Day 16 and 17- Rat!!

So I had heard there was a rat that had been in the house when I first moved in but heard the housekeeper had put poision down so thought so more about it.

Until...

I came home from dinner with my colleagues and came home and went to my room shutting the door behind me. It was at this point I saw a brown flash across the floor, and the noise. That scurry of claws, that makes your skin crawl.

It was in. my. room.

 EUUUUGGHHH!

There it was. Behind the my luggage. My clean clean clothes, tainted by rat. I saw it and it saw me........a stand off ensued.

Who would be the first to move? Why didn't it scurry away back from wence it came?  Ohhhhh....I was in the way of the shut door. It needed to made a bid for freedom but had no where to go.

I open the door and it ran out right past my feet. Needless to say the door was almost shut again on it's tail.

This infact gave me some solace, if it had another escape route it would have taken it. The fact that it waited for me to open the door suggests it's the only entry/exit point in the room.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...anything to sleep at night!

Day 15- OMG MY FEET ITCH LIKE MAD

So yesterday when we finished the run, I took my trainers off as having waded through a stream I  considered it safer to remove my shoes than continue to leave my (slighty blistered and raw) feet in shoe that was soaked through with water that probably contained parasites that cause Schistosomiasis. You know that disease people learnt about in geography also known as the snails disease that can cause paralysis?

OK, ok  so that might be me being paranoid, the lettuce debacle all over again.

The fact of the matter is. I took my shoes off. By a lake. In late afternoon. With the repellent I put on earlier washed and sweated away hours ago.The result?

I got bitten.....alot. It seems like the mosquito's had fun  drawing patterns on my feet. I have 3 big ones in a line on the arch of my foot that have joined to form a mega itch, and it's just on the right place to rub on my shoe...resulting in further itchiness, and distracting me from doing any work no matter how much cream or spray I put on them.

Bollocks.

Day 14- Run forrest! 10K with the Kinshasa Hash House Harriers

Day 14

I woke up this morning at a leisurely 9.30 and went and ate breakfast out on the veranda, which lovely.  H and I then went to a local market called the Marche de valeur (the value market), more commonly known as the marche des voleurs (the market of thieves- for the extortionate prices they charge you if you don’t haggle). It a cute little place, just an empty plot of land where 100’s of people are selling their art, masks, statues etc. There is a constant chorus of ‘madame regarde’. You really have to haggle, and be persistent but there are a few things I’ll buy when I go back some of the paintings are really cute.

By the time we managed to leave the market I went straight to the grand hotel to join in with the Kinshasa hash harriers. A group of expats that go on fornightly hash in different areas around Kinshasa.  For those of you who don’t know what a hash is it’s basically a long run that has been set out before hand and you run to checkpoints and have to search for the correct trail as they deliberately set ‘false trails’. The hash was by a lake called lac ma vallee that was 40 mins drive, so I jumped in the convoy with a family from Cameroon who had been in Kinshasa for 7 years who were so sweet.

Today there were three flavours   of hash 3k, 5k, or 10k. Out of bravery, or stupidity, I picked the 10k. In the midday African heat. O M G.

Not only was it in the midday heat but it was through jungle, bush and even a river, well a stream but I got wet enough it might has well as been! But inspite of the pain everyone was  lovely cheering each other on and the scenery was so spectacular and felt so good  to be out of the city and running through the countryside, I managed to make it all the way round. At one point we had been running for about 3K and bumped into a local lady who was carrying a massive bag of fire wood on her head. I have no idea where she was coming from or going, but I’m glad we bumped into her, I even manged to pull out my camera in time to grab a pic as I ran.

The funniest thing about the hash is the post hash review. Everyone gets in a big circle with beers, to rehydrate, and sings  songs. The hash ‘virgins’ have to come up and introduce themselves and down a beer as the rest of the group sings, same with the leavers, the hash hero/heroine, and as punishment for anyone found to have taken short cuts. It’s like fresher’s, nothing like introduce a bit of university style drinking to the DRC.

I’m pretty sure they have their own Kangaroo court at somepoint in the year and have their own hash names that you get given for life. Someone today was dubbed shoeless Joe Jackson for turning up in flipflops. Big oops. So now I am pretty broken, a few scratches from running through the jungle, and no doubt sore muscles tomorrow. I came home with some guys and girls from the American embassy who were such fun and great to meet new people, but I  COULD. NOT. WAIT for a shower.

