John’s Blog

Well, it’s been quite a hectic trip!  In mostly good ways.  I’ve spent much of my time here with another visitor from Canada who is launching his new book, which I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in Congolese music.  It’s called Rumba Rules, it’s written in English, and published in the U.S. by Duke University Press.  The author is Bob W. White - a spectacular scholar and a top-class human being.  But don’t take my word for it!  Check out the book!  It is the fruit of a research project much like mine: different in that it took place when the Congo was Zaire and Mobutu was still in power, and that Bob actually performed with a professional Congolese band - he was an atalaku with Defao and his Big Stars.

So I’ve been having the opportunity to sit in on research group meetings, attend events at several universities around Kinshasa, and even sit in the studio for a TV interview with Bob about his book.  It’s been non-stop action, and has been very enriching (and fun, I must admit)!

I’ve also had my own itinerary - seeing friends and visiting my old haunts to see how things have changed; my old guitar maitre Gianni is actually in North America now to do some concerts, and he is sorely missed.  The U.S. Cultural Center organized a two-part lecture series where I spoke to local journalists, artists and academics.  There were some very interesting conversations, I made some good contacts, and apparently I was on TV the other day playing the guitar and singing (part of my presentation).  I know this because a man approached me while I waited for a taxi yesterday and said, “hey, aren’t you the American who sings in Lingala?  I saw you on TV yesterday!”

Today I’m attending the final ceremony of a two-week English immersion program.  Yesterday I gave a brief presentation to this group, which was really fun.  The program is quite similar to my “alma mater” of sorts - Concordia Language Villages - although here the camp is only a day-camp, not an overnight camp.

What else?  I’ve made some friends in my new neighborhood, which is always nice, and had some nice chats with the “grown-ups” around my old stomping ground, as well as my former next-door neighbor.  The most common question I’m getting this time around is “how did you choose Congolese music and Lingala?”  I haven’t quite found the perfect response yet, actually, but I’m working on it.

There’s also the usual mix of annoyance and hilarity that goes with the various random strangers that approach and try to “make a connection” using different tactics.  Last night I was explaining to a group of Congolese friends in the car that in our (western) culture, people tend to be quite solitary, and that personal space has very well-defined and well-defended limits.  They were asking me why people are so afraid of Kinshasa, and it was the first time I took this tack in answering.  Usually I say that it has to do with people being very attached to their material possessions (it’s true that people have things stolen very often, but violent crime is very uncommon for a city this big), but this time I was talking about this idea of the violation of an unspoken personal space (which I really experienced to a high degree for the first time in Morocco) as an act of aggression.  In other words, in some cultures, there are actions that are considered acceptable and are in no way a prelude to violence, but to someone from another culture (a more “private” one, perhaps), these actions not only feel aggressive, but actually constitute an act of aggression or violation.  How about an example, eh?  What about a stranger starting to walk next to you while you were alone, minding your own business, trying to talk to you, and then opening another car door as you start to step into a car.  Sound scary?  Sound like a prelude to violence?  For me, it’s hard for it to not feel that way.

Another thing I’d forgotten about Kinshasa is that most people here (especially children) address me as mundele, even the first time they see me.  This just totally couldn’t happen in Johannesburg, I think.  A friend yesterday said, when I pointed this out, “but in the U.S., when a black person walks up to a group of white people, aren’t they surprised to see him?”  The answer, obviously, is often “yes,” but I was trying to explain that calling out someone’s racial category when you see them just isn’t socially acceptable in the U.S.

OK I feel like I’m meandering now… more later!

I arrived on Sunday in Kinshasa, leaving behind the chilly Johannesburg winter months. It’s actually the cool season here too, and it is much more comfortable than when I was here before. The sky is constantly hazy, which weakens the sun a bit and also makes for an absolutely amazing full moon. Some impressions:

I’m shocked by how little I seem to have forgotten of Lingala or of the city. I can still get around without a problem. As friends in Kin have been telling me, it does seem to be more “orderly,” especially on the roads: no more crowding two or more people into a single seat, the taxis only stop where there are designated places to stop, front-seat passengers wear their seat belts, and I saw a working traffic light last night that was obeyed.

Every time I go out, I run into someone I know. This is kind of typical for me anywhere I go (for some odd reason), but it’s a really nice and “homey” thing here. The people here are just amazing.

