Notes from the Congo

While I aim to offer a more comprehensive or generalized post on my time in the Congo at some point, for now what I’ll present are the unedited entries made from my room in the Hotel Bellevue in Lubumbashi, with explanatory or exculpatory notes where appropriate. The journal in which I made the entries, for the record, is a beautiful volume bought in Stonetown, Zanzibar. It’s large and leather-bound, and the pages are made with flower petals mingled into the fiber of the paper. The leather closes over itself with a flap to give the effect of a portfolio, which can then be cinched shut with a string.

~

1. July 30, 2007

The grand format of this journal may inspire a sense of modesty or insufficiency, but the circumstances under which I pen these first words into it do not. Today for me marks a major personal victory: I am in the Congo. Lubumbashi, Katanga, DRC, motherfucker. I am sitting in my hotel room with silent relish, sipping from a celebratory bottle of duty-free South African wine: Fleur de Cap, Pinotage.

Though in reality my relish is accompanied by elements of non-silence, since there are Congolese talking in the courtyard, a news broadcast blaring away in the French-inflected Swahili of the southeast Congo, not to mention the ambient buzz of startled impressions filling my head. And eh! Me, I've been calling my friends to let them know the happy news. [Note at the time of transcription: This would later, predictably, lead to a gigantic phone bill] It’s almost as if I’ve gotten married. One has to do something to keep up with all these friends doing the nuptial nouement.

Getting here was really quite easy in the end--I won't go to the length of saying anticlimactic. It took no more than paying $450 and then stepping aboard a 737 and kicking back for 45 minutes as Air Zimbabwe's flight UM 350 tore through a sky hazy with smoke from the burning bush below. The entire planet appeared to be steeped in the thickest haze, a haze that stretched on endlessly on either side of the plane, the obscure cipher of some confusion or inadequacy native to the people below [Note at the time of transcription: This seems a bit extreme in retrospect!] One thing I can say with confidence is that the haze was appreciably worse over Lubumbashi than it has been over Lusaka. As we descended, it was unequivocally apparent, right away, that this was a dirty, piss-poor, hardscrabble place. There was very little green and few properly straight roads. Just, seemingly, dust, tracks and houses in their thousands, most of them in 3^rd world states of incompletion or disrepair. Those who fly frequently should know that it really takes a lot for a place to look like shit from the air. Most of Zambia, for instance, looks quite orderly.

The haze took on an oppressive aspect when we touched down, reducing the sun to an inchoate orb, the function of which one could not ascertain--was it to give light, or to slowly bleed it away? By an alternate logic, after all, the sun could appear bright precisely because it was stealing and hoarding light native to the earth. [Note at the time of transcription: And from all one has read of the Congo, one knows that it is in the thrall of an alternate logic]

As we were taxying on the runway, I slid close to the aisle and asked the fellow across it if he was familiar with Lubumbashi. I needed to know about hotels. He said he was living in Angola, but had a friend meeting him who could probably be of assistance. I should mention that when I had seen this same (middle-eastern looking) fellow earlier reading a Sura out of the Qur’an and the visit the head as the flight took off, I had been suspicious. Which is not to my credit, because this same fellow, far from torching my ass, basically saved it. When he realized I wasn't being met by anybody, his brow furrowed, and he asked what I was doing. I told him I was just visiting. He asked if I spoke the language. I said French, yes, but not Swahili. We started speaking French, starting with an exchange of names. He was Patrique from France, and I was Markus from Sweden. Harmless half-lies both. When it became clear how little I knew about what I was getting myself into. he became concerned. You mean you have no place to stay? You are brave coming here like that!

He was a generous and kind man, as so often with Arabs, and it was not long before I began enjoying the fruits of his planning. He beckoned me to follow him through the loosely aggregated sea of parasites that closed around us as we walked over the tarmac to the terminal building. Specifically, the fruit I enjoyed was the use of his Congolese facilitator, Nawaj. He was a man with the connections and pull to help me quickly get through Congolese entry formalities. I gave him my passport and $10, and he got it stamped with a minimum of fuss. He also managed to have the yellow fever vaccination card formality overlooked for another $10, which in any other event would have fucked me up, since I had neglected to bring said card. An Alexander Hamilton made it pas grande chose. He explained that it would have been $60, had I not had the good fortune of knowing him. Can you believe that I had very nearly neglected to bring any dollars? A great sense of relief gripped me when I considered how lucky I was to have initiated contact with Patrique.