 Got home .................and the water pump was broken. No running water ....now I’m Africa -so instead I jumped in the pool to shower and headed out for a pizza.

Amazing day, so much fun and am now ready for bed!

Day 13- Moving into the Castle, and life beyond the castle walls

 Today I was moving from my hotel out to the project house with the rest of the team. They put us in a hotel to start with as a bit of a buffer to find our feet with all amenities on site, and not having to fend for yourself, but now I’m in the house it feels like this is much more long term. Like I am actually living in Kinshasa not just passing through.

Packing up my stuff and slugging it the mile and a half across town,

The house is lovely, old Belgian almost art deco house with a pool and tonnes of entertaining space – 'which has been nicknamed 'the castle' you can imagine the fun the original owners had in here. It’s now in a little complex of houses in a populated area. But in the garden are trees that are jungle tress 100’s of years old. With the way the city is now it’s easy to forget that is place was all dense jungle, and I wish I could have seen this place in it’s heyday. It would have be utterly spectacular. 

Sadly my room is under renovation so had to borrow K’s room while she is on a trip out to one of the pilot sites back east. The room is so large we call it the bowling alley. Unfortunately there is one small step which prohibits the actual use of the room as a bowling alley but I foresee it double up as an exercise study once K gets back. We’ve been using 5L water bottles as kettle bells. (Full of course).

When driving over from the hotel, and driving up the long private road to the complex where the house sits, we came across a couple who were screaming at each other, picking up rocks and hurling them at each other literally looking like they were trying to kill each other.  The woman was bleeding,  although giving as good as she was getting. But the look in their eyes was just awful. My boss was driving at the time and manovered the car in between them to try and give the girl a moments rest. (Mummy you will be happy to know that I was safely locked inside the car.)

Apparently, the woman was known to him a lady with mental illness who occasionally walked down our road to build fires and sleep. The attitude towards mental illness in this country is like in the middle ages, to be laughed at and then told to bugger off.  It was horrifying to watch, but there was literally nothing we could do. My boss tried to calm the man down it it quite quickly became clear that he too was not sound of mind, and by this time the local security guards had heard the racket going on and were trying to intervene. So that was it we drove off back into the safely of our little fortress, in our beautiful castle. It didn’t feel good.

When you think about what sort of people they could be if they received with the help that we have at home, and the fact that these clearly unstable people have to fend for themselves, outcast, it’s terrible. And yet, out here worse things happen and are happening every day. The people out on the streets, trying to scrape together a living, and all the terrible things I with my sheltered upbringing am yet to comprehend. One of my colleagues put it like this, ‘when you think of each of these people as an individual, it breaks your heart, so you think of them as society so that you don’t become depressed’. It’s something that we do all the time you can feel bad for a nation in despair but when you times that by the individual pain of the millions of people, it’s so hard not to be consumed by it. So you divide it by the lowest common denominator, a survival mechanism perhaps.

It made my think twice about not spending that $5 on whatever the person is trying to sell me and getting more involved in volunteering while I am here.

Followed swiftly by my second survival instinct- Ice cream. H who is one of the guys in the house and I were shattered from our night out on Friday so went to get ice cream and have an early night.

Days 11 and 12- Rumble in the Jungle, Ibiza and being a VIP

When I started this blog I said I couldn’t promise it would be entertaining, witty or even up to date, and now I’ve missed a couple of days oops. At least I’m honest.

Gosh, it’s quite tough remembering what happened 2 days ago, as time passes so quickly here something to do with the physically shorter days- sunset at 6.00pm is hard to get used to, and the fact that things take longer to get done results in days flying past.

2^nd of September. That was a Thursday. What on earth did I do on Thursday? Hmm. Obviously nothing exciting. On to day 12.

Day 12.

So Friday evening one my colleagues asked if I wanted to go to a boxing match. Oh now I remember what I did on Thursday!

I went to the British Embassy’s quiz night and got thoroughly beaten. At least we didn’t come last( we came second to last). Suppose that’s what you get when you turn up late and only have 3 people on your team instead of the 7 the others did. Heyho.

