The fate of the people here. It's such a small sentence to see written on paper or typed on my computer screen, and yet the longer I'm here the more I find those few words popping back into my head, and now as I start to think about packing for home, the presence of that thought is growing increasingly pervasive, blocking out the other things I'd much rather think about. Like food. (I don't think I'm actually going to spend any time talking about the food here; people who know me well understand I maintain a particularly peculiar diet, and it would just be cruel for me to comment in any way on food outside the American South, which, by the way, is not the kind of food you'll find here.)
The day after I arrived I received a relatively casual, but intense, security briefing from our unbelievably knowledgeable and immensely capable security liaison. Because of the three days of shelling and heavy violence that erupted in Kinshasa after the first-round election results were announced, it has been his suggestion, instruction rather, for us all to have "go-bags" in the case of an emergency where we all have to be evacuated from the country quickly. And so, we are all lugging around heavy backpacks or duffels bags with the essential personal effects of our choosing. The personal effects of my choosing are similar to what I brought in my tidy little carry-on, so I just never unpacked it and continue to haul it around with me everywhere I go: a clean t-shirt (okay, I added that once my luggage caught up with me); water and snacks; toothbrush; malaria medicine; my iPod, camera, spare camera batteries, laptop and accessories; and a whole notebook full of useless information. I probably would be better served to pack my go-bag with more food and underwear than my laptop, especially since when I say snacks I mean "a granola bar," but I know if we are evacuated for any reason, I will feel especially compelled to continue this correspondence, thus, the laptop goes when I do.
But all this talk about emergencies, go-bags, evacuations or even just winding down the week and wrapping up activities for my regularly scheduled departure this weekend makes the throbbing pressure of the fate of the people here pound even louder in my head. I've been able to enjoy all the Western comforts of home while examining this city through the telescopic lens of a foreigner who can put some safe distance between me and everything I've come to find disconcerting about life here. I've had my own car and driver the entire time, often traveling in intimidating caravans that rival presidential convoys. Congolese walk. When they ride, eight to ten people will pile into a car, or about 20 to 25 people cram into a van with one or two men standing off the back. Christian tells me these are taxis; I really hate to say these vehicles conjure images of clown cars, so I won't. I've had all my meals in nice restaurants at my leisure. Christian tells me common Congolese can't afford restaurants, although there is a particular shape of bread that women sell in baskets from their heads that can be found at every turn and soft drinks (a lot of Coke, Fanta and Grenadine) are available at most sidewalk stands. I've had air-conditioned (more or less) shelter from the sun and the rain and mosquitoes and flies. I don't know if buildings that aren't serving Westerners or the government even have electricity; the one where I went visiting folks for interviews did not, although to be fair, my hotel did not have electricity for eight hours today.
It's just such a mess. And I'm not saying that because I haven't enjoyed my time here or I don't enjoy the people or because I don't like the city. I have, I do and I do. It just feels so overwhelming. I know this is a problem that many new democracies, post-colonial states and even long-standing bureaucracies have faced and still face, finding themselves so bogged down in a mess of poverty and politics that it's hard to know quite what to do next. There were many days I was riding through the wet muck of some of the outer regions of Kinshasa, and it looked like the shacks and slums where people were living, with water and mud and sludge and trash oozing around their homes, had been bulldozed. That, or hit with the force of a category five hurricane, very often reminding me of the images I'd seen on the news of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But clotheslines were strung from one shelter to another with freshly washed clothes hanging out to dry. Children played in the street; chickens squawked. Every single haphazard-looking but actually very carefully constructed shack along those mud roads was inhabited. I played "Would you rather. . ." with myself just long enough to decide I couldn't determine which was worse: the victims of Hurricane Katrina, many already living in abject poverty, losing lives, livelihoods and homes at once to the hurricane and then treated as sub-humans by their protectors in the aftermath, or these people living in torturous, inhumane conditions all their lives, suffering an indefinite and slow misery.
The fate of the people here. I know it's bad. I know it's bad at home, too. But I know when I get home to my house, I'll have running water, electricity and food in the fridge. And it's not as if I didn't know these things before. It's not as if Angelina hasn't been very good about having babies in Africa so we'll all be aware of the haves and have nots. It's not as if I haven't heard any one of a hundred people at The Carter Center say, "The growing chasm between the rich and the poor. . ." any fewer than a thousand times. It's not as if I didn't already know I'm in the top 1% of the richest people in the world, just by virtue (or vice) of living in the United States and owning a computer.
It is as if I feel sort of guilty about leaving this place behind as I move forward.