Once my passport had been returned, I met Patrque's friend Yusuf. It turned out they were Lebanese, and we exchanged some pleasantries in Arabic. Which was useful, because my rudimentary Arabic was enough to convince him that I was worthy of some more assistance. He immediately called to arrange a hotel for me, and then proceeded to drive me there, offering cigarettes and Lebanese meat pies to calm my jangled nerves and belly on the way. Which way, I might add, was appalling. What I had seen from the air was only the vaguest suggestion of the roadside squalor to be seen on the way into the centre-ville, wast al-balad, downtown. It was so appalling, in fact, that since checking into my hotel (the Belle Vue), I have stayed put. Perhaps tomorrow will bring an adventure a pied.

~

2. July 31, 2007

“…there is no such thing as the past. There are, at best, infinite renderings of the past.”

-The Economist, as inspired by Kapuscinski and Herodotus

Still in my hotel room, a bit laid up with stomach trouble. Just a spot of the mung. Must have been those meat pies. Have started taking antibiotics, and in a bow to the diligent self-preserving rationalism that Africa so masterfully chips away at, have resolved to abstain from drink as the pills do their work.

And I reckon it’s for the best, this slight infirmity. Lubumbashi is much more chaotic and threatening than I had guessed. I may not venture out at all. I have my books and The Economist, after all, and I still have several things to write: About the mine; the facit to the Dar Es Salaam affair, reminiscences about this trip, and a glance cast forward on the possibility of doing Addis to Cairo overland.

The other guests at the hotel appear to be mostly Congolese here on business from Kinshasa. They are mostly the brawny, calculating and criminal-looking types so strongly favored by the central African business climate. As for wzungu, the only others are 4 fatigue-clad Afrikaners here on some risky mercenary enterprise. I sat down to breakfast at the table next to them, and though I couldn’t quite follow the thread of their discussion, I concluded that for all the stereotypes about nasty, brutish Afrikaners, Afrikaans sounds more melodious than Dutch.

Last night I watched a little TV. There was a program of religious tuition about Noah’s ark. There was also a Nigerian film which was neither dubbed nor subtitled, but which was being interpreted live into Congolese Swahili by a single studio voice for all the characters. There was news in French and Swahili, and an alarming number of stations that seemed to be given over to broadcasting what I can only call chaos set to a musical score.

I will add that the hotel costs $70 a night, and that I have been advised never to leave cash in the room. Most of the staff are friendly, but the receptionist is quite unpleasant. Her face did relax a bit when she found out I was not Belgian, as she had assumed.

~

Now for a brief detour into the future. I think that after returning to the States in two days’ time, the plan will be as follows: Attend the bachelor festivities on St. Croix, for starters. Actually for starters should be to hang out with Sebastian, whom I haven’t seen in 13 years or so, and his fiancée. Which should be interesting, and hopefully pleasant. Also need to see friends and share stories.

So after the bachelor party and some extra time on STX, it'll be back to NYC and then Maine for Chris’s & Lauren’s wedding. At some point I’ll have to fit in apartment touch-ups and the arrangement of long-term storage for my possessions. At which point it’ll be time to consider the logistics of my return to Africa. I’d like to make a more proper visit to Lubumbashi in the company of Congolese friends, and perhaps also the Dikulushi mine. And properly setting up shop in Ndola as a base for my writing seems like a good idea. The thing that delays and distracts is the idea of accompanying the overland crew from Addis through Khartoum to Cairo. That seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity, and an intoxicating adventure.

~

I will admit that I’ve dared venture no further today than a few cautious steps out onto my hotels colonnaded deck. I was thinking quite resolutely about crossing the town square to another hotel for dinner, but a brief observational interlude confirmed that even that would have been too much. I have been to many places in the world, but never to one that gives the impression of such dangerous chaos. All day long, the streets in prospect have been choked with the movements of thousands upon thousands of people. People yelling, haggling, exhibiting, running, in short doing all the things that people do in cities, but with what I'll term a distinctively Congolese overlay of strutting disorder. I will not venture out into that street. It is pretty much as I had thought: After all of my trying struggles to get here, now that I am actually here, no time seems soon enough to leave. I will be back in Zambia, insha’allah, in less than 24 hours. And should be back in New York, insha’allah, some 36 hours after that.

To be continued tomorrow (that's a firm commitment)