country. Despite the many apparent difficulties people act calmly, and life here is really established. Anywhere else, in the neighboring provinces, this would be a dream, considering their horrible chaotic state due to so many stages of wars and uprisings, with or without a cause and finality. The fact that very mean-looking soldiers and rebels are NOT pacing the town everywhere makes a HUGE difference, of course, and gives the people a chance to breathe and go about their daily businesses in a much more casual, tranquil way.

That AND the stunning beauty of the region – from perfect coastline into savannah and then the bush - should be enough arguments to have tourism flourish here one day. I can only imagine boats crossing from Tanzania, and then tourists embarking on some-day-hopefully-again functioning trains to start their adventure journeys inland, to the heart of Congo’s majestic rain forest. For now, though, a mzungu in town is a rarity, as I have observed over the past four days, and anything catered towards public service is virtually non-existent or completely run-down.

That said, I have had great company. As our American chef-de-mission is on vacation, I am left to share the lakeside house with five African expat men, from Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Cameroon, Kenya and Tanzania. Incredibly respectful and fun, they have really made it their mission to take good care of me. I feel, again, quite humbled by Africa’s hospitality and charm. To me, the Pearl of Tanganyika certainly merits its name, and then some!

Keeping Fit

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…

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.

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.

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…

Creepy Friday ahead of Long Weekend

TGIF! Indeed, especially as I was just informed that we are going to have a long weekend (maybe too late to plan for anything when you find out about a Monday off on Friday at lunch, BUT certainly better than previously in Rwanda, where the government would issue some completely useless communiqué about free Mondays really late on Sunday nights…)

Not an easy Friday, though, as I took part in pretty much the scariest meeting ever: the OCHA security briefing. “OCHA is the part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA also ensures there is a framework within which each actor can contribute to the overall response effort,” says their web site. And they are certainly an amazing resource when you work in some God forsaken places. Among many other things: they remind you, in a very formal setting, how dangerous everything is around you, and how exposed you actually are when you do your work.

Not that I didn’t know Eastern Congo was not safe… Quite on the contrary… But still, during my many trips on the road and by air in the past 12 months I have kept a certain faith that things were going to be alright. And I have basically put my life in the hands of our security staff, our partners and even the local population at times, when we were doing field work in the middle of nowhere. And yes, we do get daily regional briefings, and they are not cheerful at all, but there was something about today’s meeting that gave me the creeps beyond the usual.

Attacks, ambushes, road blocks, fights, banditry, displacements, disease outbreaks, killings, lootings, rapes – you name it, and it was on the list of ‘routine’ things that have taken place around here during the past seven days. An Indian MONUSCO officer came in and clinically detailed all of these incidents, their supposed causes, and their potential bigger fallouts. And then he recommended we stay out of certain routes and, when in certain communities, try to contain rumors about more impending attacks that are driving everyone crazy.

WHOA! Lots to take in, for sure!

And a bizarre, two-fold feeling too: on the one hand I was quite charged and motivated by the vibe around (this was the closest I’ve ever been to a ‘situation room’); on the other I saw my vulnerability maybe clearer than ever before.

It’ll certainly take more than a long weekend to digest all this. And more than a few Fridays to get casual about these kinds of meetings...

Boring - Think Again!

I wanted to begin this post writing that by and large this week has been remarkably uninteresting. But then I paused to think that maybe my hyper life-style and sometimes very high expectations of myself and people/things around me should not mean that some ‘quieter’ days are boring. And then I realized that even my ‘quiet’ times are actually pretty incredible – even if sometimes, hearing the out-of-this-world stories of my colleagues and new friends here, I consider my own life pretty standard… Yes, I know, perspective shifts all the time. Sometime, when they throw in stories from all over the world about how they were evacuated, robbed at gun-point, lived in compounds or had their cars high-jacked, I go ‘wow!’ and I find not much more to add…

And then there comes a weekend – let’s say the first ‘slow’ weekend I would have spent since coming back to Africa, settling into my new house, etc. – and a last-minute begging-request from my former employer: that I help out (i.e. pretty much do the entire media part) of the finally happening gorilla transfer (the one which I was supposed to cover last June, and that was postponed MANY, many, many times). So here I was, working like a maniac both Saturday and Sunday, from 4.30 a.m. onwards, on the Goma side, seeing these beloved orphaned gorillas at long last being transported/airlifted from Rwanda back to Congo (where they had originally been confiscated from poachers). And what a wonderful, emotional time it was too, getting together with my former colleagues from Rwanda and also meeting some cool filmmakers, with very precious advice for my camera work. What also helped, esthetically, was that the helicopter pilot was quite a hot guy – unfortunately, though, I didn’t get a chance to fly off with him… My next post MUST have ‘frequent helicopter rides’ on the job description!

Once the whole frenzy was over, my body simply collapsed from last weeks’ fatigue (I suspect that the Goma dust clouds might have something to do with it as well, even if I am not allergic or particularly sensitive to these things)… It has also been quite difficult to sleep in, as loud birds start their morning rounds VERY early, and our Congolese house staff are also very diligent at sweeping the yard and sending radio messages at 6 a.m… Hardly being able to breathe I have sort of crawled through Monday and Tuesday, and I am now about to be picked up for a first field assignment, some 2-3 hours’ drive on a bad road… If by tonight I am feeling slightly more energetic I plan to embark on a NYC reminiscent experience: salsa dancing, with an Italian instructor, on the shores of the lake.

Wait, was I about to say my life was ‘uninteresting’?!?

Hanging Out with The Stars

For the past week I’ve been waking up every morning in the amazing Orchid Hotel in Bukavu, overlooking from a high terraced garden the incredible lake, and then hanging out with the stars. Quite literally. And quite amazing for a first field assignment in this new job…

On paper I will be based in Goma (which is the most important town in the North Kivu region), but in practice I will be traveling pretty much all the time all over the place to see and write about the different programs we are running in this HUMONGOUS country. Bukavu is the capital of South Kivu, so last Saturday I took this short, two-hour, $50 trip on the speed boat (the normal, ‘popular’ boats take more than twice this time), deep in the heart of the most amazing scenery. The only other place I could somehow relate this to: the Norwegian Fjords, only with actually beautiful weather as a plus. The Kivu Lake is simply breathtaking, with small islands and mountainous shores, and with the tropical spin of banana plantations and amazing forest brushing the water. It is so spectacular that I developed a kind of boat-addiction from the very beginning, so during the week I hopped on our own speed boat a few times, both for pleasure and for traveling to remote islands and visit some of our health programs.

