One year in the Congo

This morning I had to go to the Grand Hotel to pick something up, and low and behold, what was I greeted by if not the tacky, plastic, booty-shaking Santas of yesteryear full of their usual vigorous Christmas cheer and cacophonous song. I stopped in my tracks and grinned broadly at them. For a second there I felt bizarrely touched, as if the Santas had come out of their own accord to salute me and remind that I’ve been here exactly one year. I felt something akin to the holidaymakers who stay on in the same hotel a second week running and watch the newcomers arrive with a slight feeling of superiority mixed together with early regret that they will be the next batch to go. An early and unexpected indication that I will one day look back on these days in the Congo with some measure of melancholy. I’ll probably bore my kids witless with tales of Kinshasa: how amazing it all was, how lucky we were to be here at such a fascinating and historical time, how stunning the river was at sunset, how much fun we had camping, how exciting it was to travel to the interior… conveniently forgetting the daily frustrations and often uneventful routine. Still, it’s hard to live somewhere for a year and not feel some emotional attachment to the place – ironic, though, that it should be the despised Santas of all things that triggered it in me.

One year on, though I have become way more confident about taking pictures in public, I still don’t feel comfortable whipping out my camera in the Grand Hotel lobby. You’ll have to make do with last year’s blurred, surreptitiously-taken photo.