Woman’s Group Meeting, Kinshasa.

It’s true, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

I was in a kind of compound before, where if I wanted to go out for a beer I would have to take a Congolese boy with me and we would walk on splintered pavement in the pitch black. Occasionally he’d throw his hand out because a car threatened to run me down. Then we’d get to a tiny shop with no lights on and ask for beer. Inside the cramped space was littered with imported rice and flour, and I would sometimes see the long tail of a rat disappear into cinder block. Two warm beers and a walk back full of broken English and French conversation. He would tell me, “American boys are gooood, because they have this,” rubbing his fingers together to denote fingers full of cash. I would try to explain that this was first of all not true and that Congolese boys had plenty to offer. He looked confused, “No, you would not marry a black man?” “Aren’t you racist?”, and then I’d laugh a lot at him and he’d sort put the pieces together that I was in Congo by choice and walking with a black boy in the night.

I don’t know, I just slept all day and now I’m awake until morning. In any case, I’m back, and missing my friends.

[2] Comments

Swahili lesson:
Unataka kuchuliwa? = Do you want a massage?
Tulia, samba! = Easy, lion!

Sarah Exports the Peace Sign

I’m still in Kinshasa. I missed the earthquake in the East by a matter of days. Somehow, I forgot to factor natural disasters into the list of possible dangers. Here, in the capitol, my bad education continues. Over the past week I’ve met with high school girls, college students, parliamentary officials, women’s groups, a local private television station, and a priest. My list of fragmentary knowledge grows. Here are a few examples:

There is a culture of NGOs in Congo which have been described as the New Colonialism. The only people with jobs in this country are those
working for NGOs.

Every other vehicle in this smog choked city belongs to the UN. They have a sweet set-up and they do nothing. They do nothing. They know where rebel groups are located. They know everything about the Interhamwe’s whereabouts and doings. But instead they just act as a fat parasite, leeching like every other outsider who has their hand in Congo’s honey pot.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are offering Congo a huge chunk of change so they can get at the resources. Congo’s belly is swollen with oil, as it turns out. So if you know Congo only for its diamond mines, well this puppy has resources beyond belief and EVERYONE wants some.

On the equally frustrating social scene I’ve learned that many of the rape victims in the East are ostracized because people in the village believe that they are cursed, or even that they somehow asked for it. Across the country there is a huge problem with sexual violence and general oppression of women. The high school girls I talked to told me that their teachers are always trying to get them to sleep with them and often their grades depend on it. And the real frustrating part is that when violence and oppression is the norm and there is also a huge problem with impunity many women don’t even think about their rights, or that there really is such a thing as women’s rights. I’m really glad I’m not a radical feminist because I’d likely get all, “I’m GOING TO CRUSH SOME SKULLS!!”. And I am wildly angry, but I have met a lot of women who are trying to re-educate people about some pretty basic human rights issues. So, there is at least faction attempting to influence basic awareness.

If I come back to Congo again I have been asked to appear on a local private television show, they are going to have a special program. Yeah, hilarious and possibly a disaster, but in any case we’ll get that shit up on youtube.

Barring any last minute disasters, I will fly out of Kinshasa on Sunday and be back in SF the 16th. It’s so strange here and I’m really going to miss it. The traffic is the worst. I’ve never had so many near misses in my life, and he roads themselves are really just a series of kiddie pool sized pot-holes. There are vendors of everything, in fact they stand on the side of the street and hold out puppies to passing cars, Puppies. They sell crocodiles in the market and I also saw a monkey just tied to some log. We have been lucky to have electricity and running water almost every day. Often power lines get cut and stolen to be sold. I ate a pile of caterpillars, they tasted good. Oh, crocodile tastes like fishy chicken.

Okay, I think that covers the basics for now. Oh, here is a Konono #1 video so you can see what Kinshasa looks like:

1 Comment

I have avoided writing about my trip because I don’t really understand it. I experienced my first real culture shock when I landed, maybe not because Congo is so different than I expected, rather because it’s just as it promised it would be. It met me with green haunty hills and gashes of jungle and the twisting spine of the Congo River, and then we landed and it was havoc.

Kinshasa has a post apocalyptic quality that I have now gotten used to, but at first, after flying for days I was out of my body out of my mind.

Congo is, well I’m having a hard night so I hesitate, but I mostly want to say, terrifying and fucked, but I will re-frame by saying that it is blood stained for generations, and the whole country suffers from post traumatic stress– they are survivors. Everything seems corrupt and in perpetual quagmire. A kingdom of ghost and guns. Everyone is stunning.

For now I will just give you some disconnected highlights that make even less sense to me than they will to you:

I learned that my travel companion was hit by lightning when he was a child and smoke came out of his mouth.

I watched TV with Kabila’s (the assassinated president) vice-president. Er . . . The former president had four vice presidents, and I hung out with one of them. His slipper fell off at one point and I put it back on his foot. In his office I saw a photograph of him with Che and another with Mao, and then we ate some chicken.

We were in Goma during the big Congo Peace Conference, and when our plane landed one of our interpreters turned to me and said, “You know, there are rebel groups no less than 40 kilometers from here”. The conference was deadlocked for a few days and in the end I fear that paper signing is the last thing that will do this country any good.

I crossed Lake Kivu, which rests upon a layer of natural gas, one crack in the basin and the whole lake would explode and the surrounding region would be suffocated by the gas. Seriously, they have exploding lakes here.