The reason why I actually traveled to Bukavu, though, was to entertain some Hollywood, NFL, Nascar and private sector stars, who have come together to find a project and save the Congo… Easy to do, right? Well, actually kind of wrong. This country is SO big and complex, and has such a twisted post-colonial history and so many actors at play on the ground, that a ‘REAL’ solution is just not within anyone’s grip. Our stars, however, have been adamant that they can do something beyond the obvious pattern, so it has been quite entertaining in turn to see their thought-process related to this, accompanied by the most interesting comments and questions: “So this land was Belgian, right? And then what?”; “We should invest in conflict-free wine and call it ‘Delicious’”(they don’t grow grapes in Congo); “There are so many pregnant women around here, were they all raped?” (Bukavu happens to be known also as ‘the rape capital’ of the world); “So we're here to see some refugee camps, why are they not on the schedule?” (because there are none…); “I was thinking a few months back that I’d like to drive around here, but I’m glad I changed my mind. Man, these roads are bad!”, etc. etc… It will definitely be interesting to see what they come up with in the end. So keep your eyes on the media in the coming months, and you will certainly hear/see some big names talking about saving the Congo!

As they are heading back to their luxury homes later today, I will also take the boat back to Goma and hopefully have a few days in the same place to get my head around this new job – which from now on will hopefully only involve stars with shiny solutions on a NOT regular basis... Luckily my luggage also arrived (both from Kinshasa and from Rwanda), so I can envisage a couple of days of unpacking and decorating my new home. Very down-to-earth, star-free environment, to recalibrate and start anew. (Although I must confess that I definitely got hooked on one starry thing: an exquisite Chanel diamond white ceramic watch – which I duly googled and found that it costs around $10,000)…

UN Flight Taking Me Back Home

I have always had a thing for men in uniform (maybe not entirely coincidentally my two boyfriends were also more or less involved with their respective countries’ armies, although I rarely/never saw them in their officer attires). Anyhow, this could potentially be the one underlying explanation of why Eastern Congo does not entirely freak me out. In a space where there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers and numerous rebels belonging to God knows what factions, all carrying some pretty scary guns around and going on some terrible plundering/raping/killing sprees for any or no reason, I have managed to keep my emotions under control fairly easily. On top of it all, of course, there is the very large MONUSCO contingent (the largest anywhere in the world), trying to keep things relatively calm around here, so if you don’t bump into Congolese armed men then the Blue Helmets are certainly going to show up in your way pretty much wherever you turn.

However, I have never before been in a ‘military’ situation just like this morning, when in Kinshasa I was taken to the UN Terminal, to hopefully board a UNHAS (United Nations Humanitarian Assistance Service) flight to Goma. Backtracking for a second: my new employer, just like most major NGOs in Congo which have massive field operations requiring extensive travels, does not allow us to fly on any national carriers, given their horrible security record and measures. And, quite frankly, after the latest plane crash in Kisangani just a few days ago, I was quite happy to oblige and go for the safe UN flights. The only problem there: they are quite rare and extremely coveted, so more often than not the already exclusive people on the list get bumped and have to wait for another week or so until the next flight becomes available, as well as hope that no other more exclusive people called in all sorts of emergencies take over their seats again.

So yes, arriving at the small terminal I had strong doubts I’d be allowed to check in, but somehow this was my lucky Tuesday. After a couple of rather quick screens, during which I only had to present my new work-card and Ordre de Mission, I entered the waiting room only to find myself literally magnetizing the gazes of tens of men-in-uniforms, putting together the funnies looking ‘army’ ever: Nigerians, Chinese, Uruguayans, Egyptians, Congolese and Nepalese are the ones coming to mind now, some 12 hours later, when I can hardly believe that I was part of that scene. Too bad, however, that I had not quite anticipated that, so I was so NOT looking at my best (after being quite a knock-out in Kinshasa this past week) ;-) But so it happened that I was still a bit sleepy at 6.30 a.m., and wearing my field clothes since the rest of my luggage had been in the meantime shipped off by DHL (at a whopping price of $430 for 30 kgs).

With the burden of all those looks on me, which I clearly did not quite know how to handle, I thought I should keep myself busy and for starters decided to use the restroom. The ladies’ toilet, clearly marked, opened however with a urinal, which obviously threw me off balance even more. The next thing to do, after coming out of there quite startled, was to pace the big room and take a look at the strangest collection of posters I have ever seen: how to be safe around a helicopter; how to fight HIV stigma; how to approach the apron at the terminal; and, finally… how to take a UN flight. This last note was basically a list of all the things that had gone somewhat wrong with these flights in the last few months. Among them, bird attacks and humans crossing the runways to-and-from their fields just before planes landed. What was missing was a note about the UN plane that crashed in April (in which someone working for us actually perished), to give these ‘safe flights’ a more realistic touch…

Slowly, passengers for different destinations were called up front and handed a piece of paper acting as a boarding pass, and sadly it turned out that on my flight there were not going to be any men in uniform after all… Finally my turn came as well for the Kinshasa-Bukavu-Goma-Kananga-Kinshasa flight, and I boarded this really cute plane whose shape reminded me of a baby crocodile, with a really long, slender nose. It turned out it was actually a Mexican plane, and the crew consisted of the most endearing, chubby, middle-aged steward I have ever traveled with. He performed his duties in a rather homey manner as well, so I really totally enjoyed the flight, dozing off now and then and dreaming of Uruguayan soldiers.

When we landed in Bukavu, some three hours later, I felt how I was finally coming home, returning to the East after this crazy Africa criss-crossing from the past three weeks. I then came close to tears when we flew from Bukavu to Goma, over the most spectacular Lake Kivu landscape, and literally brushing by my dear Rwanda, of which I basically recognized every hill, hotel, beach. So close and yet so far, as upon arrival I actually handed my passport to some stranger who was returning to Kinshasa on the continuing flight, so that the guys at HQ could finally take it to immigration for my new work visa. I will henceforth be stuck in this country for at least two months, so God pray there’s no emergency or anything of the kind coming up!

