Luxury living in Kinshasa

7:15-8:30 am – Wake up, wash face with slow trickle of water from bathroom tap, put water on stove for porridge (it takes about 10 minutes to come to a boil on our stove), make tea, have breakfast.

8:45 – Our Lingala tutor calls to say he’ll be here in half an hour; he’s late today because it’s a national holiday – Congo’s team won the Coupe d’Afrique last night! Getting groceries today may be a challenge because many stores are closed.

9:30-11 – Lingala lesson around our diningroom table. We decipher some sentences from a Bible story and learn a new tense and several new expressions.

Before the end of our lesson, the phone rings – Suzanne and a short-term MCC couple are ready to meet us for lunch at a nearby Lebanese restaurant. We eat a shawarma sandwich and discuss a possible outing to buy some cloth and visit a tailor. John and I walk home to pick up some cloth we have there; on the way we chat with a street boy who has been very friendly ever since I gave him 500FC a few days ago. He is extremely excited about Congo’s soccer victory and tells us all about the looting and stealing that happened last night during the post-game celebrations. I give him a bottle of water and we huff and puff up five flights of stairs (the elevator stopped working a few days ago). I collect my purse and some cash and leave John at home – he isn’t interested in cloth shopping and is planning to go grocery-hunting.

2:30 – 5:00 – We have a great time buying made-in-China cloth at a roadside market where all the sellers are women – this makes for a much more pleasant market experience. Later in the afternoon we drive out to a tailor whom Suzanne knows and order several shirts and skirts. I look forward to having a few new clothes, because I took very few with me and am cycling through them every 3-4 days.

Back home, I find that John has just returned from shopping, mostly successfully. He had a slightly unpleasant encounter with two drunk soldiers who asked him for food. He bought them some bananas. The atmosphere on the streets is a little different today because of the national holiday and last night’s partying – not entirely pleasant and a bit too quiet. The power has also just gone out. This means no stove, no water (electric pump), and very careful coordination of each opening and closing of the fridge. We sit out on our balcony with peanut-butter sandwiches and bananas and enjoy the relative quiet that comes with a power outage – no loud whine from the neighbors’ AC; just regular traffic noise and a low, rather intense roar from a nearby generator. A candle inside adds a pleasant touch. I am a bit cranky because this hasn’t been a very productive work day and I am anxious to get into more of a routine, but the cool breeze and food slowly relaxes me.

Cockroaches frolic on the kitchen counter and disperse when we shine a flashlight on them; I replenish the small tray of rat poison because some intrepid rat has downed every last bright pink malathion crumb; here’s hoping it went far away to die.

7:00 – Completely sticky from several layers of dried sweat that have accumulated during our afternoon grocery shopping and our many trips up and down five flights of stairs (elevator stopped working) we use water stored in 5L containers (for just such an occasion) for a pretty satisfying wash; while we’re finishing up, the power comes on.

8:00 – Now nice and cool, we collect our laundry to do tomorrow at Suzanne’s house; fill up our water containers for the next water outage and recharge our emergency lantern, and kick back to watch an episode of Star Trek on our laptop. A little blog entry before bed, and thus ends another day of luxury living in Kinshasa. –Anicka