AP Blog: In Congo, reminders of home
AP chief of bureau for Canada, Beth Duff-Brown, is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which she visited many times as a West Africa correspondent in the mid-1990s. She has returned to visit to a remote village in central Congo, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1979 to 1981.
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TUESDAY, Aug. 29, 6:47 p.m. local
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo
Just spoke to our 8-year-old, Caitlin, via the Internet; a long, leisurely call over the Internet, a conversation that would have been near impossible when I first came here 27 years ago. It was so good to hear her tell stories about visiting Grandma Stephie in California, then sign off by shouting at the computer: "I love you bigger than the, um, what is it, the Kanga River?"
To find her a gift today I went to the Memling Hotel -- a five-star accommodation too pricey for my taste and budget -- where outside are craftsmen who cleverly market cool kitsch, items that their own families would roll their eyes over. Ten years ago, my husband got a great little faux camera made out of bent copper wire, complete with flash.
Today, a guy rushes me with a small painting of "Tintin au Congo," taken from a famous series of comic books on which all Belgians and Congolese were raised. I never cared for the comic about a reporter and his adventures around the world, as well as in this former Belgian colony. But this painting, done on the back of a flour sack, was so over-the-top tacky and the artist looked so hungry, I figure it makes a nice addition to Caitlin's African collection. Though she was born in Malaysia and lived in India for nearly five years, I remind her that the prayers that preceded my pregnancy with her came from my Peace Corps village in central Congo and are part of her unconventional heritage.
Another reminder of home today, seeing dozens of new
Driving back from NBA basketball star Dikembe Mutombo's new hospital on the outskirts of the city, I see a cherry-red Mazda sports car by the side of the road in a neighborhood they call "La Chine," or China, because it's so congested. Kinshasa has about 8 million people, many of whom live in nothing more than plywood shacks with tin roofs, surrounded by concrete, dirt and rubbish. With only some 600 miles of paved roads nationwide, cars are a luxury, and a convertible sports car really shouts for attention.
I ask the driver to pull over so I can see who owns such a car. Turns out it belongs to the entourage of a large woman, dripping in gold chains, who is barking at a cameraman to get in closer, as she takes a shovel and appears to help clean out a stinking, backed up sewage drain.
When I ask what on earth she's doing, I discover she's a political worker for President Joseph Kabila, making a campaign ad about how her boss would make all this go away. All you have to do is vote for him in the upcoming runoff against rival Jean-Pierre Bemba.
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SUNDAY, Aug. 27, 6:30 p.m. local
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo
A box of Kellogg's Cocoa Puffs: $15. A can of Diet Coke: $7. A 12-pack of Huggies diapers: $35.
Who can afford these items at City Market in downtown Kinshasa?
According to the U.S. State Department, the average income in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a hundred bucks a year. Only the well off or well connected and, from what I could see today, mostly foreigners: U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers or the Indians and Chinese who now dominate much of the city's trade.
The only locals I saw at the American-style grocery store were "domestics" shopping for their madams, the check-out clerks who tallied up items on a digital register, and grocery boys packing goods and avoiding eye contact. Because inflation fluctuates daily and the rate of the Congolese Franc -- today about 460 to the dollar -- changes so often, goods are marked with code numbers that coincide with daily printouts of prices posted at the end of the isles.
Mercedes cars and Japanese SUVs with U.N. and relief agency logos are lined up out front, as they were last night at Chez Gaby, a popular Portuguese restaurant with a well-stocked bar and apple-cheeked Gaby, who greets patrons with offers of chocolates to enjoy with their aperitif.
The last time I was here in 1997, it was a treat to find Belgian chocolate. Rebels were approaching the city and dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's days were numbered. Since then, nearly 4 million people have died from civil war, poverty, AIDS, malaria, and other disease. Yet, there are vine-ripened tomatoes from Belgium, Pedigree-brand dog food, Doritos, and cans of imported whip cream.
Who would even want these items? Who has the time or inclination to shop for imported goodies when only last week 31 people were killed in Kinshasa?