This trip is comfortable because of the cooler weather, but also because of my living situation - I’m staying at the house of a friend, and the accommodations are very, very nice. I’m seeing my best friends from before (Serge is here, although Gianni is in Europe performing with Kester, and reportedly heading to North America sometime soon), other friends and colleagues who are also visiting, and making new friends: I was out to dinner last night with a group of Americans, all of whom I’ve met in the last few days.

The Congolese are almost all working and living in the same places they were when I left, whereas most of the expats that I knew are gone elsewhere. I suppose that makes sense - foreigners living in a country are by definition transient. It’s just amazing to me how quickly people come and go!

I went to a Bana OK concert on the day I arrived, and am planning to go out tonight with a big group. I also have quite a schedule of presentations - I’ll be giving a couple of talks through the U.S. embassy, at least one public event at the music school here, and am also attending and participating in several other talks at Universities and other organizations.

I’m writing here, and also bouncing the ideas I’ve already written up off of scholars and musicians from Kinshasa. It’s been very affirming - I really feel like I’m on the right track with a lot of things. I’m also learning a ton from listening to scholarly debates, especially with other visitors like myself from different fields.

One of my favorite quotes so far was a Congolese acquaintance talking about getting stopped by the police for weaving in his car. When he pointed out the giant potholes he had been trying to circumnavigate, the officer replied: “dans le code de la route, il n’y a pas de trous.” (”there are no holes according to the law of the road”) I love it.

I’m eating and drinking well, although I’ve been quite spoiled in Johannesburg by the availability of high-quality steak and salad. I used to come into town from the cite just for those items, but am not at all tempted this trip. I suppose that after a couple weeks I’ll be a lot less picky. Went back to my regular spot for dinner, and it was all that I had remembered it being!

OK, that’s all for now! Back to being busy!

The first time I can remember someone stealing from me was in third grade.  I remember the guy - he took my Transformer.  I accused him before an ad-hoc jury of our peers, and presented with the scratch-marks where I had claimed to have put my initials, he gave me the toy (without overtly admitting guilt).

The most devastating case of theft was actually not very materially devastating.  It was when I was studying abroad in Cameroon.  I remember vividly the feeling of walking through central Yaounde - I think I’d just come from having drinks with Cameroonian musicians, so I had a pleasant, light buzz, a sense of purpose and belonging, and the feeling like I’d really made some human connections with Africans and was “on top” of things.  Then a strange scene unfolded, beginning with a thick wallet falling to the ground in front of me (which I ignored), then a thankful Cameroonian appreciatively handing small CFA bills to those who had helped him recuperate his wallet, then him asking me for change for a 2000 franc bill.  I slowly, hazily took my wallet out and opened it, at which point a hand quickly reached in and removed the wad of CFA cash.  This hand was attached to a smiling, beckoning face, leading me to the side of the road where there was a card game waiting.  It’s all kind of embarrassing, actually, but the point of the game was that as long as I was losing at it (the typical “guess-where’s-the-king” street hustler game), they knew that I hadn’t shown them all of my money, and once I had shown them it all so that it could all be “blessed.”  I was frustrated and confused, but at some point I realized there was a crowd of thirty or so Cameroonians watching the spectacle, that someone must have set this up after having just seen me leave the bank, and that I needed to just quit while I was only this far behind.  When I threw up my hands and walked away, the whole crowd burst out laughing.  It was humiliating.  I’m not even sure I’ve ever told such a complete version of the story.  It was devastating because I’d been so filled with the feeling that I’d come to Africa to try to promote inter-cultural understanding and that I was really getting somewhere, and that feeling was so quickly replaced by the feeling of being the ridiculous foreigner - the white man - whose humiliation was a pleasure to everyone.