Brilliant Day

Just because so many people got seriously worried after my previous post - here’s a positive one. Since I was trapped in Kinshasa for the weekend, I decided it was time to go for the main three important things in a new place: sightseeing, shopping, eating.

Now, it was a bit difficult to go for the first one, since we are actually not allowed to go on foot anywhere in the city, apart from a gated area around the embassies, next to the mighty Congo River (i.e. the border with the other Congo). And sightseeing from the car – well, yes, you do see a lot of concrete on the massive Avenue 30 Juin and a lot of dust everywhere else, and you get it how great things were under Mobutu (!) when everything was working properly(?) And you do also catch a glimpse of the fantastic villas from the colonial times, and happy you are indeed when friends and friends of friends happen to know people living there, and when you are invited to multiple garden parties every single night. But eventually that excitement also wears off, and by Sunday morning I was really dying to move my legs. I cautiously took my big camera bag (knowing that I would probably not be able to take any pics, due to the MANY absurd restrictions here), and together with Sara, a colleague visiting from London, we asked the driver to take us to the ‘walk place’ at 9 a.m.

The moment we approached the river, on a beautiful street that reminded me so much of the promenade in Montreux on the Geneva Lake, few soldiers came up to us and started explaining this and that, until one actually said “you can go down to the river.” OK, that was unexpected. We left the high paved road and took a ton of run-down stairs until we actually came to the water. And there it was, the incredible, mythical, fascinating Fleuve Congo, that captured my imagination ever since I was a small child and heard tales of the frightful Heart of Darkness. Of course, on this particular stretch, where you have both capitals on opposite banks, the view is rather ‘civilized’, but when you think where this river – the deepest and second largest in the world - is coming from you do get the ultimate chills. It really is one of the most humbling sights I have ever laid my eyes on, and certainly the highlight of this week in Kinshasa.

Closely supervised by soldiers I was about ready to go back up, when one of them, having spotted my camera bag and smelling some dollars coming his way, very naturally suggested I take pictures. WHAT?!?! A soldier in Congo suggesting you take pictures!?!? And of the ONE place (the border) that all guide books and wise white people with vast Congo experience caution you against?!? OK, this was indeed a good Sunday morning. Still in disbelief, and quite nervous (I was actually thinking he’d take my camera at some point), I started flashing my Nikon left and right, in a sort of surreal excitement. The river was obedient, and calling, and of course all I could think of was floating away on it (apart from wanting to do the cross-country in the US and the trans-Siberian in Russia, the long trip on the Congo River from Kinshasa to Kisangani is right there, high on my priority list).

After the soldier expressly asked for money for coffee or beer, and we duly conformed, we felt like we had paid our way to take pics from the promenade as well. Bypassing only expats jogging and more soldiers guarding bushes and trees, we took this amazing walk, on which I came to think Kinshasa is really not THAT bad. Yes, it is outrageously EXPENSIVE, and FILTHY, and completely CHAOTIC, and just IRRATIONAL overall, but it does have the life, and the feel, and the grandeur, and the power of a really great city. And just when I was pondering on all that – here I was faced with the only other thing I always fantasized of in Congo: some sign with the Zaire name. It came to me from atop a very tall, ugly building, and the “Z” was obscured by a ladder, but no mistake – it was splashed there, for everyone entering the country from the port to see!!! Mobutu was indeed still alive, and probably dear to some people in that building, that the name he created for this country was still allowed. My faithful NIKON zoom did its job this time as well. And with this precious gem on my memory card, I really decided it was time to take off, before some other zealous official thought differently about our picture-taking spree.

The next thing on the agenda was shopping. The day before we had already purchased some pagne (the Congolese waxed-fabrics, in screaming colors), when our colleague Dorothy had arranged for us girls to go spend some money in some upscale shops, but today I really wanted to see the Marche Centrale. Unfortunately, though, it was a Sunday morning, and they were still far away from setting up and getting going, and I also kind of bowed to my own person wisdom giving me nudges (stop buying things, you cannot carry them, your bags are overflowing!), so instead we set up for this lovely road trip. We were going to see the bonobos!!!

For those of you who need some context: these guys, thought for a very long time to be some chimpanzee subspecies, are to be found only in the DRC, to the south of the Congo River, deep in tropical forest. I had heard lots of talks about them last year, since several of my gorilla colleagues had some experience with bonobos, but I had not seen them ever before. What I remembered best was something about their hyper sexuality – they basically have sex ALL the time, not only for reproduction but also for pleasure and for resolving conflicts in their society. The motto they are associated to, quite fittingly: “Make love, not war!”

We were certainly not going to see them in the wild, as that region is FAR, FAR away, and habituated bonobos are still not commonplace, so we went to this fantastic place just outside Kinshasa called Lola ya Bonobo (Paradise for Bonobos) – a very large forested sanctuary, where bonobos rescued from poachers are being rehabilitated. Of course, just like with gorillas or chimps, for every bonobo that has the luck to be saved and brought here, many others are killed, sold, eaten… But yes, it is a real jungle out there, and certainly not only for animals…

Some 60 bonobos are currently cared for here, in different fenced enclosures (but imagine that not as in a zoo-fenced, but as in a huge forest which has fences going throughout it). They are practically free to do whatever they want, but they are still closely monitored. The only thing that does not make any sense to me (coming from the Uber-strict gorilla world, where the human presence is sooo limited and heavily controlled): here there are basically no rules. Or, if there are, they are certainly not followed in any way. A bunch of school girls yesterday were about to feed the bonobos chips through the electric fence, when I just had to shout out. These guys are still supposed to be wild, and return to the wild some day (well, maybe), so any such close contact with humans can only be damaging. Then again, I was just a visitor there myself, so I had to get over my zealous over-protective attitudes and carry on.

