Home Sweet (new) Home

Newly arrived to the Republic of Congo, I can now understand why it was recommended that I opt for carrying whatever I needed with me and paying excess baggage fees as opposed to having household goods and personal belongings shipped via a moving company. Three and a half hours in an outboard-rigged pirogue (or dugout canoe) would not be the best way to treat a large amount of one’s personal belongings. It would also be cruel to make the pirogue pilot endure several trips overloaded with cargo.

I had time to reflect on things as they are. I’m pretty sure I’ve always considered ecotourism a stupid idea from a consumer’s point of view. My family, while I was growing up, never considered it, though we did make our unforgettable visit to the Catskill Game Farm in upstate New York (though I’d be hard-pressed to point it out on a map). But as cruised along the Sangha River on a Saturday afternoon, with basically nothing to see in ecotouristy terms, I thought about how much some people pay to do just that. And in email exchanges on Monday morning at the office, I’d have a unique response to the what-did-you-do-this-weekend query.

But the part that makes me gloat is that I get paid to be here, and every now and then, I have to remind myself of this great benefit. Yesterday, I had that “Hey! Look where I am!” feeling that I have not had in a long time, having been in Madagascar for an extended period (it had become “normal” – uh oh, here we go again on the “normal” bit), and most recently employed in the DRC, which I would not wish on anyone that I liked.

I guess I’m kind of harsh on the DRC, but we worked with people who were constantly being abused by their countrymen, and then bailed out by foreigners only to turn around and bite the expats in the jugular to suck the life out of any relief program that either helped them or employed them to help others. And it was worse in Kinshasa, where I unfortunately spent most of my time. I preferred to be out in the field because then it was only the staff that I had to contend with, as the average people in the village and along the roads were not out for my grant-endowed blood as were the Kinois (people from Kinshasa). Another expat staff person pointed out, while we were in Kasongo, that I was a completely different person when we weren’t in Kinshasa. That’s understandable. It’s the only place, so far in my short life, that I was consistently pissed off from the time I left the apartment at 7 AM until I got home at 7 PM. And my poor, wonderful wife put up with me. In fact, she encouraged me to hang in there.

Anyway, here I sit on my new veranda, overlooking the Sangha River on a Sunday morning. The people standing in their pirogues, making their way across the river, seem like miniatures to me because, apparently, the distance is deceiving. I mean, the river is right there in front of me, and yet it is so vast.