I have another great story from a trip to Paris a few years ago.  I was showing around a couple of cousins who didn’t speak French (one of them had never been to Europe before).  We were about mid-way finished with our week there, and had had a fabulous time.  One day on a crowded metro car, my cousin said to me, “somebody took my wallet!”  I said, “when?”  He said, “just now.”  I looked around, fuming.  I said, “you mean someone right here in this metro car has your wallet?” (the car was moving).  He said, “yes.  I just felt a hand.”  I scanned the crowd and settled on a nervous-looking little guy standing right by the door.  My mind was racing.  What to do?  I indicated the man with my head and told my cousins, “that’s the guy.”  The subway stopped, the doors opened, and the man stepped out.  We followed him.  When he saw us get out, he stepped back into the car.  We did the same.  This was all very strange and baffling to the huge crowds of Parisian commuters and tourists trying to squeeze on and off the train.  The man pushed as far into the car as he could, and we squeezed in on either side of him.  The metro started again, and we felt more and more sure that we’d correctly spotted our man.  “Still,” I thought, “you can’t go accusing people without proof.”  We had a tense conversation over the head of this guy about what we were going to do.  One thing was sure: I was going to do the talking, because I was the only one who spoke French.  Mind racing again.  As we discussed our options, the idea of trying to contact police of some kind came up, and this word is close enough in both languages (in French, “police”) that a lot of ears perked up (especially those of the man between us).

When the metro car stopped next, the man moved towards the door and I said to him in the most syrupy and polite French I could muster, “excusez-moi, monsieur, vous n’auriez peut-etre pas un portefeuille qui ne vous appartient pas?” (Excuse me, sir, but you wouldn’t happen to have a wallet that doesn’t belong to you, would you?)  This definitely got a lot of attention, and I remember the eyes popping out of the faces of several onlookers.  The man responded roughly, “quoi?  Dégage!” (what? Get away from me)  I followed him, saying, “c’est seulement qu’il nous manque un portefeuille, et on se demandait si peut-etre vous en sauriez quelque chose” (it’s just that we’re missing a wallet, and we thought maybe you might know something about it - but it is hard to translate the syrupy politeness I mustered).  He continued trying to shake me off with rude, short phrases, but I insisted that I just wanted to talk to him as we got off the train.  He started walking away and at some point I said, “you don’t have to run, we just want to talk,” to which he responded, “I’m not running!” and simultaneously took off at a mad dash!  I ran as fast as I could on his heels with my cousins right behind me, down a long tunnel in the Parisian metro, screaming, “au secours! Voleur!” (help! Thief!)  It was really quite like a scene from a movie, and I have faint memories of the reactions of the three or four people we passed at a full sprint down the tunnel - a little old lady stopped with her hand at her mouth, a couple whose heads swung around as we went by… the man burst through the exit gate of the metro stop and was on the stairs when a young French man grabbed him by the coat, making him swing around and stopping him.  At this point, we caught up, and as my cousins were screaming in English things like, “where’s my %@*#-ing wallet, you …!!!” I continued my “good cop” approach, saying, “why are you running - we just want to talk!”  The guy found a way out of our collective grasp and tried to run back down into the subway.  He was snagged by another bystander, and this time, somehow, he said something that I remember as meaning “here!” but I’m not even sure what he said in French, and the wallet popped out and into my cousin’s hands.  The thief took off, and we gathered around the recovered wallet to examine its contents.  When we realized nothing was missing, we looked at each other and my other cousin said, “man!  We should have kicked his ass!”

It’s honestly one of my best travel stories, and is always great for a laugh.  Of course, the best part of it is that it ended happily.  Sunday, I wasn’t so lucky.  I got pickpocketed as I went to find a seat with a big group of expats.  It was pretty silly of me to have my wallet on me at all, and even sillier for me to have it in my back pocket, and on top of it, to have things inside it that I didn’t want to lose.  I know I wrote recently about feeling like maybe I’m a little too comfortable here… too confident.  Oh, well.  What is kind of interesting and maybe a little funny (although it will be funnier when I have replaced the contents of my wallet) is that it began so similarly to the Paris experience and evolved so differently.  I was in a crowd, felt a hand, turned around and started demanding that people be searched.  I have a feeling I would have had more success, but I kept using the verb “kozwa” which means more like “someone just found my wallet!” (it’s also the verb for “take” in the nice sense) instead of the verb “koyiba” which is “to steal.”  In fact, if the word “moyibi” - “thief” - had popped into my head right away and I’d started screaming it, I might have had a chance.  As it is, all I got was some very relaxed police officers who were obsessed with finding out how much money I had in the wallet (I kept telling them I didn’t know or care, but I just wanted the other contents), and eventually picked the guy who was closest to be and started smacking him around, assuring me that this was the guy.  I tried to tell them I didn’t really care who did it, but I just wanted my wallet back, but it turned into quite the roaming spectacle as they dragged the guy out then downstairs.  It was kind of surreal when, as we left the stadium (my desire to watch soccer was totally killed by the theft), the whole procession of about 15 people including this poor handcuffed guy came strolling across the empty place outside the stadium to get my phone number and an official statement (scrawled in pen on a folded piece of paper).