It was, indeed, a delight seeing them. And not that I have anything against them having sex all the time (if anything, I applaud a species that has the guts and the time and the drive to do so), BUT there is one just about disgusting thing in this whole business: the female genital swellings, which obviously attract the other bonobos (males and females alike), but which to me looked like nothing more than gigantic tumors. Brrr. And quite frankly, even going beyond the looks – those things must make life SO incredibly uncomfortable. Quite a price to pay for being attractive...

But anyhow -- the bonobos are indeed adorable, and the long walk through the primary forest just what I needed and missed so much. And after such an active day, it was certainly time to delve into the next amazing Kinshasa has to offer: the Cossa Cossa.

They are, quite frankly, the best reason to come over here. The fantastic Congo River prawns, that I have had this week in all possible ways (with garlic, with pili-pili (chili sauce), on a ‘tropical skewer’ with pineapple and veggies, or in a casolette) are just divine. And yes, expensive, at an average of $25-30 a portion, so my finding Chez Philo, where they go for ‘only’ $15, was even more so a treat. I topped the day with a large Tembo beer (whose labels have fun, quick facts about Congolese history), and an actually very good moelleux (which is my all-time favorite desert, that I had had only in France, Belgium and NYC before), so I was indeed quite HAPPY for this brilliant Sunday in Kinshasa.

Bad Day

I've had a bad day. Or maybe just a Congo day. Either way, I am exhausted and at 9 pm I am still not sure where I will sleep tonight.

It all started at our nice Sultani Hotel this morning, when our entire delegation (senior staff from every province) was basically kicked out to make place for - apparently - the South Korean presidential delegation. OK, I get political sensitivities and all, but I am outraged at our logistics guy, who seemed totally unfazed. His only reaction - throwing of all of our stuff in the back on a car, with an unknown destination TBD. I cannot even stress enough my utter annoyance, at the fact that I had to pack again my three + suitcases that I've been now living out of for more than 2 weeks, just to be told that on Friday morning we'd have to move yet again...

I thought I knew better, though, as I was totally planning to fly out to Goma on Friday, and I also thought I had made all arrangements for it (i.e. asking our extensive logistics team to book me a seat). When I arrived at the office they were all smiles, but soon they started punching the bad news. First, as we are only allowed to take UN flights, we are also only allowed to have 20 kg of luggage with us - and paying overweight simply won't do. I could not emphasize enough that I would want my luggage there WITH me, so a whole machinery started looking into DHL options to ship my stuff a day in advance of my flight (i.e. Thursday). Of course, as proforma for shipping came in, so came the other piece of fantastic news: I was totally cut off the Friday flight, and I was now looking at next Tuesday at best... In the meantime my passport was being taken to immigration but my work card was not yet ready, so I was in Kinshasa without identity, without accommodation, without luggage. Exactly what I had dreamed of in this mad city. Add to that the fact that yesterday, as I was using my personal Vaio for work, my charger fried, and the news was that no Sony chargers were to be found anywhere in Congo, and in the meantime they gave me this CRAP DELL with an impossible French keyboard, and all was just terrific. In the midst of all this I also had to reconfigure my entire schedule, as Mary, the girl that was supposed to give me an extensive briefing, had just gone gone down with malaria...

As meetings came and went, and as the evening was drawing closer, I was sort of becoming slightly impatient. The system we have here - with rotating drivers and cars - is all nice in principle, but certainly not that great during rush hour, when cars are totally stuck God knows where and the mobile phone networks simply do not work. So there I was, at 6.30 pm, frantically calling an unanswerable driver phone, while on the other line trying to find out at least what the name of the new hotel was. No real luck on either end, until someone rushed to our office and mentioned 'the bus was downstairs and all have to go now'. It turned out we had been rented a bus, that no one wanted to take in the end, since they were all about to go out. I was so tired, though, that I decided to get a lift. And there I was, all by myself in a 20-seater, that stumbled every 2 meters on the way to an unknown destination.

When we finally arrived to this no-name construction behind a thick fence I was really at the end of all my wits. A few guys came up from nowhere and showed me through a narrow hall to the reception window, and then through another narrow hall to my room - where, MIRACULOUSLY, all my bags (tagged an untagged?!) were waiting for me... In my delight, coupled with the excitement to see a really nice room, I almost overlooked the fact that the mosquitoes were literally swarming in there. When I was quite directly attacked, while still standing, and pointed to the guys that there was no moustiquaire and that I absolutely needed one, they were quick to rebut me "But why, there are absolutely no mosquitoes in here, as you can see!"

At that moment all I could do was get the hell out of there and ask for a large beer. And a moustiquaire and insect repellent. And surely, they did provide a Primus as well as some anti-insect canned product, which finished at the first attempted spraying. At the same time I was trying to negotiate for some dinner, and the best I could do was get a fried quarter of a chicken, with some rice and two tomato slices for 20 bucks. Clearly, this was NOT going to make me happy.

While I was waiting for my dinner in the nicely hidden garden, by the pool, I was duly informed that 'the technician' called to buy and fix the moustiquaire had defected. Just as well, I thought, as he was the tiniest man I had ever seen, trying to estimate how to deal with a problem hooked to a ceiling of at least 4 meters high, without any ladder or any tools. As I was biting into my delicious soso breast, I was also quite naturally courted by this fat, middle-aged Congolese man sitting at the next table. Small talk all you want, of course, I was thinking, until I almost choked when he mentioned he has just returned from... Maramures (the most picturesque part of Romania). Wait, WHAT?! He then went on a rant telling me how much Romanians and Congolese are like each other, because they prefer living in large groups. La Roumanie, c'est presque comme l'Afrique, he concluded, and that's when I decided it was time to go back to the mosquitoes.

After another round of negotiations with the reception guy, who took me to five other rooms to prove to me the 'no-mosquito show', I decided to take the first one anyhow, at least to try it out. With the disgusting AC at full blow, malaria-Mary on my mind, and three personal sprays at peak (intoxicating myself to begin with), I am now maybe contemplating to let myself pass out and just hope to wake up to a more normal day... Then again, when you sign up for Congo, you pretty much forgo any right to any claimed normality...

Jambo Kinshasa!

