New Toys in the Backseat

Kinshasa police have a new toy. I have spotted the simple yet sleek design at various traffic crossings throughout the city. I've even tried capturing a photo (it's another of those needs to be seen to really be believed items) but no luck so far.

The device appears to be an alternative to the chunky traffic boot. It is long and slim, can be applied in seconds and requires no bending under the car or near the tire. The handle looks like a black rubber strap or bungee cord but is straight- kind of like an invisible dog leash.

Invisible dog walker

Instead of sporting an invisible dog at the end of the leash, however, the policemen and women of Kinshasa have something much more lethal. A piece of wood or iron is found at the end of the rubber strap and it hosts a mob of spiky nails an inch thick or more. It is a portable, handheld version of the tire spike strip.

     Kin strips require no bending and appear much hardier than this traffic spike. Photo found at this all-in-one supply site

I've been noticing them around and hoping fervently not to be stopped by one while at the same time wondering why my heart races just a little faster at the thought of it.  I did manage a narrow escape while rounding a turn out by the large bakery (known locally as Mama Poto I think)  on the way to Victoire.  The policeman knocked on my passenger side window and showed me what he was going to do, which allowed me just enough time (and luckily there was space) to speed up and maneuver away from him.

We weren't so lucky yesterday afternoon, however, on our way to meet some friends. I had made a right turn on red (as did the car in front of me) just by the Safricas intersection (Mercedes circle if you are from that generation of Kinois) when one of the police stepped in front of me (as they did with the car who had just passed. They usually never go for two cars in a row but somehow he wasn't stopped for very long.)  I thought maybe the problem was my right on red (really not sure if that is legal here in Kin even if it is necessary at times) but our conversation didn't get very far. Soon enough,  a cop appeared with the portable tire strip and placed it just behind my front wheel.  So I turned off the car, getting ready to dig in my heels and wait things out. My car was in the middle of the road, completely blocking all traffic, which I took to be a great advantage on my part.

As the cars honked and made lanes around either side us, we tried to figure out our traffic infraction. Mohamed thought they were telling him to sit in the back so he undid his seat belt and climbed over the seat. I couldn't really imagine that to be the problem and just as I was telling him to sit back down, so did one of the police from outside (no get back in front, he gestured, that's not it.) Around this time, they removed the strip and motioned for me to pull over- out from the middle of the road.

Of course, this was my only advantage so I advanced slowly with one policeman in front of me and the other motioning me to pull over, which I absolutely refused to do. It seemed, even if we advanced at this slow rate, I could eventually make my way to my destination with the policeman walking backwards in front of me the whole time. Just when I had this cheery thought, a beige jeep pulled up from the side cutting me off. I turned off the car again, now two cars deep cutting off traffic in the middle of the road and began to wait. All requests for an explanation about what the problem was were ignored. The man in the jeep got out, off duty if he was an officer,  it's completely unclear who he was or why he was there, and walked up to the car.

"Tell the kid to get in the back and it's finished. That easy," he said. Except of course we'd already tried that and it hadn't finished nor been that easy. I couldn't really understand the logic of this anyway. "He's too little," the man said. Too little? He's eleven years old, I thought, out of car seats for ages. Is he really too little for the front seat? In my five years of Kinshasa life and driving, I have never heard this.

A little research does suggest backseat placement for ages 8-12. Especially in a car with front air bags- though I have been thinking our school cars do not have airbags. Booster seats or car seats for ages up to 8, in the back of course. I have never seen any child in a car seat in Kinshasa except those of ex-pats and usually they are toddlers or infants. When I asked a friend (after finally arriving) he said 18 was the age in Kinshasa for riding in the front. 18? Really? I found this hard to believe and after some intense questioning he backed down a bit. He said  the kid had to "be big." I guess determining big is dependent upon the viewer. I am ready to comply with this new law (oh the fights and "I call shotgun-dibs-blended-locked-it-and-googled-it" I have just been saved from) but I am mostly incredulous that it's taken 5 years to figure this one out.

In the end, Mohamed jumped over the seat into the back and this time it worked. They shooed us on our way. I'm guessing it was a combination of the helpful stranger and me refusing to get out of the line of traffic but in reality, you can never actually tell why you've been pulled over or why you've been let go.  And I would love to see the car seat rules take effect here. Happy to do my part in spiking tires and stopping traffic to make that happen.