Since then, I’ve had some other hectic happenings, and had an amazing day in a real recording studio today, but I’ll save that for later!

First, the long-promised movie (very lo-fi, but you get the idea).

One thing that I was pleasantly surprised by when I moved to New York was how easy it is to become a “regular.” Usually, if you talk to people even a little at a restaurant or bar, by the third time you come back, they already treat you very differently: want to remember your name and what you usually order; start saying, “hey, man - where have you been?” and the like. I’d always thought it was a big-city phenomenon, since I’ve had similar experiences in other big cities, and theorized that the disproportionate number of transient relationships that one has in a place like New York or Paris makes one cling more readily to something that promises to be more substantial. It is somewhat contrary to the image most people that don’t live in big cities have of the big city. After only a few visits to New York, I already had described my experience of it as “a bunch of small towns smooshed really close together,” with tight-knit communities within the larger city.

In Congolese song, there’s an expression, “Kinshasa eza mboka te.” It means, “Kinshasa is not a city” (although it is somewhat confusing, and I may be reading it wrong, because “mboka” is also the word for village, and although it is not really the Lingala word for “country” - as in nation-state - it is used that way in Kinshasa: “mboka na ngai Etats-Unis,” for example). I’ve noticed this in some songs by Simaro (an older guitarist, songwriter and singer from the second generation of Congolese music), but I think I’ve also seen it elsewhere, but in Simaro’s songs, it’s often followed by an elaboration of his statement: “you see someone fall on the street and nobody helps them - they just laugh at his sorrow,” or something like that. Hm. Maybe he means Kinshasa is not a village (where people are more inclined to help each other)… I’m not sure, but my point is that Kinshasa is like a small town in so many ways. Particularly, people not only know the musicians who live in Kinshasa and all about their lives and their habits and things (as we do for our celebrities in the U.S.), but it’s like everyone knows where they live, what their car looks like, whether they’re travling or not, and they will salute them in the street by their first name. I can’t believe how many people I randomly meet in the city, or people I randomly meet who know people I know and the like. I mean, I know I have a reputation for these kinds of chance encounters, but seriously!

Yesterday I went to get lunch with some friends at a nice little lunch place on the boulevard. I love this place because generally in town you have to pay big-city prices to eat, and it’s at a sit-down place, and I’m rarely impressed with the food, whereas in the cité I feel like I eat really well for reasonable prices. The problem in the cité is that during the day, it’s just too hot and sunny. But this place (which an expat friend showed me) is shady and breezy, it’s right in town, but you can barely hear the traffic through the wall of the parcelle, and there are four or five “mamas” with their “marmotes” (stew pots) on a table, and you just go and pick out cité-style food and pay a reasonable price. I’ve gone back to this place several times, and this time, I was the first in my party to arrive. The guy who serves drinks gave me a long, enthusiastic speech about how happy he was to see me and how it’s been too long (I love the expression, “mikolo ebele boye” - literally “too many days like that”). The mamas yelled salutations of “ee mundele!” to me. This is the nice kind of “mundele” - like, “I don’t know your name but I remember you and it’s nice to see you - and you’re white.” I also randomly saw the commissionaire who found my house for me, who is already chomping at the bit to show people my place since I’m leaving soon. I sat with him until my friends started arriving, and when we went to get our food, it was the customary joking, people expressing their pleasant surprise at my Lingala and telling me to teach my white friends Lingala. I really felt like a regular, but I think that becoming a regular for a Lingala-speaking white man in Kinshasa is a little like becoming a regular for a professional basketball star in New York City.

After lunch we went to another friend’s place and relaxed, had various beverages (I made myself some tea for my sore throat), interesting conversation, and I played some of my music for people, both on guitar and off of my iPod shuffle. Soon I heard from Serge, who I was meeting on the boulevard to head to another engagement. Actually, my plan was to go to four different social events during the course of the day. One of my problems here (especially lately) is that my weekend days start at the same time as every other day because I’m always awakened by the various noises from the neighbors: loud voices, loud music, running water, cars starting, etc. This is usually around 5:30 or 6 AM. On the weekends, nobody I know gets up that early - they’re all tired. Actually, I’m tired too, but just have a hard time sleeping in. This morning I got up at like 8:30 because it was starting to get really hot and stuffy in my bedroom. This is not too too early, but a few late night concerts, and you can get pretty sleep-deprived pretty fast.

