"The Road Not Taken"

The title of this blog is from the poem by Robert Frost. Kinshasa is a city with many forks in the road. However, very few roads have actual names. If they do have a name, there may not be a street sign to tell you where you are. There are no maps of the streets. There are no phone books. There are no numbers on the stores or houses. There is no mail service. And it is a city of 8 million people. How does one get around? By landmarks, of course. The Mercedes dealership. The statue of Mobutu. The Vodacom (cell phone) shop. The Jewish store. The River. The Grand Hotel. The pharmacie. How do I describe where I live? Take Kasa Vubu, through Kintambo, then go up the Mobuto Hill and follow the Matadi Road (it leads to the city of Matadi on the ocean) past TASOK (the American School). When you pass the triangle, watch for the Queen's Restaurant on the left and the Water Company called Regideso, on your right, Take the next left. I'm at #6 Mukoku. When you arrive at the gate, honk and Ndambele will open it up for you. Easy, eh?

So what do you get when you use a poem like Frost's in a class here and ask, have you ever stood at the fork in the road and had to decide which road to take? For one, you get a 25-ish young man who says he had to choose between staying with his family in the war torn Kivu area where he had a job and moving to the Kinshasa where he could go to school. You get a young woman who made a decision to leave her Muslim husband because he didn't treat her well. You get a 30-ish woman who completed her law degree and can't find a job here, and desparately wants to obtain custody of her deceased sister's young children from the Netherlands. You get a soft spoken son of a pastor whose sister is in medical school both of whose lives were spared because they were able to get on the second of three planes out of the war torn east in 1996. His cousins were not so fortunate and were delayed on the third plane. The stories go on.

"And I--I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

Philosophy of the automobile

Closing my last blog post with a lament for the Honda I left in Michigan is a perfect segwe to my subject today. I've always held the position that cars are a necessary evil. My philosophy holds true here in Congo. Abbey Martin, fellow American colleague at UPC, and I have been sharing the joys and sorrows of a 15 year-old Mitsubishi Pajero. It is a jeep-like creature that has been our life-blood for work, play and everything in between. I'm getting used to driving right-side steering wheel on the right side of the road, during the low traffic times to places that are familiar and safe for travel. For all other occasions, we contract Pierre, the chauffeur who I "inherited" from my rental predecessor.

Problems began a week ago, on Saturday at 7:15 a.m. when Pierre arrived to get the car and then transport Abbey to class. She teaches every Saturday, which sounds really foreign, but that's just the way education is here. Unfortunately, the car wouldn't start--the battery was dead. No cables available. But resourceful as he is, Pierre was able to secure a "new" battery for $115.00, which I assumed would be reimbursed by the University, who holds the title to the car. That night, while I was driving to a little rendezvous in a great Greek restaurant, (great is a relative term), the automatic steering went out. If you don't know what that feels like, all I can say is that my wrists are still recovering from the trauma of trying to turn the wheel. Again, we assumed that the university would pay for the repairs. However, there is evidently a parallel to the protocal that the renter pays for repairs on A/C, painting, appliances, etc. Similarly, the owners of the car assumed that someone else would be paying for maintenance and repairs.

Throughout last week, negotiations were scheduled starting with low level reps from both the embassy and the university, to the climax on Thursday when the PAO of the embassy and the rector of UPC met in order to determine who was going to pay for the $550.00 for the steering repairs. Neither party seemed willing to compromise. Abbey and I felt caught in the middle, but were not willing to take the brunt financially either. On Friday, we finally had a break through with UPC who was willing to go 50% with the two of us. We brought the car in and it was repaired in good order. I wish that was the end of the story. After shopping around town yesterday in preparation for a party I had last night, we decided to buy gasoline. How many of you would know that a Pajero takes Diesel? We asked the attendant who confirmed it took gasoline. And, yes, we did put $50.00 worth in the tank, only to stall out a few blocks away. Fortunately, we followed the Congolese example, limping along and finally got out and pushed it through the gate where it rests today. Three Lingala speaking mechanics are syphoning the gas out as I write. They poured it into 2 bright colored plastic diaper pails and will hand carry them on foot four blocks away where they will let it settle and then skim the gasoline off the top for my friend Pascal. We will ask Pierre fill it up and change the filter tomorrow.