Googling Congo Line

Wanting to see if my family and friends could easily find my blog on line, I googled "odile congo" which yielded nothing, then "odile congo line" which showed my blog - in first place! then "congo line" which gave: a few sites about the Congo (on "line"), a video I can't see on this computer, presumably of people forming a giant misspelled "Conga line," a board game called Congo Line, "where goods move from city to city across the Congo", and various articles titled "Congo Line" in the Washington Times, Slate, etc. So much for originality! Anyway this was supposed to record my heroic or hilarious happenings here in the DRC. Nothing heroic so far, I'm sure you're all disappointed. I managed to forget to do the one single most important thing a hostess is in charge of, that is, the seating arrangement for the working lunch with Senator Feingold who was here last week. It didn't occur to me until the guests were actually entering the dining room. Luckily, since it was all Americans, and a working, not social, lunch, things fell into place rather naturally (I like to think). The next mini-crisis was that there seemed to be too many seats, or one of the guests was absent, so in the end I had to fill in as the 12th person, which wasn't planned, this being a working lunch, and work and me haven't been buddies for a while. j.k. But the "conversation" was very interesting, since each head of section or agency at the mission gave the senator a summary of his/her role and challenges here. I'm still trying to learn all this. After lunch we figured out who was the missing 12th guest: I'd counted the senator's military escort as a member of his team. He was happily snoozing at the hotel after the long flight. The second function i.h.o the senator was held mere hours after the lunch, a reception for four of the newly elected parliament members, two from the lower house, two from the senate. Since the DRC's 2006 elections were the first in 45 years, it was interesting to hear what the elected had to say about the election process, how they accepted the results, and their opinions on the main issues here. Two were old enough to have been active in politics at the last elections, and the other two had been born since. Two were from the party of the president, and the others from the opposition. One was a woman. What was the color of the bear? j.k. That's about as exciting as it's been around here, except for one or two blitzkrieg rainstorms, violent but over in a few minutes. Yesterday we took a 2-hour walk from our house to the stretch of road along the river where "everybody" (except Congolese ppl) takes a stroll in the evening. The view is beautiful as the sun sets across the river and shoots out rays from behind the cloud cover. The exotic trees turn into silhouettes against the bright river and sky, while around us parrots, bulbuls and cuckoo-shrikes screech, pip, and coo: "Kwaaw! Doctor-quick! Doctor-quick! Doctor-Quick! Hooooo, hoo hoo hoo hoo!" The camera in my bag was a strong temptation, especially with the video/sound recording, so maybe next time I won't take it with me: Taking pictures is forbidden. The riverbank stroll turned out to be really short, maybe half a mile, so after walking it from armed-guarded end to armed-guarded end, we wandered around in the neighborhood, which seems to be where all the embassies' residences, and some offices, are located. At one end, at the point where the Congo bends, is the presidential palace, and just like in DC around the White House, the streets are blocked. The whole area, called Gombé, is shaped like a fan, with the riverbend forming the arc, the presidential palace occupying the top of the arc, the Palais de Justice, at the other end of a wide boulevard, at the bottom hinge; all the embassies inside the left part of the fan, with the riverbank walk between them and the river. Our house is somewhere in the middle of the right side of the fan, on a street called Cadeco. The street blocked by the presidential palace is called Roi Baudouin, which seems like a name somebody forgot to change 47 years ago at independence, but the road signs are new, so there is some reason; I'll probably never know. For the most part no one bothered us. A guard at one of the residences (they ALL have guards, sitting under trees conversing with each other) who was alone playing cards, asked us for money to buy food, and another, of a handful in uniform patrolling the streets, asked us for a cigarette. Since we weren't carrying any of either, we politely said so. Our own house has a couple of guards inside the gate, from a private security firm, and a police guard outside, in uniform and cradling a kalishnikov (or something). There's also a gardener, a cook, and 2 women who clean, launder and keep each other company. I feel like a guest, especially until our effects arrive, and then I can feel like a guest who's invaded and taken over. ha ha. All the household staff are very educated compared to those I've seen in other countries. They speak, read, write, English and French, and two or three African languages. That they have to take these jobs is the result of almost total unemployment in the country; and even the employed, like schoolteachers, don't get paid. One of the drivers told me he has the Bac, loved chemistry and would have wanted to study, but there is no opportunity for anyone but the very few (very) rich people who rule this country. There is plenty of work to be done: schools need to be built and staffed, hospitals idem, roads and bridges built, etc. so there's room for employment and development. But it's an iterative process that keeps stalling before it gets into first gear, and needs constant reinvesting instead of siphoning off by corruption. Well, that's enough for now.