I could not quite believe yesterday morning, when at the airport in Kenya my boarding pass said ‘Nairobi-Kinshasa’. But there I was, on my way to this mighty city, far, FAR away from any other place in Congo I had been to. The flight was actually quite funny: we first crossed over to the other Congo (the ‘French’ one), to drop off and pick people up in Brazzaville, and then went up again for the shortest ever flight of my life: 8 minutes to Kinshasa. That’s right. We simply crossed the Congo river by air, and landed in the ‘Belgian’ Congo around 10.30 a.m. All safe and good, apart from a minor frustration: it was so cloudy out there that I could not take any pictures (after repeatedly haggling for a window seat). There will be other opportunities, of course, JUST that in these countries you should take whatever you can whenever you can (before they take away your camera or attempt to arrest you for God knows what reason).

But here I was, and off I was going into the immigration hall. From my previous experiences at airports in Congo, and based on all sorts of stories I’ve heard about this airport in particular, I was expecting some kind of trouble with my visa, or my vaccination certificate, or my looks, or my attitude, or something. However, to my utter surprise, everything went as smoothly as it could have gone, and in a few minutes only I was out in the baggage claim area not quite believing my luck. This place reminded me of a huge sort of public toilet: pillars covered in blue, chipped tiles, supporting a rather low roof, and windows that have not been washed in probably a decade. The baggage belts were also quite a scene: many officials were jumping up and down on them, and then in and out through the little hole meant for luggage to appear through, so it took about forever to get some bags flowing. And when they finally did, I could not quite understand what they were all about: some hundreds of humongous packs meant for douane came first, which meant we had to wait some half an hour for our regular stuff to begin rolling. In the end there I was, with everything intact, ready to step out and look for my driver.

Henri was duly there, waiting for me with a big sign, and fitting me readily into a big jeep. He also presented me with a large information package -‘First 24 hours in Kinshasa’- and suggested we stop by the office first to get the duty phone which was waiting for me. Impressive organization, I must say! Add to all the smooth operations a fantastic drive for the first 20 minutes or so, and I was beginning to wonder how come Kinshasa has all the bad names associated to it.

And then we hit THE traffic. I thought I had seen the worst in Nairobi, but this was hardly comparable. The gigantic Avenue 30 Juin (named after the Congolese independence day) is basically this half newly renovated boulevard with some 4 lanes each way, synonymous with the land of grueling concrete. All trees were cut off to make place for additional lanes a short while back, so it’s like this massive airport take-off runaway surrounded by mobile markets and stranded people trying to cross everywhere (with very little chance at it too). And then, when you get stuck, you really get stuck, in such a way that it is quite physically impossible to figure out how to get out of it all. We thus did not move for the longest time, and my energy levels were dwindling at an alarming rate, so much so that when I was dropped off at the hotel I completely crashed in the hallway. It did not help the fact that the reception guy at the rather fancy Sultani Hotel insisted he had no reservation in my name, and that they were so full there was no way he would accommodate me. Some half an hour later they did manage to find my name somewhere, and miraculously I could choose among several free rooms available. I was so tired that I even allowed myself to accept a room without a mosquito net (“cause there are no mosquitoes here!” (?!) said the guy, and decided instead to use just some spray and some preventive AC). In the meantime, I ordered at the restaurant some $14 spinach cannelloni (the waitress said they’d be ready in 10 minutes, so I figured 40 minutes would be about right), and with an eye on Wimbledon I fell asleep at 3 pm, only to wake after some 14 hours of the deepest sleep ever.

By contrast, since I didn’t really know many people here, and I had not scheduled anything in particular, I spent my Sunday mostly in the hotel, frantically enjoying a splendid internet connection. I went out just for lunch, with a colleague, and marveled at the ghost-town in the Gombe (expat) area – apparently with the July 4 weekend, the Americans are all celebrating out of the city, while the Brits had some sort of exclusive club-meeting to watch Wimbledon together. Resting well I did then, bracing for a crazy week full of meetings ahead.

Africa Reloaded

So I did decide to stay on and move on at the same time. After an amazing vacation in Europe, last week I returned to Africa to take on a daunting mission: becoming the Congo media and information officer for a large humanitarian aid organization.

Luckily, the beginning of my assignment coincided with an advocacy and external relations workshop that they were holding in Nairobi, so here I was, learning about my new Congo job in Kenya and meeting new colleagues from across Africa and the US. It is now my last night here, and I am standing by the pool at the fabulous Silver Springs Hotel, bracing for a flight to Kinshasa tomorrow.

As hundreds of names of people, locations and programs are flying by me and flooding my new outlook inbox I am slowly getting ready for what will certainly be a CRAZY job. Since Congo is just about INSANELY BIG, it is actually considered not a country, but a region, with each province a sort of country on its own. I can already see myself criss-crossing this 2.4. million km2 territory, setting up a whole communications machinery and dealing with everything I could have ever imagined in ‘field work’. I am quite exhausted only at the thought of it all, but soooo excited to see all these places and help give those tens of millions in need a voice out there (yes, exactly, I am already learning the message, not to mention that my head is pretty much full of organizational jargon and strange acronyms). I am certainly pumped up by the Americans delivering this workshop (I felt a bit like back in class at Columbia, with this very forth-coming, hands-on-oriented approach, of which I had grown a bit apart in the last few years.)

It was all, actually, so professional, that I have been working some 12 hours a day (OK, with short breaks for the hotel gym and Masai shoe shopping). I was also thrown in cross-continental conference calls, with both staff around the world and journos interested in covering our work, that I am totally feeling part of something really BIG.

I can only hope I'll be safe and healthy in this momentous new chapter of my life, and that some day I will look back on it all and be convinced I made the right choice(s). See you in Congo!

Illegal Freedom

I was supposed to fly back to Europe today, but very last minute 'things' came up: i.e. I got offered a massive promotion, PLUS my visa expired. As of today, I am therefore an illegal manager in Rwanda - a completely new status that will require some adjusting to.