Back to the boxing match, I’ve never watched a boxing match in my life, but as Kinshasa is famous for ‘the rumble in the jungle’ I thought I should educate myself and go. So went with 2 of the people from work, to the Surf Club for the match.  What I didn’t know was this was a big deal boxing match- being televised across DRC. We bought $20 tickets and ended up in the VIP section, ringed in sat at table with waitress service, in a sports centre that had been done up for the occasion.

The cheap seats at the top however was where all the action was going down even before the match. Now anyone who has been to Congo will know that these guys are like Italians when they talk, loud, passionate and with lots of gesturing, and man were they all excited and psyched up for the matches, singing songs about their boxers, trying to get under the skins of the oppositions fans, some fisticuffs ensued, but nothing major.

What I don’t understand was how lively and excited they were, when there was so much weed being smoked, it seemed the whole of the sports centre was being ‘hot boxed’ , so much so that I’m surprised that the crowds weren’t giggling and trying to locate the nearest food source, rather than getting hyped up and excited about the match.

The boxing itself was really good, and I started to understand why it is considered a sport, rather than just an excuse to be violent, so definitely an eye opener for me, and something I rather enjoyed watching, even though I did lose 1000 Congolese francs to my colleague in a bet, although I maintain that I should have won.

Ok so it was only a 60p bet but her contender had to be carried out of the ring! My guy was disqualified for hitting below the belt, but my guy was 2 foot shorter and was just punching at waist height for him, and was winning anyway. I maintain it was a technical knockout. (See I learnt something!)  He might have been almost officially a midget but man could this guy fight.

After this we went to a bar in Kinshasa called Ibiza bar. Far from being full of techno and house ravers, they have a live band that play a mix of samba, Congolese and salsa music, apparently the bar hasn’t changed in a decade and it seems like the whole expat population is in there on a Friday night. And at $15 a gin and tonic they sure must do well out of it, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.

We danced until 2am, inbetween people watching at the bar, (Val you would love this place people watching, the numerous characters around the place are hysterical to observe. )

From here everyone jumps in their cars and drives over to a bar called VIP. A bizarre place full of the local Lebanese and Bengali who run the town, pretty much any place you want to go it be it ice cream, patisserie, super markets are all run by these guys.Which leads to an interesting musical repertoire but it’s also one of the only places I’ve been that plays up to date western music, well suited to my penchant for dancing :)

You can spot all the Lebanese guys a mile off, with their uniform of white shirts, jeans and white shoes. It's quite hilarious.

VIP reminded of fusion for a a number of reasons.

1. The decor
2. Cheesy music
3. The sheer number of 16 year olds in the place, swigging smiroff. (it's not often I feel old in a club!)

By 3am it was bed time and we all jumped in the car and heading home, with ringing ears, and ready to crash.

Day 10- Frogs (of the Congolese, not French Variety)

Today there was the first rain of the wet set season. I was expecting it to be a thunderous tropical affair, cords of water raining down from fat clouds, but it was a very light drizzle.

 English style....

.... rather disappointing in fact.

However, this was enough for the frogs who came out of their hiding to a crescendo of croaking as the sunset. This was something that I had been told about, but  I didn’t think that a little drizzle would invoke such a massive change for these little creatures. But it did and I am still waiting for my first tropical rain in Africa :( a sentiment I will probably regret once the wet season is in full swing and it’s hot as hell and humid and the frog chorus would have started to wear a little thin too by then.

Hmm maybe should do a little sun dance instead....

Not much more has gone on today, instead of rambling on about my attempts at exercising in my room and that I showered and ate boring food and finished my book. I’ll leave you with a few facts out the town I’m currently calling home....

Kinshasa:

• Second largest city in the sub Saharan Africa
• Main language spoken are Lingala and French
• Population: More than 10 million!!!
• Elevation: 3000 meters above sea level
• Founded by Henry Morton Stanley in the year1881.
• It was named as Leopoldville, in honour of King Leopold II of Belgium
• The city lies just opposite to the city of Brazzaville, which lies at the north bank of Congo and is the capital of the Republic of Congo. This is the only place in the whole world where two national capital
• Residents are known as Kinois
• The largest French-speaking city in the world.