Elevator blues
-week 5-
i have to tell you about this flemish missionary who lives on the campus of kinshasa university in a room filled with books. born in 1920 he spent seven years studying chinese and writing a phd on the use of the chinese language in church, only to find out that mao closed the country for missionaries. that is how he ended up in the congo, more than 50 years now. he calls himself a failed china man, and i cannot help feel sorry for him, how he has to witness the further decline of his university, how he worries about what will become of his impressive collection of books on africa when he returns to belgium this summer. he tells us how last week a neatly dressed man came to ask for a valuable book by stanley, only to disappear with it.. i think i can agree with mao that china did not need these missionaries, but somehow i am convinced that his energy would have had more constructive results than here. however, the faith is strong and he seems a happy man.
reading about singapore's history i am amazed how the british colonial system from early on allowed a local elite to be educated at the motherland institutions. in contrast the congo only had a handful of university graduates at independence in 1960, and kinshasa university had only been opened a couple of years earlier..
last week another of those crazy days when everything seems to go wrong. driving on the main boulevard, we were stopped by two police women after running a yellow light. they got into the car, and started to argue with the driver, telling him to drive to the police station. they would not leave the car, so i decided to get out and let the driver sort it out. he picked me up half an hour later; because he had no money to pay a fine they were keeping his license until he would deliver the money. the car which had just been repaired that morning refused to start again and we had to wait for a replacement. later i had to receive our new office furniture. our building does have elevators, as is usual in kinshasa, and ours even work most of the time, which is less common. unfortunately my furniture guys got stuck between floors. somehow this symbolises the tragedy of this country for me- one day all these elevators were working, the potential is there, but some destructive force is eating everything.
that evening i had to say goodbye to my new friend xavier who had taken me on an intensive three day tour of kinshasa night life during the weekend. the same men i see downtown having lunch with their colleagues seek the company of local beauties after dark, or is it the other way around? anyway each side understands well what the other side is looking for. still some of these guys want to keep up the illusion of romance and the girls play their role professionally. problem is that these bars seem to be the only social entertainment in town, and for that matter, people do not hesitate to be seen there, like the ambassador of a major european country who arrived with his bodyguards and in his official car. it is a small scene; the third evening i already recognise some faces- i don't think this will become my hobby.
a routine i do want to establish is a lunch swim at the club, at noon i have the entire pool for myself. this sunday afternoon there were at least 50 people around the pool, but nobody noticed a young man drowning. they tried to re-animate him for 30 minutes, to no avail. i think it was the first time for me to see a dead body- strange how helpless and quiet everybody was. but as any sunday evening, the open air concert in front of my apartment block goes on and i fall asleep to the tunes of never ending happy songs.
my friends passed a copy of this text to our flemish missionary, who typed the following answer in return, in perfect english, to share with you all:
Tom Tobback © 2002