So enough complaining. I only made it to lunch and one of the three parties I wanted to attend. It rained a little, which made everything happen much more slowly, but also I was still not feeling 100% and the first place we went was much further than I thought. We went down-river a ways to a spot where there is an absolutely fabulous view of rushing Congo river rapids and a lot of sky. To get there, we could have taken a couple of normal taxis, but at Kitambo Magasin, the transport was crazy because of the rain and the time of day - Saturday is pretty much a normal business day everywhere in Kinshasa until noon, when half of the businesses close, so it means that rush hour is earlier and longer. By the way, I’ve noticed lately, as I’ve been taking more and more different routes to different places at different times, that traffic here is really a nightmare. I mean it is intense. It has a lot to do with the condition of the roads, but also a lot to do with the fact that there are just something like 8 million people all moving around, and rush hour is no joke.

But this place we went to - called Chez Tintin, we met with blogger friends among others - was really nice. Oh, I almost forgot that I had a good moment in the express taxi we took from Magasin. We were only two, and since there were so many people heading the same direction, we invited two people (a woman with her child and her sister) to ride in the taxi with us. As they got out where we turned to head to the restaurant and the ladies thanked us for the ride, the driver said, “aren’t you going to pay anything?” The women said no. He said “boprofiter!” (you’re taking advantage!) and as we pulled away I jokingly called them “faux têtes!” Yes, that’s the word - in French “faux” (meaning “false”) would have to agree with the feminine noun “tête” and would become “fausse” but this is actually Lingala, where there are French words, but no gender agreement. “Faux” is a very common word: “faux chanteur” means someone who can’t sing. “Faux mundele” means a white person who doesn’t have money or a car and walks around or takes public transport, or who is always late (hmm - I wonder why I know that vocabulary word?). “Faux tête” is a slam against the military, police and some government workers who have a card they use in taxis so they don’t have to pay. I guess it probably comes from the fact that you count the number of people to see how much you’re going to make for that taxi run, but those “heads” aren’t going to produce any revenue. Anyways, everyone got a big laugh out of the mundele calling these mamas “faux têtes.”

We had a nice meal by the river and watched a spectacular sunset (sorry, mom - forgot the camera!). It was dark by the time we left, and the other events of the day were surely winding down, so we went to hear music at Kitambo Magasin. This is another place where I’m a “regular,” and they always play the same Franco song I always request whenever I show up: the title is “Matata ya mwasi na mobali esila te na mokili.” - “The problems of men and women (it could also mean husbands and wives - same words) will never be finished on this earth.” I’m pretty sure it’s the first song I learned the real words to, and is one of my all-time favorites. As they were announcing it, I had a sudden desire (in French I think you can say “le désir m’a pris” - “the desire took me” which is much more how it felt) to get up on stage and sing the song with them. I’d been meaning to do this for months, but never had the courage. I’m not sure what got into me, and I was already really losing my voice, but I went up with Serge to ask, and they announced that I was going to sing the song with them. My friends told me afterwards that it seemed like nobody was really listening when he said over the mic, “a mundele is going to sing this song with us,” and that as people noticed me on stage, it rippled through the crowd (not a huge crowd - the place is small). But it was really fun, and I’d say a good seven or eight people came up on stage to press money against my forehead, a way of showing appreciation for singers. A couple of guys came and gave me combination hug-and-Congolese-style-head-taps too. People seemed to really dig it. It’s a well-known song and has a first section sung in chorus, then a series of vocal solos interrupted by the refrain (the title of the song). The other singers really wanted me to sing one of the vocal solos, but I don’t really know them very well. They finally got me to stumble through one:

Likambo nini Nzambe osala biso mibali tosalelaka basi.
Bango baliyaka, balataka,
Biso mbula mobimba patalo moko na nzoto

It means:

What, God, did you do to us men? We are always helping women
They eat, they dress well,
And us? We go an entire year with only one pair of pants on our body!

