Welcome to Africa!

There was a moment there, as I cycled to work at some unpleasantly premature hour of the morning, all clumped over in a vain attempt to protect myself from violent gusts of arctic wind; there was a moment on this exceptionally icy November morning as I screeched to a sudden halt to avoid a grumpy, middle-aged woman who stepped out unexpectedly onto a pedestrian crossing, then turned to glare at me pointedly; there was a moment there when I noticed angrily that all it took was a drop in temperature for moods to plummet and the world to turn grey and cross, until I was forced to acknowledge my own knotted brow and clenched teeth as I pumped my legs up and down vigorously, shivering and cursing under my breath.

Then an unlikely smile spread slowly over across my face: DRC awaits! Hot, colourful, messy DRC, with its legendary music, tropical heat, its reputedly friendly people and lush vegetation. And of course, its tumultuous history and the promise of a fascinating year ahead.

On Monday morning, by 8am, after a week of relentless and hectic packing and organising, after a late finish and an inhumanely early start, I was sitting, completely conked out, in the plane to Brussels. My first intimation of Africa occurred in Brussels Airport: loud, happy shouts of recognition, full, unembarrassed laughter, and even some singing. And sure enough, there it was, the SN flight that would take me to Kinshasa after a short stop-over in Douala, Cameroun. (Ha!) I felt vindicated; here was the Africa I’d assumed, the image of Africa I’d built in my mind based on the many stories I had heard from homesick African friends, then corroborated during my short experience of Ghana and South Africa (not Namibia, which I found weirdly Germanic and un-African). I couldn’t wait to get to Kinshasa.

There was a moment there, as I sat for the fourth consecutive hour in an airless airplane in the muggy heat of Douala Airport, sweating profusely as mechanics tried desperately to fix “a small technical glitch that shouldn’t keep us more than half an hour”; there was a moment when, having finally been told that the small glitch required a piece to be sent from Brussels, which meant we couldn’t leave Cameroun until midnight the following day (i.e. over 24 hours later) and no, we would not get our luggage back so we would have to face the heat and humidity dressed in our winter bests; there was a moment when, the SN crew having legged it at the first sign of discontent (by this time plenty and loud and increasingly aggressive), we were left with one, poor, incompetent, junior airport official who insisted that we leave our passports overnight at the airport, then made us queue messily to be told which third-rate hotel we would be put up at, then made us wait for our luggage which had been erroneously taken out of the plane only to pile it back up on a cart that would take it straight back to the plane; there was a moment when, having spent 8 hours witnessing incompetency in its purest form, it suddenly dawned on me that this posting in Kinshasa may not be, after all, pure panacea.

Nonetheless, when we finally did land on Congolese soil, 24 hours later, I clapped along with everyone else and joined the general euphoria of having arrived at last.

I had been warned to brace myself for Kinshasa Airport, but the experience was unexpectedly straightforward, even if I did witness more rolled-up clumps of cash exchanging hands within ½ hour than ever before. In fact, my very first transaction with a Congolese official was the immigration officer asking me whether I was going to sweeten his day. I played dumb.

Just when I thought the adventure was over and my bed seemed alluringly close, I discovered that the Grand Hotel – which I felt I had to stay in at least 1 or 2 nights given its central role in Kinshasa’s recent history as the refuge of choice for all the Congolese “Big Vegetables” who went into exile after the collapse of Mobutu’s regime – was severely overbooked. The room they initially gave me turned out to have someone in it, a fact that became clear to me only after I’d entered the room, noisily knocking the walls with my luggage: “EH!” Eventually, however, a room was found, and I was able to collapse. Only to be woken up at 9am by my employers, who rather unapologetically asked whether I could please be in a meeting by 10am. But that is a whole other story.