So I’m happily sitting cross-legged on a small patch of lawn near the south side of Lake Kivu, typing up my daily sitrep (situation report, for the uninitiated) and enjoying the peace and the soothing sounds of undisturbed nature, when suddenly, out of nowhere, this multicoloured private helicopter appears and heads straight for my small corner of paradise. No friendly warning, not even a moment to gather up my things, and the rude, heedless pilot lands just a few meters to my left, sending my precious notes airborne. Harrumph.Still, after the noisy fan-packed hotel in Kisangani and the showy, waterless hotel in Goma with its atrium TV constantly and loudly tuned into Kabila’s tedious campaign propaganda, the hotel here in Bukavu is pure bliss – terrace looking out over luxuriant tropical plants to the misty lake, deep comfy chairs, understated, wooden furniture to replace the favoured Congolese kitsch, dim candle lighting instead of neon, Jacques Brel playing softly on the stereo, and guests conversing discreetly in hushed tones, not wishing to disturb the ambient peace. What more could a girl spending a week in the middle of Africa want?
True, the rooms are old and dusty, and with all the flowers and greenery (the hotel is called ‘Orchide’) my allergies are rampant. But right now nothing can diminish the feeling of euphoria that started with the first gin & tonic on this terrace two nights ago, watching dozens of lanterns appear on the horizon as fishermen headed out on the lake for their night-time shift. And you should have seen me clapping merrily like a five-year-old in front of a well-laden Christmas tree when I tested the shower and unexpectedly found it spouted hot water (admittedly this only lasted 1 night; today prolonged cut-outs and a weak generator mean we are back to cold water).
Like Kisangani, I really like Bukavu. They are probably my two favourite places in the DRC – although how different! Kisangani is hot, dusty and flat, cutting surprisingly deep into the thick, dark forest and across the Congo River. The main produce appears to be maize, pineapple and bananas, carried in large bundles on the back of rusty old bicycles. Bukavu, by contrast, is made up of a tight cluster of hills. It is cool and rainy (it rains 9 months per year!), and the surrounding areas are starkly cultivated with an unusual variety of enticing fruit and vegetable (if you look carefully, you can even find the odd artichoke – produced exclusively for the persistent, homesick expatriate). The only things Bukavu and Kisangani appear to have in common, in fact, are the terrible state of the roads, forsaken since the days of the Belgians, the consequent prevalence of motorcycles, and the unexpected presence of a conspicuously-placed mosque (although the one in Kisangani is far more beautiful and grand than its more recent Bukavu equivalent).
Everyone else I speak to seems to like Lubumbashi the best, perhaps because it is the cleanest and most orderly of DRC’s big cities, the closest to its European equivalents and the least affected by war and dilapidation since Belgian days: the traffic actually follows some semblance of regulation; the mini-van taxis are clearly marked and have designated stops; the houses are a neat stack of earthen-coloured bricks set within relatively trim gardens clearly delimited by straight walls; the shops are lined up under wide archways with pavements in front of them… I don’t want to overplay it, but compared to the arbitrariness of other Congolese towns, Lubumbashi does feel extremely functional.
Everyone else seems to like Lubumbashi the best, and most people I speak to really dislike Kisangani. But there’s something about its decrepit glamour, the lingering sense of past beauty and prestige, the stark evidence of a recent war (many buildings remain riddled with bullet holes) and the friendliness of a bicycle town with only very few cars (mostly UN), which appeal to me tremendously. Kisangani is the prince turned pauper whose royal dignity is still barely detectable behind the rags. And I love it all the more that others don’t; it makes me feel privileged somehow to be privy to its well-kept secret. So part of me wants desperately for someone to invest some money into rebuilding Kisangani to its past magnificence, and another (smaller, more selfish) part of me wants it to be left just the way it is so I can continue to admire it alone. Either way, my worst fear is that the old dilapidated brick houses with their rounded bow windows and shaded verandas (where women gather to braid each other’s hair) are razed to the ground and replaced by the cheaper, more functional, but depressing squares of cement with corrugated iron roofs so prevalent in Kinshasa’s ‘Cité’.
Bukavu, meanwhile, lies somewhere in the middle. Its unequivocally beautiful setting appeals to all, but some find the busy, blustering town hard work. For me, it always feels like a soothing refuge after hectic Kinshasa. And the hard-working people are so optimistic, it’s inspiring! They actually believe these elections can change things, they want to vote, and their contagious enthusiasm is a real breath of fresh air after Kinshasa’s cynicism. I stopped asking people about the elections in Kinshasa when everyone I spoke to said they wouldn’t bother to vote because it was all fixed anyway, every candidate was as bad and corrupt as the other, and none of them would make a difference to the welfare of the Congolese. On the contrary, here people talk animatedly of heroes and liberators – of course, they mainly refer to Kabila, and maybe the source of their joyful hopefulness is quite simply that their candidate is very likely to be elected President. Let’s hope they are right and the Kinois are wrong.
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