Eastern Congo, really. We had a police man from the presidential guard when we went outside of the city into the villages in the Walungu region. I just found out today that there had been another rebel raid on a village in Walungu while we were there. We don’t know where exactly, they could have been on the other side or it could have been a few miles away. Yes, pretty much scary, but I knew this going in.

I was able to interview a few women, rape victims, in Walugu, and interestingly I actually met and interviewed the same woman that was in that Anderson Cooper thing I sent you. I don’t really know what to tell you about this. It was disturbing, of course, but really my brain is only allowing a little of this information to register at a time.

The next day we were invited to a gun exchange in which a local organization was trying to get villagers to trade in their weapons for useful items like tin roofing or bicycles. It failed; no one would show because this would be a public admittance of being a thief and rapist. I didn’t think it was a realistic plan, but I was there to bear witness anyway. The army was there and then the UN showed up. In this region the UN is made up of a bunch of terrifying Pakistani men that ride around in jeeps. They were like, what are you white people doing here in this village in Eastern Congo?

A fine question.

And then I left the jungle and now find myself back in sweltering Kinshasa. I am trying to follow what is and has been going on in this country since the war. I now understand that Rwanda is trying to carve out a piece of Congo, and that the Interhamwe were once found eating UN food. I don’t know!

shitfuckmutherfuckingjesuschristbaby

ok.

Anyway, I’m safe still but pretty well frustrated and misanthropic. Well, no, not completely, but if you want more details I’ll try my best to pull together the fragmented mess that i know and have gathered from my time so far. I will be here for two more weeks, more interviews and filming and then I will pull myself from the motherlands dark loins and return to our white bitch of a country.

I am missing everyone something awful and I feel so so far away. But, all this said, I wouldn’t trade a moment in Africa for anything.

1 Comment

Hello Hello, I´m currently writing from a very cold apartment in Berlin, but by the time you get this I will be on my way to Johannesburg, and then into Kinshasa, Congo.

This morning my sister sent me a link to a special on 60 minutes about women in Congo. I must admit I find Anderson Cooper to be a little self-important and difficult to listen to, but this truly is not the point. His report covers the issues I will be dealing with in the upcoming project in Congo– in fact he visits and speaks to women in parts of the country I will be traveling. It was strange, to say the least, to watch this news report this morning when I will be right there in a few days.

I will have occasional access to email over the next few weeks and will send updates when possible.

And I promise, I will be careful.

No Comments

It feels like Christmas outside. I’m sitting in the kitchen… in my pajamas trying to acclimate. I knew I had entered the United States of America when I entered the airport in Georgia and was met by several sour faces and had to run the gauntlet of shoe removal and liquid checking by security. I accidentally said, “lo seinto” and “gracias” on several occasions.

Don’t mistake this as complaining, mind you, I haven’t any right to. I was so incredibly lucky in my travels to: never run into any crooked cops; packs of wild rabid dogs with flesh barley clinging to rib cages and nipples dragging on the ground; any pickpocketers who cut your pocket open while you’re in an orgy of bodies on any given chicken bus; the really tricky and clever pickpocketers who throw their baby at you and when, in utter shock, you go to grab the falling baby they lick you clean of wallet, passport, overpriced camera, etc. No, the worst I can say is that my Tevas were stolen while I wandered barefoot and stoned on scalding back sands. And, lets face it, it was for the best, because now none of you will ever know that actually owned and wore with pride a pair of Tevas.

And I haven’t any reason to complain about coming home since it has become obvious quite quickly that I have returned to the most incredible and generous friends on this cold little island.

In my last week I traveled with two very comical French men. Simone was 50 and quite large. He slept in his speedo and snored with vigor. Emmanuel was 23, giant and could have been a Tommy Hilfiger model. His English became far better and funnier when he was drunk or stoned, so we spent the last week engaging in any combination of the two. We traveled to the Tikal ruins together, which were lovely, but that was due mostly to their setting in the jungle; otherwise I have decided that seeing such things is only complimented by good company and somewhat devoid of mystical power because of the reconstruction and tourist families making it all feel like I was in Maya Land at Disneyland. No, not really. It was beautiful and terrifying to climb temple number 5 which takes you far above the tree line, and the tour guides love to tell you about how many tourists have slipped and fallen to their death on these temples.

After that Simone traveled back to France and Emmanuel and I traveled down to Rio Dulce which is both a town and a big river on the eastern edge of Guatemala. We arrived at night and after taking a look at the ratty hotels in town took a boat to the nearest hotel on the river bank. We were taken to our dorm room which was basically a tree house fort cabana over the water. Basically the best thing ever. The next morning I walked around to discover that we were staying at a yacht club full of richies. Mind you, our awesome fort only cost us five dollars a night. I met a dirty old Italian man who invited me to sail the Caribbean with him, and he told me tales of islands with shores awash with bags of cocaine that drug sailors had dumped to avoid getting caught, and he told me of the locals’ brutal style of taking the law into their own hands. He also told me that when he first saw me he wanted to give it to me and then when he talked to me he found out I also had a brain in me. Very sweet, very sweet. I have his number if I ever decide to become an old Italian sailor’s babygirl, so . . .future plans?

I ate tacos for Thanksgiving and saw fire flies for the first time.

Now I’m back, sending text messages and taking hot showers. I will be around for the next month and then I leave January 6th for Congo to begin work on a big documentary project.

more to come.

1 Comment