This is the classic “man’s complaint” in Congolese culture and song, and I think the irony of a white guy (in dirty jeans and a white t-shirt, no less) singing this line was “too much” as they like to say here (in a positive sense) for most of the audience. They were cracking up. It was a really fun evening. Unfortunately, I was totally wiped out by 9 PM or so, and had hoped to go hear other bands at other venues, but instead I taxied back to Victoire and walked home.

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while.  I actually have been laying low, not feeling so hot - mostly just tired.  Today I’ve got a stuffy nose and a headache.

I have managed to do a lot of work on the songs we’ve been doing all year, and I think by next week I’ll have a CD of six or seven original songs (I’m hoping I get my English-language rumba together in time!).  I also spent the morning editing the video I promised a couple of weeks ago.  It is entitled “A Few Good (Congolese) Sebenes.”  I know that sebene doesn’t really rhyme with “men” so it isn’t a very good punny title, but it is quite descriptive.  It is a huge file and I’ll have to find the right time and connection to upload it, but that may be soon.  I already compressed one version of it and the video isn’t so hot, but you can get the idea.  We might broadcast it on Congolese television if we have any takers.  It’s basically just a montage of me and Gianni playing a few songs in my house.

What else to report?  I’ve been hitting the books a lot more lately, and just laying low.  I’m also making arrangements for my departure and thinking through my next move.  Don’t expect any of my travel information to become public any time soon… some things aren’t meant for a blog!  But we can just say that things are wrapping up here.  My mom told me it is time to start taking more photos, so I’ve been doing my best at that.

I just found out that the Lingala word for “monkey” is “likaku.”  The plural of the li- noun class is ma-.  What does that mean?  That means that “monkeys” in Lingala is “makaku.”  Sound familiar?  Like maybe a word made famous by a U.S. politician in recent months?  Serge claims that this is a loan word from the French “macaque.”  Anyone know anything more about this?

Also, we’ve had discussions about the word “suffering.”  In Lingala, it’s “mpasi” (or more commonly just “pasi”).  But in Lingala to say “I have a headache” (which I do, by the way), you say “naza na pasi na mutu.”  It is literally “I have suffering in my head.”  I’ve often mentioned the phrase “transport ekomi pasi.”  “Transportation is getting difficult,” but literally, it is becoming suffering.  I have found myself occasionally talking in English about suffering, which sounds really melodramatic, but it’s just translated Lingala.  Also, in French people here say “je souffre” a lot.  A friend here with Jamaican origins pointed out that in Jamaica, it is common to use the verb “to suffer” and to talk about “suffering.”  I think she might be right, and perhaps this is a vestige of African language… interesting, eh?  Any other thoughts on that?

OK I’m on a timer again today, and wasn’t even planning on writing, so I gotta run.  More soon!

I might be getting a little too confident and comfortable with public transport. Maybe not, though. Friday night I was meeting with friends in Bandal for dinner and left about a half hour before we were supposed to meet. I had the business card of the restaurant and headed down towards Victoire. It’s funny how in the evening on weekends it is impossible to find a taxi for the short ride from my place to Victoire because most of the commuters are heading home from their day’s work in town, and for thousands and thousands of them, the road home is a taxi all the way to Victoire, then a second one towards their home (and sometimes a third if they live very far). This means that the taxis approaching Victoire in the evening are totally full and nobody is going to get out before they arrive there. It was a nice walk, though, and made me think about how much I’m going to miss my neighborhood when I’m gone. The other night walking home from Victoire, I arrived at my place and wrote down all of the chance encounters with strangers and neighbors, and I realized I had spoken to a dozen people on that short walk without realizing it!