The interim results of the first elections in more than four decades were announced and rival factions had taken to the streets.
My new colleague Shafiq -- the cousin of a friend from Toronto, ordered to watch over me -- pushed his shopping cart and shrugged off the horrors of the last decade, saying they haven't really hit Kinshasa. Sure, the family bakery had to close last week, but they're back to baking bread. He conceded people are tense and expect more ugliness when the runoff between President Joseph Kabila and former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba is held in October.
Until then, the well-to-do shop at City Market, enjoy wireless Internet, juggle their cell phones. Yet, no one appears to be using the city's first ATM machine and few have applied for the first offered MasterCard, he said. Instability trumps convenience.
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SATURDAY, Aug. 26, 5:30 p.m. local
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo
Landing in Kinshasa and looking down on the bloated Congo River brings tears to my eyes. On the first day of what my daughter calls "Mama's African Adventure," I recall how many times I crossed that river, back when the Democratic Republic of Congo was called Zaire. It was how I reached other villages, visited friends and escaped the chaos in the capital. Once I went to hunt down a rumored white crocodile, instead coming across an unfriendly family of hippos.
The first time I crossed the Congo River was 27 years ago. I joined the Peace Corps and had the good fortune of being posted to one of the most complex and colorful countries in Africa. The last time I made the crossing was in 1997, on a ferry from Brazzaville, capital of the neighboring Republic of Congo. Yes, the names are confusing and deceptive: The Republic has the democracy that the Democratic Republic lacks, though it is attempting it for the first time since its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated in 1961 and then-General Mobutu Sese Seko declared himself president.
I had crossed the river that last time to get to Kinshasa, where the airport closed as rebels approached the city in an attempt to overthrow Mobutu. In a scrum of other foreign correspondents, I finally met and interviewed the legendary Mobutu, one of the longest-serving dictators in Africa and still sporting his signature leopardskin toque, which many Congolese believed held the magic that kept him in power for more than three decades. Joseph Kabila, the son of the rebel leader who finally brought him down, is now facing a runoff election to lead this massive country of 58 million people. In 1997, I was covering West Africa for the AP, but pregnant and knowing I could no longer cover the civil wars of Sierra Leone and Liberia, and believing that my Congo trip would be my last.
But now I'm returning, 25 years after I was the last Peace Corps volunteer in Kamponde, a small village in the south-central province of Kasai Occidental. I returned 10 years ago for a story about how the village had changed over the years and how much the villagers had shaped my decisions later in life -- leading me to journalism and grounding me with blessings that many Americans forget to count. The villagers were saddened then to learn that despite years of marriage, and in what they viewed as my seriously advancing age -- the average life expectancy in Congo is only 49 and I was fast approaching 40 -- that I was childless. They promised to pray to their Buntu gods and the Roman Catholic one imposed on them by Belgian colonialists that we would be blessed with a baby.
Several months later, those prayers appeared to have been heard. But I had no way of communicating with Kamponde, a village where the train no longer stops, where there is no running water or electricity and certainly no post office or telephone lines.
Now, I'm returning to thank them for their prayers and introduce them to Caitlin, via video and photos and family stories around the fire with a calabash of palm wine. I'm carrying photos of other Peace Corps villagers who were there before me, Melanie, Doug and Yale, who also sent photos of their children, prized in a country where family is often all one has.
More than 4 million people have died in fighting or war-induced hunger and disease since rival rebel groups began fighting across the Congo just before my last visit, more deaths than in any other conflict since World War II. Violence last week, when a runoff election was declared, claimed another 31 lives in the capital. I'm anxious to learn how Kamponde has fared.
In Kinshasa only for several hours, much is as I remembered. Shakedowns by soldiers at the airport and along the road that takes you into what was once called Kin-la-belle for its wide boulevards and leafy beauty. The ubiquitous "pousse-pousse," or rickshaw pushers carrying people and goods across open sewage.
Yet many of those people are shouting into cellphones. And here in my grim-but-clean hotel, I'm writing this on a wireless Internet connection.
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