First Week in Congo

I had been warned about Kinshasa's airport, where my father told me I was almost sure to pay a bribe and jump through useless administrative hoops before I could see him let alone get my baggage.  All went well as a "protocol", a Congolese man hired by my father's school put out his hands to show me a piece of paper with my name on it and motioned for me to follow him out of the small, hot and chaotic baggage claim into the parking lot outside where I saw my dad standing on the curb waiting.  We waited a couple hours before the protocol was able to retrieve my bag, but not before being told to move away from the doors as a turf war began to smolder between the blue uniformed Kinshasa police force and the Congolese soldiers, dressed in army fatigues.    As I have come to learn, the military and police are ever present in Kinshasa.  As we made our way through the capital city of the DRC in one of The American School of Kinshasa's vehicles, I got my first glimpse of the city.  Women wearing  immaculate, tailor made dresses of bright fabric decorated with those distinct, unmistakable geometric African designs did not fit with the dust and grime of the street where they walked.  Barely running passenger vans screeched by, the woefully inadequate public transportation system for a city said to be home to 8 million people, the largest francophone city on earth.   Others, dressed in simple western t shirts, walked serenely on the shoulder of the road with bananas, baguettes and almost anything else one could reasonably expect to sell, effortlessly balanced on their heads.  Young boys came up to the car as it was stuck in the frequent traffic to sell bottles of water, you can't drink water from the tap here, a welcome site as we baked in the tropical sun.  The vast majority of people in Kinshasa make a living in the informal sector like these women and children.  The ride seemed to last forever, but I didn’t mind as my dad and I began the long process of catching up after 8 months.  We had both experienced so much, he in African and I in Latin America, and our infrequent phone calls had not done our adventures justice.  Eventually we made it to a surprisingly wide and smooth boulevard that the Chinese had apparently just put the finishing touches on.   My father informed me that the Chinese had built stadiums all over the country and were heavily investing in Congolese infrastructure.  As we passed some of their ongoing road projects, I saw dozens of Congolese men laboring to remove dirt from a deep ditch along the side of the street and the occasional Chinese supervisor standing on the ground above dressed in baggy blue clothes and straw hats.  Questioning my dad's colleagues later on about Chinese investment, they voiced the concern that this type of investment still left the Congolese without the knowledge or means to maintain the roads or build new ones, meaning they will continue to be dependent on the Chinese and other foreign nations.  The Chinese, of course, are making it possible to access the vast natural resources of the Congo more easily by improving the nation's infrastructure.  The Congo is home to large amounts of diamonds, copper, tin and cobalt, along with several valuable metals important in the manufacturing of cell phones and other electronic equipment.  In fact, it is one of the most resource rich countries on the planet, but its development has been stunted by two incredibly complex and vicious wars beginning in 1996 and ending in 2003.  The first of those wars toppled the dictatorship of Mobutu, an autocratic leader who took power shortly after the Belgians pulled out in 1960.   He enjoyed American support for most of his 32 year reign, in which he deliberately undermined state institutions to keep them weak, viewing them as a threat to his hold on power, and used state resources to buy political support and the military's loyalty rather than invest in his country's economy.  The city finally seemed to peter out as we approached the American School of Kinshasa, which is next to a military base, and Mobutu's old private zoo.  The campus covers several acres and is completely surrounded by a wall topped with barbed wire.  It is also incredibly lush and green.  Teachers like my dad live on campus and because of this he and his colleagues sometimes resemble a group of intelligent, adventurous and well traveled summer camp counselors.  Their students, as you may have guessed, are generally very privileged, apart from students of the missionary community that lives on campus.  Missionary's have been active in the Congo since colonization by the Belgians, when King Leopold made it his personal backyard and cash cow, and apparently they had a hand in founding the school shortly after independence.  As the State Departments "choice," in Kinshasa, American embassy will pay for its employees kids to attend the school.  Congolese president Joseph Kabila's daughter and niece also attend, as well as the children of many business moguls and government ministers, including that of education ironically.  His son says he's embarrassed about it but wants his kid to get a good education. 

But my time to settle in to this new city was short lived.  My dad had arranged a trip to Goma,  a city in the Eastern Congo on the border with Rwanda, to climb a volcano and see the endangered mountain gorillas made famous by Diane Fossey.  However, this area is now known for its central role in the beginning of a conflict that would consume the nation, involving 8 foreign countries and dozens of armed groups.  Hutu refugees set up camp along Goma's periphery after the Rwandan genocide and the subsequent rise to power of a Tutsi government in 1994.  This event helped to trigger years of conflict that claimed the lives of over 5 million people, many from war-related diseases that sprung up in refugee camps.  I just finished reading an excellent book called "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters" by Jason Stearns.  It was published at the end of 2010 and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand more about a war that is all too often unknown, forgotten, or explained away with vague allusions to tribalism or greedy rebel groups fighting over mineral wealth. 

