3 Months in DRC: Salopettes, Coffins and Hashing in the African Heat.

The next day was Sunday and this Sunday was a hash day- which happens fortnightly. As usual we gathered at the Grand Hotel and set off in a convey hazards blazing out through the chaos of Kinshasa, out through the even more chaotic suburbs and out east into the countryside. Now usually this happens without event, perhaps one or two cars of the 15 or so lose sight of the convoy, but that day we ended up stopping.

As the 3^rd or so car we had no idea why but we waited patiently, and then sure enough out of the tiny side road we needed to go down came streams of people singing and dancing. What we saw next therefore came as a bit of shock. This wasn’t a party, but a funeral party. With 6 young guys carrying the coffin on their shoulders with everyone singing and dancing around them, it was not a sight you’d see back in Europe, funerals here are a huge affair attended by anyone who had even remotely heard of the deceased. Even the bearers were jumping up and down to the beat, which was making the lid of the coffin –that was tied on with cloth slide open.

Not what we were expecting, but the crowd slowly passed without incident and we turned down the narrow unmade road out to the meeting spot where we were to start the run, again we stopped.

There was another coffin to come. This time however we were already down the tiny road with cars in front and behind us there was nothing we could do. We sat as the 100’s of people included the coffin and it’s carriers squeezed through the narrow lane. This time the atmosphere was not so jovial, annoyed that we had blocked the road, and always looking for a buck, they started to crowd the cars and bang on the windows. It was time to get moving even if it meant, fulfilling the stereotype of obnoxious mundelli in our big 4x4’s, this was not a place to be hanging around.

Slowly we edged forward and the crowd starting thinning and we made it back on to top road. I can only imagine what the locals were thinking as a convey of white people in their big cars, sped down the little roads past their houses- this was obviously not an everyday occurrence.

We started the hash in the car park of a school, already a small bunch of local kids had come to see what we were up to and what all the fuss was about. I been deliberating whether or not to take my digital SLR on a 10k run, but my god am I glad I did!

To all the kids amusement off we started running through the countryside and towns and villages, it was stunning and as we ran through each village more children came out to join us, I kid you not when I say that by the end of the 10k we had about 80 kids who thought we red panting people were just hilarious.

However there were a couple of highlights:

· A 9 yr old boy called Joseph who ran the whole 10k with me without any water – I immediately gave him my back up water from the car when we got back.