Ali Boom ba yay!

Well, I made it to Kinshasa. Piece of cake! The airport was not that scary. One a scale of 1 to Juba, I give it a 5.5. Heck, if they hadn't asked for my immunization card, I'd probably even give it higher marks.

My first day was a flurry of meetings where I floated in and out of jetlagged consciousness. I was doing that embarrassing dozing head bob in the car between meetings...

Today after what felt like 17 hours of sleep I feel much better. My IFES minder, Bernadette (chosen because she speaks the best English) picked me up and took me to the market. We went to buy fabric. I know I know,  I'm addicted. But how can one not buy fabric ("liputa" in Lingala) when one is in the heart of Africa?

Speaking of the heart of Africa or Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, I visited the shores of the Congo River after the market. This river is lesser known than the Nile, but it is infamous because of Conrad and of course the Belgians. It is wide and fast moving and I cannot imagine the crazy places to which it leads.

Admittedly it is a bit hard to reconcile the DRC I am experiencing with the one rated by the UN's Human Development Index as dead last in the world. I knew that coming over. There is often talk among development folk of being stuck in capital cities and not seeing the "real" Africa. It is true, but I'm relatively ok with that for this trip. I have paid my dues bumping up and down on God-awful roads to hold meetings under mango trees.

For now I'm focused less on getting to know Africa (we're pretty acquainted...) and more on figuring out my new job. This trip will help.

Ok, maybe writing this while devouring a "Salada Nicoise" overlooking an Olympic size swimming pool is a bit ridiculous. (There is actually a water aerobics class being taught and not one Congolese among the students.) Ahem.

But it's Saturday and the rest of the week promised to be busy with meetings to help me figure out how and where to break in with gender programming here; programming that reaches the mango tree...