Transitioning into Tourist

The dark, wide streets of Lubumbashi are empty at five in the morning. My taxi driver and I headed to the airport in silence. He was probably groggy, though he was sharply dressed in a crisp white shirt and pressed trousers. I'd worried he wouldn't show up and I'd be stuck, alone in the procure courtyard but for the frogs and the burbling fountain. No taxi driver cruises the church for five a.m. fares in Lubumbashi.

I was alert and nervous. My contraband Tintin carvings were camouflaged in my backpack, hidden under layers of jacket and towel, while my clothing was folded into a zippered plastic bag. Would the Lubumbashi airport security guys be as jackass-y as the Kinshasa ones?

If I could get my carvings to Zambia, I was home free. I could post them home from Livingstone, where tourists sending home souvenirs is not just normal, but is greatly encouraged. Zambia loves tourism. When Zimbabwe's government went whacko, Zambia welcomed its farmers with open arms and its tourists with massive promotional campaigns. Bonus: Since my first visit to Zambia in 2001, it had experienced a public anti-corruption campaign that focused on both prevention and punishment. No one in Zambia was going to pretend a few Tintin souvenirs were priceless antiques in order to extract a buck from me.

Leaving Before Leaving

"Taxi?"

The tall older man in glasses almost lazily suggested I might need a cab at the Lubumbashi airport. He motioned to his sedan, which was a right-hand drive car even though DRC is a right-hand drive country. Ah, so the cars come here from South Africa. Of course. Because there's no road to get them here from Kinshasa.

"Yes."

"Hotel?"

"Er...La Procure."

"La Procure?" A procure is a church guesthouse. It's not entirely uncommon for foreigners to stay in them—and for budget travelers, it's often the best option—but Lubumbashi is a prosperous mining town on a panhandle that juts into Zambia's "Copperbelt" region. Most foreigners who come here are on business. Hotels aren't cheap in Lubumbashi. Even the church guesthouse is $40 a night.

I had a map that Michael Kraiger had scanned in from my Bradt Congo guidebook, and unfortunately it was a really half-assed map, so I have no idea if I was in the right church guesthouse or not. Is there more than one? I'll never know. But my taxi driver took me along pleasant, paved roads through a lovely tree-lined city to a huge cathedral, then turned into a dirt alley across the street from it.

I never would have found this on my own, I thought. La Procure was invisible from the street.

He parked in a courtyard and pointed me to Reception, where it was no problem to acquire a room and (included!) dinner ticket for the night. I arranged for the driver to return at 5 a.m.—argh—to take me back to the airport for the hour-long jump to Lusaka.

I made an effort to see Lubumbashi but couldn't even find the center of town with my map. I walked along the road past mobile phone credit stores, internet cafes, and small department stores. But DRC still scares me—as soon as the sun started to go down, I scurried back to my simple room, where I packed all of my clothes into my plastic zippered bag and stuffed all of my souvenirs into my backpack, covering them with a few shirts.

Would I manage to smuggle out my Tintin souvenirs in the morning? What would I do if someone tried to extract a bribe for these supposed "antiques?"

I had an idea...maybe I'd just pay it.

I tried the church dinner--chicken and rice. Nice. Simple. The other procure residents sat in silence, eating together but alone.

The procure's shower block didn't really do it for me...bucket showers and mosquitoes. I could make it to Zambia tomorrow night.

Zambia. 

I pulled down the mosquito net over my bed and thought about Zambia. Wonderful place. Green, easy, friendly. Me? I was tired. I do this to myself on purpose, take local transport in some of the world's toughest countries. I firmly believe it's the best way to instantly immerse yourself into an area, to deliberately put yourself into an exhausting, taxing stew with the local people. You learn. You sweat. You get dirty. You see what extremes people must go to for simple things, like selling their goats. But it doesn't take long before you start think about how much nicer your own bed can be than the back of a cramped mini-bus.

Zambia. I love Zambia. I want to marry Zambia. 


Soon.

The Adventures of Tintin (and Marie)

The taxi driver dropped me off outside the security barrier at Kinshasa's airport. They all do—no one wants to pay the fee to go inside.

Traffic had been nightmarish, the road crowded and broken as drivers improvised their own alternate routes around fallen poles, mud-filled craters, and cars left for dead.

Two men were selling woven, zippered bags outside the airport. You know the kind—heavy plaid plastic that comes in different sizes. You may have used one yourself at some point en route to the laundromat.

I was thrilled to see the bag sellers—the Tintin carvings I'd purchased in Brazzaville were such odd sizes, long and thin. They didn't fit in any bag I had in my backpack.

I happily purchased a $2 zippered bag, carefully placed my two towel-wrapped Tintin canoes and one Tintin & Snowy carving into the bag, then zipped it up. I'd carry this on the plane to avoid the risk of damage in the luggage hold.

Check-in went smoothly in the cavernous dark old airport, and then I went past the security line, ignoring hints for tips.

DRC wasn't so bad, I decided. Expensive, sure. Corrupt...well, yeah. But from what I'd read, I'd expected to be put through hell first when entering the country at "the Beach," then just by existing in Kinshasa, and finally, I'd expected a kind of conflict-zone hazing greed ritual at the airport. But the worst thing I'd encountered so far was slow wifi and bad traffic.

A Familiar Tone

Kinshasa's Ave Maria Hotel was just fine.

I was surprised. Kinshasa has a reputation for offering very little for a great deal of money in the way of hotel rooms. But this hotel was similar to plenty of mid-level hotels I'd been to in both East and West Africa. And the main street didn't seem all that different from main streets in East African capital cities.

I went wandering around, looking for both the crime-ridden chaos I'd been told to expect and for a ticket agent to sell me an airplane ticket so I could find my way to the southeastern tip of DRC without sitting in the back of a cargo truck for weeks.

Brazzaville to Kinshasa

Sooner or later, I had to cross the river.

The mighty Congo River separates Congo from Congo. And if you're confused, you're not alone. Big Congo has been called one or another variation on the name Congo since 1885, except for 1971-1997, when it was called Zaire. Meanwhile, Little Congo has been both Middle Congo and Republic of Congo during that time.

We differentiate like this: Congo-Kinshasa (or DRC for Democratic Republic of Congo) and Congo-Brazzaville. But not everyone in Congo-Brazzaville does this. I heard many people describe their larger neighbor like this:

Zaire.

And it was frequently said with a bit of disdain. Could it be that not all Congolese from Congo-Brazzaville are happy to share their name? And yet, to the rest of the world, the whole region is just the Congo, a big area on the map that represents war and poverty to us, along with the minerals that make our cell phones.

We all know that this is a gross oversimplification. But as people battle through their days, putting out proverbial fires in their local lives, there ends up not being so much time left for understanding far-away lands.