Home Sweet Home

Finally, I can give the long awaited news that we have moved in, properly this time, to our new flat. For once, I’m not writing from the terrace of a restaurant, or from a stuffy hotel room, but from the comfort of my own home. Specifically (since that seems to be what is requested of me), I am sitting at a big wooden desk in the guest room, under a window that looks out onto the small swimming pool we share with our neighbours, and plants, lots of plants everywhere.

The landlady’s obsession with plants, with which she has filled every corner of the flat and garden, is one of the main redeeming features here. The pool is surrounded with greenery, making the small terrace, complete with bar and barbecue, into a tropical haven, somewhere I can happily imagine coming home to in the evening to relax after a day’s work, hopefully catching the last rays of setting sun. Similarly, our flat has this otherwise quite ordinary internal courtyard, a glorified entrance really, but with the help of some twenty lush plants it is transformed into a verdant oasis of tranquillity……………………. In every respect except the revolting smell of overflowing septic tank that sometimes wafts over from our neighbours’ on the other side of the wall.

Our neighbours. The one factor inexplicably overlooked when signing the contract. I am absolutely, wholly to blame since I work there. A welcome twist of fate that allows me to nip home at a whim, not least for a bite to eat at lunch. But living next to Kinshasa’s police HQ definitely has its down sides as well.

Dawn on Saturday. Our second night in the flat, but last time we had to get up at 5am to catch a flight. We are both physically and mentally exhausted after two weeks in the field, Fred in Rwanda discussing how to prevent genocide, me in Kisangani and Goma experiencing first hand some of the crazy contradictions of working in a country like the DRC. We are both thrilled to be back home with some space to breathe, but mostly desperate for a good night’s sleep. Dawn on Saturday, sometime between 6.30 and 7am…

Rev-eil-lee! Rev-eil-lee is sounding.
The bugle calls you from your sleep; it is the break of day.
You've got to do your duty or you will get no pay.
Come, wake yourself, rouse yourself out of your sleep
And throw off the blankets and take a good peek at all
The bright signs of the break of day, so get up and do not delay.

Get Up!

Or-der-ly officer is on his round!
And if you're still a-bed he will send you to the guard
And then you'll get a drill and that will be a bitter pill:
So be up when he comes, be up when he comes,
Like a soldier at his post, a soldier at his post, all ser-ene.

We woke up with a start, opened our eyes wide and burst out laughing: “Oh, shit!” I’m not sure how much longer we will find this amusing though! Every morning, lunch and afternoon, without fail, except possibly on Sundays, an old, rugged, rusty bugle is brought out and played slowly, painstakingly, loudly. Every time there is a long pause and you prepare to take a deep breath of relief, the bloody thing starts up again even more loudly than before, so loud in fact that at one point Fred and I both jumped out of bed in disbelief, convinced that the guy must be standing in our living room.

Now I lived 6 months right next to a mosque in Jordan, and I was frequently drawn from sleep by the call of the muezzin – in fact, I learned to really like it. But nothing, nothing could have prepared me for the agony of a badly played bugle first thing in the morning. If ever motivation was needed to support a country in reforming its police, this would be it. I hear that France is getting rid of its famous gendarmes, subsuming them slowly to the national police to make a single civilian police force. Civilian force. No bugles. Great idea.