I’m back in Kisangani now, safe and sound. There was a large crowd at the one window for us expatriates to get our airplane tickets stamped at N’djili Airport in Kinshasa this morning. I ran into a good guy with IRC that I hadn’t seen for months and he said he’d been waiting for almost an hour. Then they called my plane for boarding. In the nick of time I was able to get one of the several idle officials’ attention. I built enough of a rapport with him through my anxiety over possibly missing yet another airplane that he got my papers stamped quickly and insisted on escorting me out to the aircraft himself. Only in Congo. I think maybe the line was held up by professional “protocol” agents who handle travel formalities. If they block the process then people like me have no choice but to hire them as they block the line.
Three staff members met me at the airport and we rode through some intense heat back to town. They came up to the apartment and we had some cool water and conversation. They were surprised that I didn’t put on weight in the USA and they asked me about my family and friends. I told them about fireworks at the baseball game and Grandpa George getting his gift from Papa Wembonyama and my days at the home office in Pennsylvania. There are many more stories to tell and more to hear. It was great to travel, and it’s so great to be home again.
You’ll notice a lot of new photos from my travels in the USA. I’ll get back to posting pictures from the Congo ASAP and put these into an album of their own in due time.
Thank you to everyone who showed me hospitality, grace, and love during my travels. My heart is full to overflowing.
I am not able to write about my month-long home leave in much depth because I am punch drunk with jet lag and overflowing with great fresh memories of time with family and friends. My brain is in a state of confusion and my body doesn’t know who to believe in the argument between my brain, the sun and the moon. I’ve spent several days in about 6 time zones with a 10 hour spread over the last 6 weeks and it’s caught up.
Friday I was supposed to leave Philadelphia with Air France and they fouled things up incredibly well. The flight was overbooked to begin with and then Paris sent a much smaller aircraft. 80 of us could not be accommodated. There was only one agent on hand to rebook all of us, all of his coworkers were on some kind of leave or another. Flights in the USA and from there to Europe are fairly well booked up these days as the industry has finally begun a strong rebound post 2001. (I flew something like 20 times in the last 2 months and only 2 flights were not sold out.) The airlines make a lot of money when business is this good and their airplanes are full. This makes it extra difficult when they have to rebook you to Europe and just about all the flights are full, there’s a big storm on the way and there are precious few flights a week to the DR Congo.
By midnight (5 hours after the plane left me) the agent was able to talk with me and on behalf of Air France he took care of my difficult situation. We evaluated a few potential flight plans. Rather than being shuffled from one world capital to wait in another with three heavy bags I opted to go for a couple more days back to Kansas City and transit to Congo on the next available Air France flight - Tuesday. Of course, he’d suggested that I wait around in Philly, but when I said that I knew nobody there and would rather go to KC he replied “I’ll send you anyplace you want to go.” I found myself in a posh hotel in downtown Philly by about 1:30 AM with a new pile of meal vouchers and plane tickets in my pocket. I wrestled with the alarm clock there to set it for 5:00 AM so I could make the flight to KC on 3 hours of sleep. (That thing did not go off and it’s a minor miracle that I made that flight. I think I may write a letter to Marriott about the value of a simple alarm clock.)
I arrived in Kinshasa as planned Tuesday evening after a pleasant 24 hour trip. The air was barely on the balmy side of pleasant and the sun had just set before I walked down the steps from the plane. I enjoy walking to the terminal in Kin past the haphazardly parked airplanes of all shapes, sizes, and states of repair. The sky was a unique and intense royal blue strewn with gray and purple clouds.
The immigration officer at the door had a problem with my passport and so I was officially welcomed back to Congo by sitting in an office for interrogation. It’s a good thing that I am not much phased by this (though fatigue doesn’t help) and after some unpleasant miscommunication I was able to understand his preoccupation and explain to him that I’d acquired the passport in Congo at the US Embassy and that’s why there was no USA purchased Congo visa inside it. I was freed to clear immigration and enter the absolute chaos of the baggage claim and customs gauntlets, respectively.
After a 7:00 PM ride through the crazy congested streets complete with my fill of the carbon vehicles emissions that only Kinshasa can muster, I rode back to the airport at 6:00 AM to catch my rescheduled flight to Kisangani. My name wasn’t on that list either. It’s given me a couple more days to regroup here in Kinshasa and to collaborate on some work with my colleagues; never a bad thing.
