BrianJBecker.com

Last Thursday afternoon I went home early from work to pack up one suitcase to bring out to Kisangani. Our electricity at Nate’s house in Kinshasa has been fairly unreliable in the last week. I’ve come to believe that there is something to learn from experiencing the powerlessness and frustration that comes with buying perishable food items only to have the refrigerator fall silent ten minutes after you’ve loaded it. Then it sleeps for a day or two with no electricity and questions start to arise about what is still safe to eat and what may not be prudent.

So I was packing and sweating and packing some more (no electricity to turn the fan). I put together a suitcase of necessary clothing items and I picked out a few books to stuff in as well. I still have a suitcase full of books and one more with clothing at Nate’s place. The UN flights only allow one suitcase but they seem to be lenient on the weight of it, and that’s a bonus. As I and my colleagues travel back and forth to Kinshasa, we will ferry out the rest of my stuff in time. At Point Loma, they taught us about delay of gratification in Freshman Psychology 101. I’ve slowly learned to embrace it over the years since then and it comes in handy here. I’m glad that I can’t have all of my things here now because I know that it will make a nice event down the road when I receive those suitcases. Another example: I can’t just sit down and watch all of Seinfeld Season 4 on one Saturday afternoon because there will be many Saturday afternoons.

Like any big city, Kinshasa does wear on the nerves. Nobody seems to know for sure but there are somewhere between eight and twelve million people there. There are no freeways and there are scarcely any four lane roads. There are European style turning circles and they give the right of way to the people entering the circle, which means that people get stuck in the circle, they can’t get back out. Essentially this law creates traffic jams. While I was in town the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan came to make a brief visit. When he showed up a couple of traffic lights started working (a nice fountain was cranked up just in time as well). I was looking for someone hiding in the bushes with some wires to change the red lights to green, but it seems it is computer controlled. Most people don’t obey the red lights anyway. Apparently the traffic was in rare form over the weekend as my boss Nate waited four hours to move about two miles. Imagine that.

The HOPE driver Flory picked me up at 6AM on Friday. Just then I discovered that an early morning drive through the city is the perfect remedy for Kinshasa-fatigue. The air was crisp and cool, the streets were nearly empty. The people milling about appeared relatively happy to be early birds, as if they were anticipating the advantage their jump on the day would earn. It may have helped that I was filled with the excitement of going to the airport to take my first UN flight and to come to the city where I will be living and working for some time. Yet even if I wasn’t going to the airport, a little early morning driving would have lifted my spirits.

The United Nations has its own “terminal” at the airport. The regular rigmarole of air travel here does not suit the UN. They need to have at least semi-autonomous transit for their personnel. Fortunately for HOPE, they extend their transit service on an space-available basis to international NGO’s that are working to help the people of Congo. This means that we can travel with the UN for free as long as we are OK with getting bumped if they need the seat.

The terminal in Kinshasa is a small camp of temporary buildings. The airplanes are painted white with giant black letters UN on the side, just like every UN car. We boarded the 727-100 from a built in stair in the tail. There were people on the plane from just about every continent (I didn’t see any Australians or New Zealanders). They decided to give me the last open seat in the “first class” section and I wasn’t going to refuse that offer. I sat next to a man from Sri Lanka who works in UN logistics. We had a good talk about the size of UN operations here (18,000 troops and 4,000 civilians). We also talked about how UN civilian staff get to go back to visit their home country four times a year! (There are incredible amounts of seemingly frivolous expenses made by international relief and development organizations. I am thankful to be working for HOPE and to have leaders who are focused on getting as much of our resources into the lives of the poor as possible.) We talked about the political situation in Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. Then we stopped to laugh at the fire patrol on duty at Kinshasa Airport.

The flight was nice and uneventful. I was picked up here by Peter (my predecessor), Curtis (the current intern), Stanis (the HOPE driver here), and Tony (our MIS, or data management officer). It’s a 20 minute drive through some rural villages to the city and then Stanis gave me a driving tour of the town. I’m starting to figure out where things are. It’s not a very big city.

We went to a loan disbursal and I was introduced to some of the mamas and the papas. Out here they make a big deal of any loan disbursal. In community bank groups they save together for a social guarantee fund. The groups out here tend to do a really good job of repayment and when they get their new loan they like to organize a small feast for the entire bank group. They also love it when the office staff come out and attend the loan disbursal. Peter tells me that they enjoy watching us eat the food that they have prepared. There have been many foreigners who have been here and refused to touch the food that was offered in hospitality.

After the disbursal we came back to the office and had an informal time of staff introductions. We currently have a staff of nine here and they are a great group of people. I am privileged to work with them.

The weekend was great. Saturday afternoon we went to the Greek Community Center to watch some basketball. On Sunday we went to Palm Sunday service at the Anglican Church. The French speaking service there is not widely attended; there were twenty or thirty of us there including neighborhood kids. They gathered us outside the church and marched us in with palm branches waving. It felt a little like home at Mid-City Church in San Diego. I thought I was pretty cool last year when I made a cross out of a palm frond. Out here they weave their palm branches into elaborate works of art.