A few reflections on my Leap Year entry (29 Feb 2004) to the DRC:
The first day into Kinshasa was about normal for any third world country, except for the absence of a company rep to meet me. The service they used, though, was quite efficient in getting me through and getting a 7-day visa. The airport was typical of any Third World airport (maybe more so for Africa but it happens in Latin America too), with many people trying to hustle you for your business (to carry your bags) sometimes fighting amongst themselves. The thing that struck me was the baggage handlers should be renamed baggage manglers. I had never seen such abuse, some even looked intentional.

One spectular sight from the airplane on the way in was the Congo River. I have never seen such a large flowing body of water. It is bigger than the Nile in Lower Egypt, and it may be bigger than the Amazon, but I have only seen that on television documentaries. But it is very brown from all the erosion up stream.

Anyway, go to the hotel, and they had just had a big marriage the day before, and it was Sunday, so there was not much to choose from on the menu. But that did not stop them from taking forever to prepare it. I met a man who had been a PCV near Kinshasa x years ago, and he was informative. He works for CRS now in Baltimore, but is here for a regional meeting.

The guy from CRS told me about how corrupt everything used to be, particularly getting through the airport, but things have apparently changed quite a bit.

I did not sleep well at all Sunday night. Nervous? Scared? I miss my wife a lot. In the past, when one traveled for this company, he was allowed to make a phone call home at their expense to tell his family that he had arrived safely. Like I said, they were absent and it was Sunday.

On Monday morning, the car was late in picking me up, but after a race through the city, we arrived in plenty of time. As I approached the check-in, I noticed a whole bunch of rules that nobody had told me about, such as weight limits, etc. But, my heavy suitcase, the roll of networking wire and two notebook computers that I was carrying on made no difference to them, and I was ushered through.

The scenery from the plane started off as usual in these countries, with patches of forest between largely deforested grasslands. I can't imagine they are pastures because the people here seem too poor to raise cows. A little later, the forest cover increased, and now it was the open spaces that became the patches. Then, it was just blanket of tropical forest as far as I could see. It was amazing. It makes me wonder what I would find if I was dropped into it. I'd be terrified I would never find my way out again, as the distances and the density of the cover were intimidating, to say the least. There were occasional villages later on, ranging from a few homes to veritable villages. A dirt road could be seen every now and then, and most of the villages i saw were on the banks of a river. The first two that I saw on rivers touched a bend in the river, and then widened as a V as you got farther from the river. I found this curious, but I later saw the more typical along-the-river configuration.

Another thing was the rivers. Several snaked through the forest, and they were black, indicating to me that there is very little, if any, soil erosion under this forest cover. It would be wonderful to preserve this expanse, even conduct some serious research on it, but humanity will eventually arrive and do what they do best.

When we flew into Kisangani (about 1000 miles northeast from Kinshasa) on Monday morning, the Congo river was still very large and very silty. A short stayover in the "terminal" (as in "illness") and we were off to Entebbe. This was where I screwed up--should have taken advantage of the duty-free shops. Instead got herded into the waiting area, then was told that the plane was late, and it was no longer possible to wander about.

By popular demand (a.k.a. my sister), I will post my musings as I attempt to work my way around the world. Having gone from Latin America eastward (chronologically, Colombia, Honduras, Paraguay, Mexico, Haiti, Morocco, Guatemala, Egypt, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, and soon to be in Burundi), I am amazed by how much things change and, at the same time, how many common threads of the human condition are present, no matter where I go. People used to ask me which was my favorite country, but I could never really say because it is the people with whom I interact that determine the "quality of life" in a given country.