Tomorrow I’ll try again to get home to greet the staff, see my friends, and collapse in a heap on my own bed. This weekend’s goal wherever I find myself: rest. Hopefully by Monday morning’s staff meeting my life will feel right-side-up again.
My home leave has been wonderful. What a blessing to have a month dedicated to spending time with people that I love and appreciate. I am at my dad’s place in Buffalo, Minnesota right now and we are getting ready to head to the southern farmland near the Iowa border where we’ll spend a couple of days with extended family. I’m ready to play some cribbage with grandpa George. Let’s hope I don’t get skunked!
I’d like to put some photos here, but the website isn’t letting me! Go to my recent photos to see pictures of all kinds of beautiful people I’ve been hanging out with on these travels, while I am away from the beautiful people in the Congo.
Thank you to all of my friends in San Diego, and those who came to town while I was there. I had a wonderful time connecting with you. I didn’t set foot on the sands or in Sea World or really any of the myriad traditional tourist destinations. I spent great time with many friends. (I did have lunch at Pacific Beach with Janell and the place was packed and quite a cultural eye-opener after life away for a year!)
I used to idealize the San Diego weather with the best of ‘em. But something does happen after living in the hot & swampy Congo air for a year. After last week, San Diego is now “Chilly Town” to me. This helps to grieve the loss of not being there just a little less, though it’s always been the friends that draw me back and not the other purported perfections.
I’m thankful that I’ll be stopping through again for just a few days before I head back to my Congo home. See you soon, San Diego.
Je suis bien arrivé samedi ici en Californie du Sud. Le voyage était bien passé sauf que j’ai raté un vol de connexion à Philadelphie. J’ai trouve un hôtel et j’étais capable de me reposer un peu avant de continuer. Le voyage pour le lendemain était à la direction de Los Angeles, mais mon ami Lowell m’a retrouvé et nous avons complété le dernier trajet par voiture. J’ai assisté le culte matinale a mon église dimanche et ces derniers jours j’ai visite avec plusieurs amies. C’est vrai que je me manque de l’Afrique, même au début de ce voyage mais c’est parce que l’Afrique est déjà dans mon cœur. Mes salutations à toute mes amies.
First of all I am reminded to tell you that I never did see any Amish folks driving buggies when I was in the heart of Amish country. Of course I spent most of my time in the office or in my accomodations or dashing to the store to buy things that I needed. On the way to the airport in Philadelphia, I did catch a glimpse of a man plowing his fields with a horse-drawn plow. That was pretty cool. It reminds me of car and bus rides through Rwanda where I have seen some of those mamas there plowing their field with a hoe or pick axe. It’s wild to think that the horse-drawn version is a very significant technological step beyond the hand implement and then even wilder to think about the giant green John Deere tractors that are now even satellite controlled. I am now living in a place of many technological paradoxes. Cell phones but no microwave ovens. Busy automobile traffic but no stop lights. Satellite internet but often instable electricity.
Yesterday I preached a (rather hasty) sermon at Mid-City and then went to lunch with several friends. Richard Samba took me to the airport and Deron, Leigh, and Matt followed. Nate Alcorn met me there to help with bags and to also say goodbye. We had a prayer together and I went through security. I don’t remember much of the time between security and boarding the plane because I was tired beyond belief, but I know that any coherent thoughts I had were about San Diego the place, San Diego the people. I said see you in awhile to the city as we lifted off into the cool clear night sky.
Chicago is some kind of cold for this time of year and we landed in thick fog. The pilot told me that he has to see the runway at 300 feet or they have to pull up and try again. They just barely saw it at 300 feet and we landed on time. There was a fresh few inches of snow on the ground here. I am packed for Congo’s equatorial rainforest weather, but I have a sweater and a windbreaker and some of my own natural insulation and I am doing alright.
We had mexican food tonight down near Michigan Avenue. It was my choosing since I realize that there aren’t many Mexican food joints in Kisangani much less Congo much less Africa. It was Mexican but it wasn’t like the Mexican food you get in San Diego or Phoenix. I guess that’s the way it should be.
It was a good first day on the job with HOPE. I’m with Dave Larson, the Director of Programs and Michael Smedley Africa Regional Director joined us today. I’m more excited about what I am doing by the hour. It’s great to be learning about this challenging field that helps people financially and cares for their spiritual growth as well.
