I know I haven’t really described Kinshasa or even really the people here or what life is like and I’m having a really hard time forcing myself to do it. I’ve taken hundreds and hundreds of photos, which must equal tens of thousands of words, but I’m otherwise having a hard time coming up with my own words to represent this place without sounding too American, patronizing, insensitive, naïve, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, or any the gamut of representations my explanation of Kinshasa might also indicate about me.

With that caveat in mind, this is what I can say about Kinshasa, and if I sound American and patronizing, I’m sure there’s a good reason for that.

There are people are everywhere. There is trash everywhere. There is standing water everywhere. There are honking cars and overstuffed taxi cabs everywhere. There are presidential guard, Bemba military, army, private security and UN peacekeeper officials everywhere, most with big, menacing-looking guns. And there are buildings, shelters, shacks, nooks and crannies everywhere where all these people must find some respite from the litter and water and cars and police and each other. Roadsides and sidewalks, city parks, walkways and street corners, dirt roads and along the main drag, every scrap of available real estate has some shelter, shop or home pieced together with wood scraps, concrete blocks, tin panels, cardboard or deck umbrellas. It isn’t immediately apparent to me what all these small, square-ish structures are used for, though I’ve seen a variety of kinds of merchants selling an assortment of goods from them during the day. Early, early yesterday morning when we left the hotel to travel to a polling station to observe opening procedures, it was pouring rain and the city was as lifeless as it was full of life just hours before. The little buildings all appeared to be empty at that hour and condition.

There is no proper infrastructure here for sanitation or rainwater runoff. As rain continued to drizzle through the rest of election day, people walked to the polls knee-deep in floodwater puddles and ponds, trash and litter floating around them, holding brightly colored umbrellas above their heads. Most election workers and voters disregarded me with my clicky camera as I moved about polling stations all day, snapping photos of incredibly efficient and well-trained pollworkers working patiently with voters to direct them to the right location, knowledgeably moving them about the process, then encouraging them to leave and tell others to come back and vote. I managed to ingratiate myself in most cases by offering a friendly-enough “Bonjour!” and a smile to pollworkers, national monitors and voters, to which they would offer return smiles just long enough for me to understand I was welcome, then quickly switch back to the stone faces just as the shutter clicked on my camera.

Tonight as I rode through town after dinner at a restaurant where most of the other diners were white expatriates because restaurant dining is an extravagant luxury, the mood was noticeably more subdued than my few previous days here. One man swept the litter from the dirt walk in front of his shop; few drivers were on the road. No one honked. Although Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world on the human development index, I heard a man say a few nights ago that it really is not a poor country at all, it is just poorly developed. Congo’s riches are well-known and the people here have been exploited for more than a hundred years for the great wealth that exists in mines of the Katanga region. Following so many years of such exploitation, corrupt leadership, wars and millions of death by disease and deprivation, democratic elections here hold great importance for many Congolese who view them as an opportunity to return to legitimate democracy, create institutions for development and infrastructure support, rise up out of poverty, and finally know peace and security. Tonight, one day after the presidential run-off elections between the sitting president and a vice president, the country waits in hopeful anticipation for a new Congo.