But this story is about Friday night - I arrived at Victoire and quickly found a taxi heading to Kimbondo/Commune. I was the last in, which meant I was close to the door, and I had just bought a phone card and needed to call Serge to arrange where we would meet. I leaned my head against the door and scratched off the phone card to get the code. I suddenly realized that, without even noticing, I was heading to a taxi stop I didn’t know, leaning half-way out of a VW bus, and holding my phone and a $5 phone card in my hand and not holding on to the taxi. There’s no way I would have done any of these things, even a couple months ago. The people around me were very helpful - the receveur insisted that I hold on to the rail in front of me (a good idea, I’ll admit) and then wrapped his leg around me to ensure that I didn’t fall out of the open doorway (the sliding door of the van was open and he was standing in it - standard procedure). Then the woman next to me offered to read me the phone code off of the card so I didn’t have to try to do all of that with one hand. At one point, we drove by a bar playing loud sebene music and the receveur started twisting his hips to the beat. I only noticed because his leg was wrapped around me… it was a little closer to him than I wanted to be, but it was fine. Once we got a little further along, I told the receveur (in Lingala) that I didn’t know where I was supposed to get out and that he should show me. Something I would have never done before. Same with how at a certain point, the whole taxi got involved in trying to figure out exactly which street I was looking for and where I should get out, as they passed around the business card of the restaurant where I was heading. I explained to them that I was meeting Serge (although neither of us knew the area well enough to name a meeting point) and that I’d be fine. One passenger offered to walk with me to where he thought I needed to go. Again, I realized as I was doing it that I would have never done this before - walking through a neighborhood I don’t know with a stranger and not knowing where we’re heading. People, though, I’ve learned, are so genuinely hospitable and helpful, and maybe my Lingala has made me feel like it would be pretty hard for someone to pull something over on me. Eventually I found Serge (who I picked out of a crowd, amazingly, before he saw me) and the restaurant (we were late, but so were the others) and had a great night.

I spent the rest of the weekend in town relaxing with expat friends. It was really a great weekend. Very relaxing. Some time by the pool, multiple meals a day… I got back to no power Sunday night (spent one night with friends in Gombe). This morning, my neighbor had me drive her car around the block a few times - I do this for her occasionally because she like to keep the engine in good shape, but her husband is the only one in the family who knows how to drive and he’s in Europe for some time. It was unbelievably hot, and I got out of the car drenched in sweat. Before taking it out of the garage, we needed to move another neighbor’s car, which meant that I had to push it out of the way while the mama Pasteur (one of my neighbors) turned the wheel. Then they couldn’t get the padlock out of the main gate to open it, so they called me over to do that too. The mama Pasteur said, “omoni po na nini il faut mwana ya mobali.” (you see why sons are important). Cute.

Besides that, not much is new.  It’s pretty hot today.  Hopefully it will rain tonight.  Did I already mention that people here are talking about global warming all the time?  You know it’s hot out when…

I’m pretty sure this is my 100th post from Kinshasa!  Whew! 

It is amazing how you sometimes learn a new word or phrase in a foreign language and suddenly realize that it’s been swirling around you everywhere. It’s like learning a new color or something and everything looks different all of a sudden. For me lately, there are two words like that: “yaya” which means “big brother” (or, I think, older sibling in general), and “ma,” which seems to mean something like “man” or “dude” or “hey you.” It might be short for “masta” which means something like “friend” or “buddy.” But both terms are totally everywhere and somehow I’d never noticed before this week! Maybe it is a shift in the slang, too - like more people are actually using those words more often than before. Not sure. Also, sometimes there is something that you use with some regularity and then at some point you find out you were using it wrong the whole time, or at least conceiving of it wrong.  Today I saw a taxi drive by with a little 12×8 inch carboard sign saying “Zando U.P.N.”  I looked at the word U.P.N. and wondered where it was.  I don’t know how it came to me, but I suddenly realized that the place (beyond Kintambo Magasin and Delveaux) that I’d always thought was called “l’Ipen” and had talked about it with that spelling in my mind was actually staring me in the face, and that just the way “Eau pure” sounds like “Opi” (see a prior post) and “Mutzig” sounds like “Midzig” with the accent here, I had internalized “U.P.N.” as “l’Ipen.”  Funny.

I’m at a new (to me) cyber cafe just down the street from my place.  It is so interesting to see the demographic at these places.  They are almost always crowded.  Young and old, people doing research, job searches, downloading reading material or music… in France I remember seeing many of these places swarming with kids playing video games.  Don’t see any of that here.  There are kids sometimes, though, but they are usually listening to foreign music (meaning American music, usually).  We’ve definitely found a few nice places with the newest operating systems and fast connections just in my neighborhood.

Tonight was really nice.  I chatted with my neighbors on my way over to Serge’s place, saw some of my favorite neighborhood kids and other folks, and we sat and had a drink at our favorite place right around the corner from Serge’s “where everyone knows my name.”  It has been a few days since I’ve felt this at-ease around my place.  I’ve just been tired and feeling unenthusiastic about Lingala lessons all day every day.  I think the little “break” I had between my visitors and the last couple of days of skyping and hanging out in town has made me feel somewhat refreshed.

