“The party’s over….”

It’s been four weeks since I have been in Kindu, along the mighty Congo River. Do I feel any more enriched by this? Yeah, in a lot of ways. Am I reminded of Tarzan movies from when I was a kid? Of course! (What does THE CONGO conjure up for you?) One thing I really regret is not having mastered this weblog-thang so I can put photos in the middle of the text, as I have seen on other people’s blogs. There is a link on the sidebar, “See some of the places I’ve been,” that takes you, the viewer, to a photo page, but a lot of people don’t bother with that sort of stuff. Go on, be adventurous!

So, it’s my last night in Kindu. And it’s raining like never before, except that this time there are no hailstones. The rain in Third World countries poses a conundrum. They have so little “developed” area, how do they manage to have so much “urban” runoff? It’s because they sweep their dirt! There are some things that run common in “under developed” countries which contribute to their being that way, in my opinion. It is not to say that all of these aspects are bad, but they could be prioritized a bit differently. For example, the Mayor of Bunia accused all foreigners of being too cold, because the Congolese value the “chaleur humain.” Well, this “human warmth” is what keeps his piece-of-shit cousin in a job that someone else could perform a thousand times better. (Why make an effort when I can get by on chaleur humain?) It is also what encourages people to not respect contracts. (And then the contractor can’t understand why I don’t want to be his buddy. If I can’t trust him to do the work he is obligated to do, how can I trust him to anything else?) {On the other hand, this network of social capital provides a viable substitute for a government-sponsored welfare program. So, maybe development is a government-sanctioned plot to get us all dependent on them! Pretty clever.}

Now, during leisure time, some people are genuinely interested in foreigners and their (our) perspectives on things. That was how I originally got interested in getting overseas: through knowing exchange students in high school. They had an adventurous spirit that was almost invincible, but when I did the exchange student bit in Colombia, I found out how fragile that façade can be.

And, next week I join the ranks of the unemployed. It will be nice for a little while, like a week or two. But I am sure I won’t sit still. The reason I am looking forward to it is to tend to all the things that have taken a back seat to work. Like writing letters, reading a few decent books (for pleasure, not for work). Or that very interesting course on a CD that I dropped $50 on and haven’t touched except to see how it works, once, if ever, I get around to it.