I am soaking up the cold weather here in the hopes that it’ll take that much longer for the heat in the Congo to warm me to the bones.
Brian
That’s when I’ll be boarding a plane for Chicago the day after tomorrow. Between now and then I’m surrounded by my incredible friends here in San Diego. In the car today I realized that I’d be hard pressed to ever find another place with quite as many wonderful friends in it. Maybe God will surprise me and prove me wrong, but if not I’ll be OK and I’ll be looking forward to my visits.
Speaking of Friends old and new, I’d like to give major thanks to Leigh Nottingham (old friend) and Matt McKinley (new friend of Leigh, new friend of me) who “happened” to be coming to town for a visit. They showed up while I was in Florida and by the time I got home Leigh had all of my things organized and ready to pack, Matt was already steam cleaning the carpet and using his own toothbrush to clean my bathtub. I asked Leigh last night what it felt like to be sent to a friend by God. She said it felt good. I don’t know if I’d have gotten everything done, cleaned, wrapped up, given away, without the tireless help of these two saints. I hope that I can help people in Congo half as well as Leigh and Matt have helped me.
Joel P. West helped me pick out the right digital camera, and I’d like to thank him for that here. You can all thank him too, unless I lose or crush that thing you can be sure that I’ll be posting pictures to the site soon and many of them will look sweet. If you are looking for a digital camera (people always asked me about this in my old job, usually at LEAST once a month) I will pass on Joel’s suggestion: just go buy the Canon PowerShot SD-400. You’ll find it on BHPhoto.com.
Goodbyes are hard. Someone told me that Doug Harrison said that we should live for hard goodbyes. (I think Doug may have been quoting someone, but he could have come up with it himself because he’s one of the top five most creative people that I have ever met.) I love the community I live with here. Yet I keep trying to remind my friends that this is not goodbye forever. It’s just that we won’t see one another face to face for a year probably. If we still want to be friends, technology enables ample communication and for better or worse it’s shrinking the planet every day.
I have been overwhelmed with the amount of support and love that I have received from my family and friends in these last two weeks since I accepted this position with HOPE International. All at once it makes it both harder and easier to go. I am counting on my family and friends to work together with me to maintain relationships and technology helps make that happen.
I just had a wonderful weekend with my brother Colin and his girlfriend Greta, as well as one of my best friends Ryan Ethington. Together with another great friend and coworker Travis, we cruised around San Diego from top (Mount Soledad) to bottom (La Jolla Children’s Pool) and several places in between. What a beautiful almost idyllic place that I have lived in for many years now. I’ve really only moved once in my life, from Arizona to here and this is another hard move. I’m leaving here for awhile but I can never turn my back on this incredible place or on my family and friends.
I’ve sold most things now and I’m making plans to deliver the furniture to friends and the odds & ends to a thrift store next week. It is amazing and odd to sell all the things I have accumulated, but it’s also a freeing feeling.
I am going to Florida this week to watch Jason get his wings in the Marine Corps. I am proud of my brother for his accomplishments. I think it’s really cool that he flies big machines. I look forward to seeing family there and celebrating the occasion together.
There will be a few parties once I get back. Julie Geraths is hosting a party for friends at her house on Sunday the 25th. My boss Phyllis is hosting a reception for coworkers on my last day at PLNU. I’m working with my coworkers to plan a celebration for my current and former employees to be held on March 2nd. My roommate Aaron and Tiana Reinhardt as well as the Gates and Bulgriens are hosting a church farewell on March 3rd. I’ll be going to lunch with friends after church on the 5th just before I get on an airplane at Lindbergh Field to begin this new chapter.
If you are interested in joining in on any of these festivities just let me know and I will hook you up with the details.
Peace,
Brian
It has been just less than one week since I found out that I’d been offered a job with HOPE International to work in Kisangani, Congo. I’ve wanted to launch a weblog for some time and this has put the fire under me. Thankfully I have talented friends who have helped create this site. My desire is that this website will be a convenient way to stay in contact with my family and friends. I sincerely hope that the stories and photos shared here will keep us close while I am living far away.
I will be finished with my jobs for Point Loma at the end of the month and I’ll be around for just a few days after that. It’s a crazy and exciting time! I am selling almost everything I own, so let me know if you need anything at all. Hey if you really need it, it’s free!
Many more posts to come. Judging by the transition I have ahead of me, they should get pretty interesting.
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