Missing

Things go missing when you live in a house with people. Things get misplaced, moved around, stashed away and forgotten about. Things fall in the cracks between the sofa cushions and behind bookcases. Sometimes they are little things that have not even been missed until they are found. Other times they are bigger things, more important in the daily rituals of life and their absence becomes an inconvenience.

Occasionally it's hard to tell what is missing. The rice goes faster than you thought it should or the milk is consumed at an impossible rate. You may have small ideas about what is happening in these cases, but it's not nice to think so and the suspicions get pushed to the back of mind where they mingle with doubt and no proof and remain an uncertainty.

Too many hands. It's a saying I employ often when searching for my missing things. Too many little kid hands that like to pick up small objects and fiddle with them absentmindedly while doing something else. Too many hands sharing the same electronics and chargers and forgetting to return them to a communal place. Too many hands cleaning and moving and touching objects that might appear to be out of use or unimportant.

It's part of learning to live in a full house, or a halfway full house or even just with one other. It's one of those small perks of living alone- everything is exactly where you put it the night before. Or the week before.

Ex-pats in Kinshasa tend to have cleaning help, however, so even living alone doesn't ensure you will find things where you left them.  We have someone who comes in everyday to clean up and wash clothes, though I have tried many times to help her find other work. We simply don't need someone everyday. And I am intensely private. I have not quite found a way to feel comfortable going about my daily affairs, or even worse, sitting doing nothing but breathing in the fresh jungle air, while someone cleans around me. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I hate cleaning around people who are enjoying their leisure time. I want them to get up and help me so we can finish faster and we can all relax.  Sometimes I think having household help is something you need to grow up with in order to be truly comfortable with. Sometimes I think it is just me.

But then I talk to friends and colleagues and hear that they also have odd feeling moments. One friend shared with me a moment when she was sitting down to eat a taco lunch. A meal that requires small mounds of food from different dishes to be piled high upon the plate. A meal that could look lavish to someone struggling to feed their family every night. And that's where the real discomfort comes in. Conducting a rich and bountiful life in front of someone who just doesn't have.

I have been in this service position most of my life, working in restaurants, watching weddings and parties and gala affairs from the sidelines. In a job, you tend to understand the boundaries and stick to them. You know exactly what your role is and it is easy enough to maneuver about within it, marveling at the extravaganza of those you are serving.

But when it is brought into the home, it seems ever more personal. I tend to have a much harder time with the boundaries when I am on the other side. A lot of it also has to do with African cultures and the strict roles of age, gender, and economic status that command respect. I am constantly wavering between my ideas and crossing the boundaries and not enforcing the rules based on my American ideals and half-formed thoughts about how things should be.

It just leads to trouble. The rules are in place to ensure that everyone is on the same page. If I try working from my American page, it doesn't seem to translate well. I have been learning this lesson for awhile now and yet, still can't quite absorb it. I see how it goes wrong, but I don't have the mannerisms to work on that other field, even if I am slowly coming to appreciate it.

It's the one where the youth do whatever their elders ask, even if elder only means a few years. And the employee completes all the required tasks. Perhaps I am just not a good employer. I hate asking for "extra" things and constantly feel bad if I think I am creating too much work (while at the same time realizing that there is barely enough work in my house to employ someone for an entire day, every day. Oh, I am complicated.)

Because of my complications, I have been with the same woman for 5 years. I have gone to her house, met her family and bought them extra food occasionally. I give her all of the clothes the kids have outgrown and all of the things I no longer wear. I've made small loans and gifts of money even when it was a hardship for my family.  It's never really enough because lifting someone out of poverty is no easy task. But I have kept her employed, at times employed her sister and in general tried to make life a little less stressful.

The fact is, I am not really one of those ex-pats that lives an easy carefree life full of travel to exotic places and lavish luxuries (well, compared to the normal Westerner. I understand my life is probably lavish to the average Congolese houseworker.)

It's a distortion which can never truly be understood. Even if my cupboards are frequently bare and nothing I own here is really mine (a perk of working for an international school, all the basics are provided from housing to furniture to car rental.) She will never see the struggles I feel. She cannot see.

All that to say, things are missing and this time I can't quite push it back to the dusty corner of doubt and uncertainty. I know where they've gone. What I don't know is what to do about it.

There is the nagging thought that, well, we weren't using that, or I would have given it to her anyway, or even more preposterous, Mobutu himself proclaimed it was ok to take a little bit from those who have if you happen to be one of those who have not.

These all seem like excuses to me when I really want to demand complete honesty and total trust. Not to mention the feelings of hurt and betrayal, the sense of loss of respect that comes when someone has taken from you.