As for the next few days the country is still in mourning (so office hours are very limited), I am not sure when and how I will get my papers back. Too bad, because I was planning an amazing vacation with my Italian friend Alberto (a loop from Rwanda-Kampala-Nairobi-Mombasa-Zanzibar-Serengeti-Rwanda). Instead - oh well, I just had to 'settle' today for the most amazing Sunday in Africa :-)

One of our American neighbors, Jock, a retired professional biker who participated five times in Tour de France and who now coaches the Rwandan team, has finally picked up on my suggestion and took me for a ride. A splendid motorbike on a splendid road (newly paved, going to Gitarama), through tea plantations and rolling hills. It had been my dream FOREVER to be on such a bike, but I never quite imagined I would have the ultimate thrills like I did today. I smirked for the whole two hours, not quite believing the amazing freedom (and yes, the taste of danger) that I was experiencing in such a forceful way. I have never felt more liberated in this country, where everything is so tightly controlled or so overcrowded.

To end my FANTASTIC day, I had the mother of all adventures at home. For the first time in 10 months I decided to have some people over for dinner and cook something myself. As I was approaching the stove, a can of fruit on the nearby shelf exploded and threw everything around in the air. The noise was deafening, and the kitchen (and myself) splattered everywhere with canned mango and pears. It was actually VERY scary. Go figure, of all the things that could kill or harm me in Africa, to get attacked by a can in my own house...

Never Again!

April 7, 1994… Under the relentless rain, Rwanda was entering the darkest age imaginable to mankind. The macabre history is out there for everyone to read. And learn from. And never repeat again!

The survivors and their personal stories are on the other hand very much around me, every single day. Although people are mostly restrained in talking about that nightmarish spring, it is still so very much on everyone’s mind. How could it not be, when pretty much all Rwandans have had many family members, friends or neighbors tortured and killed in the most cruel, brutal, bestial way ever conceivable...

And there is no harsher time to remember than every April. The rain pours down in what reminds me of Dickens’ “implacable November weather.” No sun rays for days, no hope for light. Add to that the deep silence, and it all becomes almost frightful. In a country where everyone is walking everywhere at all times, and where traffic is insanely busy, all of a sudden the streets are empty and sooo quiet. Apart for the genocide memorial gatherings, which are organized each day for a whole week, no one moves, no one talks. Surreal to have just the rain pounding down on an empty country, with haunting memories.

I spent April 7 alone in the house, somewhat unsure of how to even act around myself. For some half an hour around midday I stepped out on our side street and just sat there, in the rain. And then, last night, I joined my friend Bonny to the big gathering on the stadium. I lit a candle in the middle of a huge, silent crowd. And then the screams came. As one survivor was retelling his story (he was the only one to make it out alive from a church where 5,000 people were massacred – a church which I actually visited…), people were fainting around. The hysterical cries of the survivors and the emotional church music, all next to a huge bonfire, made for quite the most poignant, distressing night I have ever had in Africa... Still so hard to fathom how the victims and the killers now really live side by side...

As I walked home through the ghost-like town the rain began to come down again. And I felt blessed I had no memories to sift through on a night like that.

Football Joy and Genocide Mourning Preparations

I have not missed many Barcelona games in the last year, and I was certainly not going to miss the big game last night. Dilemma, though: the upscale place 'uptown', where we usually watch the games, has just one screen, and they were definitely going to show Chelsea-Manchester, as Africans are just wild about English teams (loyalties are now re-distributed, as main love Arsenal is out of Champions League). We thus needed a longer expedition downtown, to one of the real popular football venues - i.e. dark, stuffy rooms, full of several hundred passionate fans, watching the two games on the two side-by-side huge screens.

I persuaded my American colleague Stacy (a Barca-fan-by-way-of-hanging-out-with-me) to go get a beer first at the 'Kenyan bar' in town, and then we moved next door, to Amani Soccer Center. 300 RWF ($0.50) to get in (we were the only ones to carry beers inside as well), and urged we were to move to the far side of the room - corresponding to the Barca screen. I was proudly wearing my Barca shirt (purchased in Barcelona a few months ago), which attracted a lot of noises from the audience - and although my Kinyarwanda is practically non-existent, I did sense the hate in everyone's voices (Barca being the team that kicked Arsenal out two years in a row, of course).

We were lucky to get some of the last chairs available, and ready we were to chant at 8.45, when power was cut. They brought the generator to life in a few minutes - long enough, though, for us to miss the Iniesta opener. No regrets, however, as goals kept flowing the entire night. Deep down, I was feeling sympathetic towards Lucescu, whose gimmicks again attracted a lot of laughter from my African watching companions. And I started dreaming of the four El Classicos that would basically follow in the next three weeks. WOW!

Sometime in the middle of that game, I had to turn to Stacy (who is Norwegian by descent, therefore as fair-haired as these Africans can only dream of) and asked her is she felt remotely uneasy there. I certainly didn't, and I somehow thought I should: we were these only two mzungus, and the only two women on top of that, in the middle of a screaming, sweaty manly crowd, in pitch dark, with no way 'to escape'. Stacy assured me she was fine as well. Bizarre, over all, how one African country with such a bloody history would make us feel so incredibly safe overall! Pretty scary thought, sometimes... Even more so at this time of the year, as we are commemorating the 1994 genocide, and tales of unfathomed cruelty and human bestiality surface in every conversation.

As the country prepared to go into mourning the next day, celebrations for Barca and Manchester victories in the streets were restrained. We walked home onto our recently publicly-lit street, supremely happy for the wonderful game, and prepared for a next day of silence and reflection. Another African paradox in the making...

Congo Travels

The end of my contract is now very near, and I decided to take one last long trip ‘out there’ in Congo. On the map, Kasugho is no more than some 350 kms from Goma, but this involves traveling by plane for an hour to Butembo, and then by road for some 4-10 hours – if there are no trucks stuck in the mud and if the rain holds as well as it can.

Leaving aside the exhaustion, and the fact that even if all your papers are in order there will ALWAYS be someone to come up with a ‘new rule’ that changed overnight and threaten to arrest you or something, there’s a certain beauty to this trip. First, the luggage weighing is out of this world. You stand in this dark corner and pass your stuff one by one over a rope to some guys, who fight for the right to smash your laptop bag. They hang your suitcases on this scale, and then they shout across the room to someone in another dark corner: “8, 12, 14, etc, etc.” Another guy is then supposed to cross this room and get the bag labels reflecting those kilos. By the time he is back, of course no-one remembers which bag was 8, which was 12, etc., especially as there are tons of people whose luggage is weighed at the same time. They start quarreling, and too bad for you if you end up with someone else’s luggage labeled (miraculously my stuff has always arrived in some shape).