Also, my time here is beginning to wind down.  I don’t have a departure date yet, but the end feels close, and thinking about leaving always makes one start to appreciate the “now” a lot more.  Also, I will never forget that an uncle of mine, when we were doing some home repairs together, observed that “you always reach maximum efficiency when you’re finished with a task.”  I suppose that’s the goal rather than always true, but his point, I think, is valid for traveling and studying as well.  No matter when I leave, my Lingala and guitar skills will be at their peak and my learning curve will probably be at its best (which I guess, technically speaking, is it’s “flattest”).

I’ve also been spending some time doing non-congolese music projects, because I’m planning to leave here without taking all of my equipment (but shh, don’t tell my friends here - it’s supposed to be a surprise…), and will probably not be quite as well-equipped to do so for a while after I’ve left.

Tonight’s conversation was one that I’ve had often: what exactly is (and isn’t) a mundele.  Tonight they told me it was a word that didn’t exist before the Europeans came, but that a possible etymology is that it means “he who is different.”  People say that “mundele” refers to skin color, but I know that it carries a lot of cultural meaning too.  One friend always says, “the white man is someone who has invented things, who is a great thinker, who has done something.”  This is why people (and sometimes I am among them) with white skin are sometimes told, “yo oza mundele te” (you’re not a mundele) or “yo oza faux mundele” (you’re a fake mundele).  That means you’ve got the skin, but not the other things that are associated with it.  Funny stuff.

I also learned a great extension of my “maboko makasi” story (this was a long time ago - it literally means “strong hands” but means someone is greedy, like they don’t open their hands to give).  Another word for greedy is the French word “flambeau” meaning “torch.”  The image is of a person with their fist clenched and their hand in the air (like the statue of liberty, kinda), and presumably they have money or something in it that they are keeping away from everyone else.  I love that.

OK, I think I got called motormouth for my last post, and I am (as I mentioned) tired and also distracted, so I’ll just write more tomorrow.

This morning I had a fascinating taxi ride into town. Hot and fascinating. I was in the way back of a taxi-bus and a guy in the taxi was telling everyone that I would go back to my country and tell everyone about the “conditions,” as they call it, of mass transit. He said I was laughing at them. I interjected in Lingala, saying, “don’t you think people there should know the way things are here?” Everyone looked at me, somewhat surprised. I continued, “They should know, right? Shouldn’t I tell them?” (by the way, “bango” which means “them” is used the same way as “on” in French, meaning “people in general” - in English we use “you,” as in “you should never run with a fork in your mouth”) There were “eh” sounds of approval all around. The guy next to me was sweating so much and seemed so embarrassed that I gave him my “papier mouchoir” (pocket tissues). He seemed grateful. Early in our trip into town, the driver answered his phone and handed it to the receveur, who had a loud conversation about someone being sick… I wasn’t listening too closely, but apparently everyone else in the taxi was, because when he hung up the phone, everyone said, “alingi ye makasi!” (he really loves her) This inspired the receveur to tell a long story about the woman he loved in Brazzaville (he called it “CFA” - did I translate that part of the Kester song? Don’t remember…), how they had two kids together, and then there was something where, I guess, he didn’t have enough money so he came to Kinshasa and wanted to send for his kids… this is where I didn’t exactly understand all of the details, but the whole ride into town was spent with everyone analyzing his dilemma, saying he should go get his kids, saying that the woman wasn’t right, saying that kids can’t grow up without their mother around or they’ll reject her forever… People here are so into family problems, and they love to chew them over and share them with people. It is very sweet. The poor guy seemed really grateful to have all of the advice from random taxi passengers. One guy (the same one who was talking about me) took the receveur’s phone number and that of his “mwasi” (a term that means “woman” in general, but also “girlfriend” and “wife,” so I couldn’t tell exactly what the legal status of their relationship was) and said he wanted to call them and talk to both of them. It was a great way to spend 45 sweaty minutes.

Well, I just got back from what will be my last airport run for at least a little while (it was #4 of the last ten days).  It was such a blast to have visitors!  I think it will feel a little lonely at home for a couple days, but I am also glad to be back to business.  I am a little pooped so I’m going to go home and rest, but soon I’ll write up the second half of our “team” adventures.