Adrenaline hits me like an electric shock, a lightening bolt. My heart thumps against my rib cage. The reverberations echo to my toes and fingertips. My throat tightens. I clench my fists. Whatthehellisgoingon. What the hell is going on. What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On. My senses are on high alert. But, like a stalked prey, it’s too late. I hear the click of the AK-47’s safety being removed. I see men in uniform running. I smell the humidity of the Congolese pre-rainstorm air mingled with sour odor of sweat. I taste fear. It’s my own primal fear for my life, confused with the fear of those around me. We crossed the border from Rwanda into the Democratic Republic of Congo a few minutes ago and now we are surrounded by soldiers barking at us in French, nervous young men who look more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.
Our crime was to snap a picture of an old Belgian colonial building, elegantly dilapidated and crumbling into the red clay dirt of the palm fringed property, just a few hundred meters from the banks of Lake Kivu. This building also happens to be the Goma HQ of Congolese Intelligence Agency (CIA?). We are pushed inside, forced into a small windowless room. Behind the desk sits a grim little man, not pleased with being in the office on a Saturday.
The other girls are panicking around me, filling the office with loud English arguments, trying to make sense of the situation. Inside, I am panicking with them, worse-case scenarios flashing through my mind. On the outside, the ice queen reigns, I maintain my sang-froid. As the only French-speaker, I am the group spokeswoman. The others are kicked out of the office as the chief officer begins his formal interrogation. He is arrogant and insecure, pompously inflating his own importance and the gravity of our accidental crime. He clings to the procedure and will not let this slide. Thank God I understand this, the insecurities of men and the ridiculousness of African bureaucracy. I bow to his authority, reinforce his importance, validate his work. I answer his questions and, after nearly two hours, manage to convince him that we are not spies or undercover insurgents or rebel-supporters. He chastises me repeatedly and demands that pay a “fine.” Oh, that’s what it’s all about… And here’s where the ‘cute blonde on the verge of tears’ thing helps out, as I negotiate our “fine” down from $500 to $200.
Welcome to Congo where corruption and bribery are rife and central government is a joke. The DRC is a country the size of Western Europe, covered in dense tropical jungle and chock-a-block full of lootable natural resources. Combine that with what I have termed the ‘Africurse Trifecta,’ aka serious colonial exploitation, post-colonial mismanagement and conflict, and neo-colonial abuse, then throw in small arms proliferation and ethnic grievances and you get quite the mess…. With only 300 miles of paved roads and zero infrastructure!
However, after their first ever democratic presidential and parliamentary elections in June and the run-off elections last month (thank you
MONUC), it looked like things were finally sort of calming down. That is, up until the weekend I decide to go for a visit. Last Tuesday, supporters of the losing presidential candidate, Jean-Pierre Bemba, set fire to the
Supreme Court and rioted in the capital Kinshasa. Then on Saturday, the day we go in for our visit, a rogue general and his dissident soldiers decide to launch a
mini-rebellion about 15 miles from the city we were visiting. Not that we could possibly have known any of this because we were distracted by the
anti-French protests across Rwanda.
Anyway, back to the story. After my two-hour interrogation, during which our cameras and passports were confiscated, we emerged from the building into the hot afternoon sun. While we were $200 lighter, we gained an escort, a young officer called Filo. We walked along Lake Kivu, admiring its vast expanse and craving its cool waters as the Congolese sun beat down and stung our pale skins. We passed the UN peacekeeping forces’ camps: India, Bangladesh, and South Africa… And they drove past us, perched on the backs of white pick-up trucks emblazoned with the UN logo, weapons across their laps, conspicuous blue berets cocked to the side.
Those blue berets were some of the few spots of color in the dark grays and dull browns of Goma. In 2002, more than half the city was destroyed when the
Nyiragongo volcano erupted, spewing rocks and ash for miles. Hundreds of thousands of people fled across the border into Rwanda as the
molten lava obliterated the city and spilled into Lake Kivu.
Four years later, Goma remains a surreal city. Craggily black lava rock still coat parts of the town. Buildings are nothing more than empty facades with people setting up stalls outside storefronts. And the volcano looms, tucked behind the mist and low-hanging clouds of the rainy season.
While the scars of the volcano are still apparent, the signs of years of pain and suffering are hidden just below the surface in this war-torn nation. As we sat around our Congolese luncheon feast of chicken and goat stew, boiled plantains, rice, beans, fufu, and ice-cold Primus beer, we spoke to some of the locals. Unfazed by the bazooka-toting soldiers escorting their boss into the restaurant, they expressed hope for the future of their young new democracy. The women even broke into song for us as we left, their voices rising above the intermittent pops of gunfire in the distance.
As we sped away, back towards the Rwandan border on our motorbike taxis, tears of regret, pain, helplessness and dozens of other muddled emotions stung my eyes. Those voices are what I am carrying with me from my day in the Congo. Not the sunburn on my shoulders, not the cuts on my feet from the sharp lava rocks, not the mud that has permanently stained my flip-flops, not the antique wooden carvings we picked up in the market, not my first near-death experience in a war zone… No, it’s the voices that will haunt me and call me back, soon I hope...
