In some corners of DR Congo we say ‘bonana’ to say ‘happy new year’. Since there’s no mail service, cell phone text messages replace greeting cards and they’re sent in abundance. I haven’t gotten mine out yet.
I’ve been hosting my friend Chip here in Congo since his arrival Christmas Eve. The original plan was that I would fly out the weekend before Christmas and we’d spend Christmas in Kinshasa and then the day after fly out to Kisangani. I’d forewarned Chip that anything and everything can and will go wrong with all the best laid plans in Congo. This time it has been the lack of airlines and flights that has gummed up our plans. During 2007 three out of four national airlines serving Kinshasa and Kisangani have either gone out of business completely or have stopped serving Kisangani. One fell flat just in the last few weeks, another widely publicized their resuming service to Kisangani and then delayed it to late January. I went to another airline and they said that all of their planes are under maintenance checks and they hope to fly in February. The one airline left flies three days a week and dropped the Tuesday flight on Christmas Day and New Years Day without replacing it. They were seriously overloaded with customers. I almost didn’t make it to Kinshasa at all, which would have been the worst outcome: Chip here in Kin for a week and me stuck in Kisangani. When I finally got here and went to church I told some people that I was worried about that and they said “it wouldn’t have been the first time that’s happened.”
There’s not much to do for tourists in Congo - but at least if we’d made it to Kisangani I was planning a trip across the river, a big staff party with home cooked Congolese food, visits to loan groups, etc. Kinshasa is a bustling metropolis with many restaurants and not much else to do. Complicating matters further, I have been working these days between the holidays.
Chip packed a bag of things that I’d ordered online, a Christmas care package from my mother, a book from a friend, some things from my pastor in the USA and things from a list I gave him that he went around to pick up in stores. That bag didn’t arrive with him Christmas Eve and still hasn’t come. If anyone sees a black and gray Eagle Creek rolling duffel bag sitting in Brussels or New York or anyplace else, please let me know.
Oh man that stinks! To have the care package so close, and yet still so far away. I hope it does find you. And African travel is always “an experience,” isn’t it? Last time I was in Mozambique, it took South African Air six days to get my bags from Washington DC — where they’d been transfered onto a Joburg flight — to me in Moz. And then I had to pay a bribe to the local airport official to actually get them back. Lordy.
Good luck to you and your work! I am reading with interest. I know little about the Congo.
I hope the current unrest in Kenya isn’t playing too much havoc in your neck of the woods.
first of all, I suck at email. in case you didn’t notice.
second of all, I do read your blog faithfully.
third of all, I have tried to comment on numerous occasions and the anti-spam thing doesn’t work so it won’t let me comment. Boo.
fourth: I was supposed to leave for kenya tomorrow (tomorrow!!!) and I don’t get to because they’re all, hey, let’s light people’s homes on fire.
fifth: that’s all. just wanted to say hi since the comments seem to be actually cooperating.