Then it’s time to cross the main lobby, and turn down offers from guys who want to sell you cheese and boiled eggs. You then disappear behind this new wooden panel to go through border control. Usually, they are fascinated when they see a Romanian passport, and they go on and on about Mobutu and Ceausescu. This last time, a lady behind the counter was very confused and required some information: “Les gens de la nationalite de la Roumanie, il s’appellent comment?” When I told her I was ‘roumaine’ she had trouble entering that into her register, so we had to spell it slowly a couple of times, until the whole room was staring to this weird nationality of a girl. We then cleared my ‘ordre de mission”, an A4 paper which states exactly when and where I am traveling, and which requires a LOT of stamps back and forth upon taking off and landing. Luckily, the guy at the guichet for the yellow fever certificate was not there this time (that’s how ‘strongly’ they enforce they protection against yellow fever), so I escaped another round of discussions (i.e. ‘this stamp is not valid’, ‘what does it say here’, etc, etc.)

Finally, I arrive to the waiting room. While I wait inside, with the doors somewhat closed, for my small Butembo-bound plane to show up, a huge plane is just boarding for Kinshasa in front of us, and when it starts rolling for take-off I feel like all the dust in the world is magnetized towards me and that I’m swept away with it on the runway. I try to ignore it, but somehow the whole building seems to be shaking and the glass windows are not offering that much protection. I wonder, again, why this plane cannot be parked a bit further away, just like our little tiny one is (we have to practically run outside to get to our Tupolev). I was especially interested in getting a seat ‘up front’, to escape being on the window under the wings, so that I can take some decent pictures.

As luck has it, I got a magnificent seat: some 20 cms. away from the pilot’s cabin, which, for some reason, was left with the doors open. It was quite THE fascinating flight, me sticking my head between the pilots’ seats and watching closely all they were doing throughout the flight (AND recording it all, without bothering to ask for permission). It really is fascinating, flying these small planes across the jungle, but so low down that you can see everything out there. My favorite command (not sure what it does, though), was “Bleed air”, which they were turning on and off quite a bit. I also almost developed a crush on the co-pilot, who was young and seemed quite good looking from the profile. And who, thank God, landed us safely some 50 minutes later, on this dirt strip amid potato fields in Butembo.

I had not been there in some four months, and things had progressed considerably: they had sealed off the ‘landing area’ with a rope between two poles, and the waiting crowd was committed to the parking lot, some 15 meters away. Which meant, of course, that I had to carry all my luggage by myself to the driver, George. To my immense joy, the airport chief remembered me very well. “Demian, vous etes ici!” Indeed I was. “Et vous allez a Kasugho”. He was right again. I just needed his stamps and his blessings, and off I went.

The next thing you need to understand about the drive from Butembo to Kasugho (actually Katoyu, a suburb of the grand village of Kasugho) is that because it is such a difficult and expensive ride ($120 for fuel), they always need to make sure the SUV is always filled to capacity, with both people and merchandise. Somehow though, none of this is ever ready by the time I land there, so once I’m out of the airport it’s time to go around Butembo and collect them people and things. Too bad if you happen to arrive on a Friday – which is reserved for ‘public works’, so pretty much all shops are closed until noon. To get the items on the list (paint, salted fish, water, gas, all sorts of onstruction materials, plus documents from different offices) we need to go in circles around town several times, which is even more difficult nowadays as half of the city is closed down for road repairs. Eventually, some three hours later, we are uber-loaded with stuff and we start collecting the people. Soon, the back seat will contain 3-5 mostly sweaty-smelly Congolese of different affiliations, family or work relationships, so we are finally ready to embark on the jump-up-and-down road journey.

Surprisingly, this time it all went quite smoothly, with no incidents in the first three hours. As we were almost ready for a record finish, we did have to put our expectations on hold, arriving in a curve where the road was literally cut across in two. They had dug up this four-meter deep ditch, to put pipes across from the mountain on the right to the river on the left, so that rain water should easily pass under, not over thee road. Important improvement, no doubt, for future travelers. As for us – well, just get out of the car, walk around, give bonbons to a hoard of kids gathered around, and quietly wait for about 2 hrs ½ to finally get the road back.

Five days later, at five a.m., the trip back starts – again, with quite a loaded car. My colleague Sandy and I were supposed to catch a flight early afternoon, so we started off quite early, to avoid any possible mishaps on the road. It all went amazingly well this time, with our driver George getting us out of some pretty nasty muddy situations. We were then left in Hotel Butembo eating and drinking for some three hours, not knowing that our biggest challenge would come at the airport. The chief apparently found that Sandy’s visa was expired – which, actually, it was not. Issued on Oct. 12 and valid for 6 months, it would have expired only on April 11, but since the officials also included October in the counting – there it was, over and done with. Luckily, with my amazing math skills, I saw the problem, and in a very enthusiastic French I was trying to make him see it too, as Sandy was confined to a corner, not believing what was happening to her. So, we gathered every airport officials in a room, got two calendars available, a piece of paper and a pen, and started:
Oct 12-Nov. 12: 1
Nov. 12-Dec.12: 1
Dec. 12-Jan.12: 1

Etc, etc. Of course, by the time we would get to March, they would all get confused, and we had to begin all over again. The chief would pause now and then, saying wisely “Je suis en train d’analyzer la situation…” After some 20 minutes he did admit he was wrong – for which conclusion he definitely deserved a chocolate bonbon, that was still left somewhere in my bag. In turn, he gave me a long-overdue gift as well: the DRC independence anniversary pin, which I had asked him to get for me since last June.

Ufff, we could finally board the plane. I was exhausted from my advanced numbering session, and all I wanted was to get going. The same cute pilot was on duty – but somehow didn’t seem as cute anymore. I put it this was to Sandy: “This pilot looked better proportioned a few days ago,” to which she said “You mean you found him attractive.” I guess yes, that’s what I meant. Weird to have turned politically correct in Congo of all places?!