We took our chances and flew on a Congolese airline called Hewa Bora.  It was quite comfortable, though Congolese airlines are notoriously unsafe.  Even a United Nations plane crashed killing over thirty people shortly before I arrived in Kinshasa.  We touched down on an airfield littered with the carcasses of old aircraft from better days, kind of like an airplane graveyard.  My dad and I spent a day or two exploring Goma.  We set off walking through its dirt streets without a destination, in my opinion the best way to introduce oneself to a place.  We wound our way deeper and deeper into dense neighborhoods of small wooden houses with metal roofs, tightly paced along dirt roads built more for walking than for cars, and the occasional shack selling something advertized with a handwritten sign.  It began to rain a little after midday and the busy street emptied immediately as people took cover, apparently very accustomed to this seemingly daily ritual.  The one exception was the naked and barely clothed children playing in the muddy puddles, happy as ever.

 Goma has a port on Lake Kivu, the gigantic body of water along the border with Rwanda, where large and dilapidated boats make the journey to Bukavu, on the south end.  The day before we got there 72 people died when one sunk mid journey.  Along the road to the port, children were swimming in the huge lake in close proximity to piles of garbage on the shore.  Some creative young men had made their own pinball table out of wood and springs.    One of the most striking features of Goma was the omnipresent homemade wooden bicycle used for transporting goods through the city.  With a long slanting ramp and handle bars like the Y shape of a sling shot, the Chukaduru as they are called, seemed to be owned by any enterprising young man.   Without a load,  Congolese men would sail downhill standing upright on the long slanting seat, or push the bike along with one leg, the other knee resting on the seat.  When the bikes are loaded the men have to not only keep the thing from falling over, but push it forward, even up hill.   There are a few trucks, SUV's owned by rich Congolese, and 4 by 4s belonging to the alphabet soup of NGO's operating in Goma.  Other than that the Cukadurus rule the roost. 

Eventually the time came to scale the Volcano Nyiragongo with my father and two of his young, fit female colleagues.  The volcano lies just outside of the city and its recent lava flows in the last decade have inflicted considerable damage on Goma.  Hardened lava flows are ubiquitous even in the city center, and the volcanic rock is frequently used for building.  Our guide, Norbert, was a very friendly guy who could speak English fairly well, heads and shoulders above my French.  As we set off through the Jungle, Norbert and his soldier friends toting their Kalashnikovs, I felt oddly safer for the extra fire power.  For the past week the mountain had been closed because a Ranger had been shot and killed by a rebel.  We were the first group to ascend since its opening, a slightly disconcerting role.  Obviously, there are still rebels and a low level of violence in the area.  One of the Congolese men I spoke with suggested it was kept in check by the presence of the United Nations peace keeping force, which roams around Goma in four by fours and tanks.   But aside from the stabilizing factor, the general consensus around here as far as I can tell is that the UN spends millions of dollars a day in their operations in the Congo, which is the UN's most expensive venture, and does very little.

As the trail became steeper and turned into sharp dark volcanic rock, and we emerged above the tree line, a view of the massive Kivu lake appeared and I could make out the long thin shape of Goma stretching along its shore.  After six hours of hiking, we were approaching the rim and their seemed to be even more soldiers who had joined us.  As my dad labored up the last pitch, fighting dizziness induced by the more than 11,000 feet in elevation, he said, "I don’t mind a challenge, but I have never had quite the audience."  I glanced behind him and said, "What, you mean the 5 Congolese soldiers with Kalashnikovs bantering in Swahili behind you?" 

But the hard work was worth it.  I stepped up to the rim of the volcano and something completely novel came into sight.  Below, at perhaps a thousand vertical feet, was a circular lake of lava, bubbling, bursting and flaming red.  Some of it was hardened and gray, and these parts were criss-crossed with cracks and fissures that shined red, illuminated by the molten lava below, creating a blood red, capillary like pattern.  After a cold night in two man huts we started our descent early in the morning and arrived at the base a little after noon. Our guide from the tourist agency who had arranged the outing,  a 60 year old Congolese man and an ardent supporter of Congolese tourism named Daniel, interviewed my dad with a stick substituting for a microphone.  Daniel's most common refrain was, "Please, tell Lonely Planet to stop saying, ' Don’t go to Congo, it’s not safe.'"  Well, it's not exactly safe, but it doesn't seem all that dangerous either.  It is, however, very beautiful and so far its people have been friendly.

More to come on the Gorillas.