I know that in any other house, immediate dismissal would be the response. But we have spent five years together. Five years erasing the boundaries that are supposed to prevent this from happening.  And there is always the family to consider. Small children who depend on me paying someone to come in and do things for me that I am entirely capable of doing for myself.

Except the one thing I seem to have the most trouble doing- maintaining the boundaries and keeping things from going missing.  

Dress Code

I admit to feeling comfortable. But it was one of those days when I just felt a bit relaxed. I thought I would run out to the embassy and pick up the forms for the visas and continue on with my day. A quick errand.

Kinshasa is known as a fashion capital. They even have a video and a website (coming soon) advertising this year's event. Mama Congo dedicated an entire post about the fancy mamas of Congo leaving work and attending preschool affairs dressed to the hilt. So, running errands in a "comfortable" and "relaxed" state of dress can be precarious.

Kinshasa fashion includes the traditional pagne and occasional headwrap as well as slinky jeans and curve hugging dresses. And high heels. I watch the women navigating the rocky dirt sidewalks and crumbling roads in their impossibly high heeled shoes and liken it to an art form.

Last night, a woman sauntered by in a pair of shoes like this, practically glowing in the night air.

 As I sat outside the university ISP Gombe waiting for a dance class to start, my eyes were bombarded with sights like this. Bowing under pressure, (or just conforming to what's available) I have upgraded my style a bit and added something of a heel to my footwear wardrobe. But nothing even close to the glamour of the Kinshasa women.

This day however, I donned a cozy pair of thick, but flat Birkenstock type sandals (they did have fancy jewels decorating the toe however.) Not quite but something like this.

And I had a dress on. No slinky jeans for me. So it was quite a humbling experience (and humble is the right word even if the feeling is more like infuriating) when the guard outside the embassy looked me up and down- yes, it took at least 30 seconds, with his eyes lingering on my shoes (or maybe it was my bare legs just below the knee?) and said, no I couldn't go inside dressed like that.

If this were Mama Congo, I'd have a pink arrow saying "Denied" or maybe "Not fancy enough"

Actually, it was the leggings that did me in. No sport wear inside the embassy apparently. I might have had a better chance with bare knees.

Embassies aren't the only places that require a certain formality of dress. I've been with my dance instructor on two different occasions when he was denied entrance to (yeah, the same embassy) and the Grand Hotel. We had gone there to make some final arrangements for the benefit gala we were organizing. We'd gone to talk to the manager only to be told one of us couldn't go in. I was incensed to see, on a second trip, two guys come bounding out of the manager's office wearing shorts but hey, I guess dress code is relative. (Another example of how the rules only apply sometimes and you can never really tell to whom or when they will be applied. Ah, la vie de Kinsahsa.)

Another example is school uniforms and exams. I remember Kazadi struggling to find a proper jacket and tie in order to take his university exams. And there is plenty to ponder when considering the school fees and uniform costs are more than the average Congolese family can afford.

But in general, I understand, and even appreciate, the concern for appearance found on the Kinshasa streets. It's good to look your best when going out in public (though admittedly, the sapeurs overdo things.) Back were the days when there "school clothes" and "church clothes" and playing clothes. I have found it to be one of the things that slightly jolts me when I am in America. The number of people who feel free to go out in their sweat pants and pajama looking attire. I guess they are feeling relaxed and comfortable but it is a bit jarring after strolling the streets of Kin. While I may not be able to put the right words to it, and definitely I was feeling put out by my denied entrance, in the end I grudgingly agreed that a certain level of dress could show my respect for the business I was trying to attend to.

I'm still finding my place here, along the line of presentation and respectability balanced with poverty and real life circumstances. There is a measure of pomp and showmanship that sometimes seems unnecessary to me in African affairs. Everything becomes a ritual or ceremony. Maybe that's not so bad. Keeping the lines of formality open and ensuring respect. I do believe that the way we dress can influence our behavior, even if it is temporary. Perhaps that is what is meant to do. Like the masks and dance costumes used to conjure spirits and gain entry to the ancient world, suits and ties help us gain entry to the business world.  They remind us that we have stepped away from our homes and our families and must act with a respectable air of presentation to represent those who have raised us. Our clothes send a message about who we are and how we want to act in the world. There are times and places for every style. Its good to remember that. The costumes that we wear help with defining the boundaries.

