Bienvenue au Congo! Where the time flys better than planes. Where the solution to everything is a laugh, and if you forget that you'll end up in tears. Where everyone suffers - from the suffrance.
Where you can find views uninterrupted by mens hands or feet or cars or houses. Where the forest simply goes on and on and ... is just simply there and green. Where the forest is a jungle.
(The texture on the photo above are trees and trees and trees! The texture on the one below is termite mounds!)
Where termites rule. Spaced approximately 50m apart termite mounds made the plains dimply. (Googlearth Rocks! Which you may already know if you're on Facebook and are my friend. Which I scorned in the beginning, as I scorn Harry Potter, but am now addicted to, although I still scorn Harry Potter.)
Geeky side note: Termite mounds are facinating. The dirt in the mounds makes good bricks because it is fine particles that are well sorted. They say the mounds can often indicate water at some accessible depth (if i had some time and money i'd like to check this out and see if this is true).
Some things never change- like bad but beautiful roads. Like driving on barely a road, horn blasting to warn those up ahead to jump out of the way and you come through a wall of elephant grass to find five ladies blancing on the side, up off the road with fish in a plastic basin on their heads, or men scrambling with their bicyles. Like talking about the crops that are growing as we pass. Like kids swimming in the river in the rain with their mamas washing clothes on this rocks. Like bridges that are barely bridges on the barely roads. Like never getting stuck (at least for very long) despite the barely roads and bridges.
Like the ubiquitous humanitarian bumper sticker.
No arms on board.
No arms. No feet. No noses. No regrets for that matter. No radio (just the VHF for communication, where sometimes you find the BBC). No sense. A little non sense.
A short history of me and the magnificent Democratic Republic of Congo: After Peace Corps in Guinea I got my first job with this NGO in DRC, based between Shabunda and Baraka in the province of South Kivu in (see Flashback post) in 2005, where I worked for a year. At the end of 2005 I went to another region of Congo (because it is soooo huge and has such difficult logistics, no roads, we have 2 missions here) to help them out. That was South, in Katanga province, where I stayed only a month (but where I met Mario). Then I headed off to Mandera in Kenya, where I worked for another year, and again at the end of 2006 I came back to help out again in Baraka and Fizi - back in South Kivu. Somehow in 2007 I never made it here. Then in 2008 I have been here for 2 months doing an interim stint as the Coordinator. Whew. I just can't stay away, I don't know why... it drives me bananas! I don't like the music (Well I do dig JUPITER (see photo below)! I am tired of corruption (but it's getting better). But something here keeps bringing me back.... the jungle, the vrai bush, and the laughter perhaps.
Walk across the room and look back, you can see we have a sweeet loft upstairs area....