The flight was marvelous, as for the first time I sat down on the ‘Ugandan side” of the plane, flying over the majestic Lake Edward that separates the two countries. I was lucky enough to get amazing pictures, of this mind-blowing landscape, as well the lava path near Goma. What an incredible country, by all accounts!

Indeed, surprises would not end there. At the Goma airport they somehow felt like picking on MY passport, saying that I cannot travel for work with a tourist visa (which we just recently purchased for $475!), and that I had to get a new one in Kinshasa of all places. I started ‘arguing’, and asking how come it was possible for me to travel for the past 9 months on ‘tourist visas’, and the guy kept rambling on and on about a ‘new law’ and the ‘good of his heart’ – that he as going to let me pass ‘only this time’. BS, of course, as it turned out soon enough, when our man, Jackson, came to pick us up. He knew the guy all to well, and he clearly explained how he was just looking for a small bribe from ‘la roumaine’.

Oh well. At least we had arrived back safe and sound. As for the ‘Goma mission’ – a completely different saga…

The Intriguing Goma Mix

I was not quite aware of the ethnic divide in the Goma society before a couple of weeks ago, when I first hung out with the ‘metisse’ community. Yes, those light-skinned people, who have the strangest, most appealing kinds of heritages: French, Belgian, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, etc., all seasoned with a dash of Congolese blood. Result: BEAUTIFUL features, and a definite noblesse and style not easily found in Black Africa. Add to that the fact that they all grew up in luxury (owning massive tea and coffee plantations in the vast countryside, as well as the most beautiful houses on the Goma Kivu Lake front), that they all got high education in Europe (mostly in Belgium – a country which, incidentally, they quite dislike), and that now they are supremely influential in the Goma high-life, and yes, the mix is all the more appealing. The fact that their properties were devastated in the last decade of civil war in Eastern DRC seems to have been largely overcome, and I am now impatiently waiting for the rain season to pass, so that roads can be usable again, so that I can visit their famous cheese-producing farms near Masisi, north of Goma.

I was introduced to this community through Dario, a young gentleman, who might just as well qualify as the nicest guy I have ever met. He works for a partner NGO and is an avid basketball player/lover, so after a cold business meeting a few months ago, we finally connected on a personal level as well. (Nothing more to read into this, as he is also married to one of the cutest women I have ever seen in my life. She is a girlish beauty, beaming with happiness, as she is quite far in her first pregnancy). The stylish house they have on the lake - one in the long row of houses owned by the metisses here, among which also the previous marvelous house my organization rented here – is quite the glamor in this decrepit city, and seems to be the drag of all parties. Great music on the lawn, crepes flambees on the terrace, fancy wines and liquors flowing everywhere, a huge plasma TV showing NBA or La Liga games for the crazy fans, all on the background of a tropical rain and high-class French (these people only speak Swahili to their staff, not amongst themselves) and yes, this is quite THE perfect night in Goma. Amongst the guests I met there: a pilot with his own private company, the main wine and spirit importer for East Africa, a professional football player (who spent years in DC and Brazil, and is now on his way to Cape Town), a hotel manager, a bar and club-owner, AND the leader of the Mai Mai (a middle-aged Congolais ‘pur’ (i.e. Black), who started the conversation by the following: “I got divorced a month ago, and I am now looking for a wife’…)

As the parties flow, the weekends in Goma are certainly more interesting. And when the parties are over, I am putting on my sneakers (actually their sneakers, they have dozens of pairs for guests) and going to shoot some hoops on their private court, next to the lake. On a day like this, I really believe life cannot get any better…

The Libyan Factor

Over the last decade I have found myself in some pretty crazy situations, but I can hardly recall one that shook me as strongly as the one starting some 26 hours ago. And I mean quite literally SHOOK, inside-out and upside-down.

The connection goes back to a very random evening some five months ago, when I met this Libyan guy, Essam, in a bar in Kigali. A few weeks later, we also happened to plan a Burundi weekend at the same time – and he duly served me and my friends with a lovely shisha session on the beach, for some 48 hours. And that was that, until a few days ago, when I called him up, to ask how he and his family were doing with all the craziness in Libya.

Now, please imagine someone who speaks English quite badly, multiply it by a 1,000, and then add the funniest accent you can possible think of. Long story short, Essam is a very hot, rich and seemingly highly-educated guy, who works for the Libyan Embassy in Kigali, but unfortunately communication between us (on a verbal level, of course;-)) is just IMPOSSIBLE. Somehow I managed to understand that he was going to Gisenyi with friends the next day, and that he would love to have me over in Kigali whenever I needed a place to stay.

On Saturday, as I was also at the beach with my girl-friends, we briefly met, and I asked Essam and his Libyan boy-friends whether I could get a lift from Ruhengeri to Kigali the next day with them. Sure I could. What I did not know was that I would almost sign up for suicide.

I have NEVER before been seriously afraid for my life in a car as I was yesterday. These guys were, quite literally, INSANE, on this very narrow, windy, suspended road. What it normally takes the other crazy African drivers around 2h15 mins. to make, we did in 1h22mins. I keep wondering how come I didn’t throw up a million times in the back seat, and how come I was still in a somewhat good mood by late afternoon.

Well, I actually do know how – as shaken as I was by the road, I was yet to take in a different shock in Kigali: the PALACE these guys live in, and the lifestyle they have, on a very regular basis. Simply put: lie on sofas and smoke shishas. My mistake was to think that this is just a late afternoon-relaxing habit, but after getting completely high last night (only with legitimate tobacco, of course), I realized that the only way to wash that away was to have more shisha first thing on a Monday morning, on the terrace. And then break for lunch, have delicious couscous, and top it off with even more shisha.

In between puffs, I was trying to get more insights from Libya, but apart from Al-Jazeera in the background and the Sevilla-Barca game in which we all suffered terribly, my knowledge of Gaddafi is still mostly from the NY Times. I did, however, experience first hand the AMAZING Libyan hospitality, so, all shaking aside, this was quite a remarkable moment in my life.

Half of the palace (imagine the same to the left)















Monday morning treat