My sarcastic self decides next time to wear the full African gear, pagne, headwrap and shoulder shawl included. I know the real reason I feel that way is because I was shamed, another area where I am finding balance. My position on the value of shaming. It's something we like to avoid entirely in American society but in reality, it has a purpose. A powerful purpose if employed correctly. By scrapping it completely we have sent the message to our youth that everything is acceptable.  It seems to be where the risk comes in. The lines get erased, the boundaries become unclear and society becomes a bit more chaotic with everyone stepping outside their roles. The norms. Of course, I am getting myself into another post here and it's not yet well developed.

For now, I'll just remember when I am feeling relaxed and comfortable it might just be best to stay at home and save my errands for those days when I feel like dressing up.

McKin

I can feel the final weeks of vacation passing too quickly. While it always seems to take awhile to get into the groove of having too much time on my hands, once I find it the time seems to fly. The days become filled with errands and small projects that inevitably turn into all day or even week long affairs.

One of the things I occasionally miss during those hectic trips downtown is the NY gas station. I know, it seems an odd thing to miss. It's about the hot beverages. Since moving to Congo, I have become a die-hard tea drinker but I remember the days of stopping to get a cup of hot, creamy coffee at numerous gas stations spotted around the Hudson Valley. And a bagel with cream cheese. While there are gas stations all around Kin, they are missing the steaming pots of java and bakery items to go with. I've turned to the travel mug, and, most often, taking time to enjoy my breakfast at home before leaving. But there are those moment when a pick-me up cup of joe would be the perfect thing.

While Kinshasa doesn't have fast food drive-thru, (though grilled goat and chicken are available on a kind of walk-thru service) there are plenty of fast food type restaurants. Hungry Lion serves a bit of chicken and a few bakeries offer some breakfast items. There's even a fairly new one that offers something respectably close to the NY bagel. But it's not really on the go, much more of sit down place, especially after fighting traffic and searching for a parking place. Of course, Pain Victoire has a branch in nearly every neighborhood but oh, the lines. It's much too popular for me.

These were the thoughts running through my mind one early morning as I dropped a friend off at work. That's when I had the chance to observe this woman a bit more closely.

A quick streetside breakfast  on the way to work

She appears to be selling bread by the roadside. Upon closer inspection, however, I see she has a little cookstove behind her and a fry pan. Fresh omelets, made to order, ready to go. This man bought an omelet which was placed inside a "mini" loaf of bread. I say mini because it wasn't a full size loaf of bread, but it was huge. I figured a meal like that could last me through breakfast and lunch.  It costs about 1500 FC which is equivalent to a $1.75 or so. An amazing deal. No lines, hearty portions and made before your eyes. Sadly, I didn't see any coffee or tea on offer.

STOP!

I don't have much to say about this photo. Rather, I don't have much information to provide. But I have plenty of questions. There are two of these around the city that I have seen so far. A few months back, I saw something similar in message, though with a different image.

It's confusing to say the least. Irony at its best. I wonder who is the deciding force behind these banners.  The one I managed to snap a photo of is posted on the side of RTNC, the local TV and radio station. The other one is located downtown on the side of a building facing the boulevard.

It seems odd that billboards like this can be posted around the city when journalists are still on slippery ground. They are menaced, falsely accused, insulted, spied on, threatened and killed for reporting on this very topic.

I also can't really figure out who this message is intended for. If this were any other country, I might imagine a group of concerned citizens got together to send a message to the government. But clearly the government is aware of these signs, has, in fact, allowed them to be placed and remain hanging. So I am left to ponder....who are they talking to?

Broken red

I finally took my trip to Kinshasa's version of Home Depot. It's that one road in Victoire where all the toilets and light fixtures and curly tubes of plumbing sit on sidewalks just outside the stores. Some stores are so small and crowded you, the shopper, can barely fit inside and it seems like some kind of crazy brain teaser puzzle figuring out how all the merchandise actually even came out of that space to begin with. It merits a photo next time.

This time, I was busy concentrating on finding just the right colors of paint for my home cozying-up project. I went with a friend because I haven't yet managed Victoire on my own. Although the streets are wider and more easily navigated (there is definitely less pedestrian traffic to push through) and the vendors seem to stay put rather than follow you around, somehow it feels like so much more of an effort. Perhaps, in the end, it is not more of an effort but just a different kind of effort.

I think it's also because this particular area seems like a man's world (although, to be honest and fair, I did see  two women- one actually sitting inside the paint and hardware store appearing mostly ready to sell, as long as it didn't require any heavy lifting, and the other sitting outside one of those overflowing brain puzzle shops- appearing quite content to sit and 'supervise' or hand out unnecessary and incorrect observations on my general state of well being. Or maybe she was selling oranges.)  Not only does it appear like a man's world, but it appears like a man's Lingala world. And my struggle there continues. Even though there are plenty of people who proclaim Lingala is easy to learn- can learn it in 3 months, no problem- my ability to perform the actual speaking part of communication is bad. Very bad. All the wrong words pop into my mind first and I can never seem to find the connecting phrases that would lend a bit of clarity to my thoughts. Nope. I stumble along like an incoherent 2 year old in need of it's mother to translate the toddler talk into a real language.

But I understand. I understand nearly everything that is being said so it's helpful to continue immersing myself - as long as I have my mother around to help me, or, in this case, some other skilled babysitter who can perform the job equally well.

Shopping in Victoire involves asking a lot of questions. If one place doesn't have what you want, you ask them where you might find it- and they can usually tell you. Although most of the shops seem to carry the same brand/quality/version of things (3 stores we went into each had the same exact flimsy curtain rod holder that I exactly don't want. Just looking for a simple screw hook.) Surely I should just bring a picture next time.

 

Screw hook- No, I don't know the  French or Lingala for this item

We moved on to searching for paint. Because I am a painter, I love color. Or maybe it is the other way around.  I love color and therefore I am a painter. I love all the shades and hues and tints. I love the subtle nuances between fiery orange, burnt orange and bittersweet. Unfortunately, my immense passion for colors is only expressable in the English language.

I tried explaining to my friend just the color red I was looking for. The color on my couch. A kind of burgundy, maroon, wine color. Not quite red, not quite purple, not quite rose. A stunning mixture of all three in just the right ratio.  While some paint selling stores do have the paint card palette to browse and choose colors from, all the colors are not always available.

While the first store we went into didn't have the red, I was offered some beautiful blues.  There were two cans, a Marine blue and a Blue Royal.  Bleu makasi and bleu claire.  Everyone looked at me like I was supposed to choose just by the name. Really? Just buy something on name alone? Maybe romantic but not very practical. Especially not with those names. "Strong" blue and light blue. It wasn't until later that I saw the English names written on the side of the containers. But even then, color by sight is how all good painters shop. Once the cans were opened, I was a bit surprised to find that bleu makasi was actually something - well, dark blue I guess certainly, but when I hear makasi I think strong and so was thinking powerful and brilliant. It turned out to be more of a muted blue. Light blue sounds so weak and flimsy to me I wasn't prepared for the radiant summer sky that blossomed from the can once the lid was removed. There it was. The perfect color with the wrong name.

We continued our search for the ideal red, ahem, burgundy. But the only color word we had to work with was red. So it became, rouge makasi te, vraiment casse. This lovely mix of Lingala and French that I am just too poetic to translate into normal English. Did he just say broken red?

Of course, I am immediately intrigued by a color named Broken Red and wonder when Crayola will be putting out the first edition. I have since looked up casse to see if there are hidden meanings that I am unaware of. I did find a reference to "off-white" as in blanc casse and so, imagine an "off-red" perhaps or a "worn out" red, hardly a color name that could add spice and warmth to a living room.  In one store I pointed to a large piece of roof covering that was a beautiful, deep burgundy. "What color would you call that?" I asked the woman. "Red." It's all she said to let me know I was in hopeless territory. The first store did offer a color palette card and we went to retrieve it to see if this "red" matched the "red" I had picked out on the card. I felt it was a little too rose and, after drying on the wall, I would be plagued with sensations of pink. My friend, of course, thought it was a perfect match.

We moved on to a third store. The person working here actually went on to explain the differences between brown and maroon and red. A soul mate. I latched on to the word maroon, even though I know it is also French for a brownish color (marron), mostly because it was familiar English (although English is barely English half the time) but also because here they tend to use chocolate to indicate brown and this man had been using both marron and chocolate. He reluctantly opened the can of "imported paint" and a purplish red greeted me. It seemed like a good color, but of course, now I worried it would be too "purple." We began to wonder if it wasn't the same color we had seen in the other shop (definitely not) and if it was closer to the original burgundy color I wanted (maybe.)

Bleu claire et rouge casse/ Light blue and broken red

I ended up buying the blue and a chocolate brown from the first store and the purple-red from the third store. I'm just hoping in the end, it will all work out. I am usually pretty good at imagining the transformations I want to make beforehand. Even if we all tend to see colors just a little bit differently than our neighbors.

One of the new school cars. The first time someone asked me about the
 "red suzuki" I had no idea what they were referring to. All I can see is orange.