by Lisa Shannon
“We immediately did a U-turn. Thirty seconds later, I saw two huge UN tanks in front of us, coming down the road, heading towards the protesters. One of the tanks passed, turned their gun at me—like two feet from my head. But I was thinking, okay, they are experts, they aren’t going to shoot me.
“The first tank passed and the second tank was coming our way. The only thing between us was a guy on a motorcycle. The tank swerved into our lane and we heard the motorcycle getting crushed. The rider started screaming.
“The tank stopped there. The guy’s legs were pinned underneath, and the UN tank didn’t roll off. One of the UN guys was just looking around, calm, surveying the scene for a good few minutes, not emotional at all. He was looking each way while the guy was screaming. A woman was right next to our car yelling at the UN to get off the guy! There were maybe fifty people around. Everyone was yelling. Finally, the tank rolled off the guy and just rolled on down the street, leaving him there. Congolese people picked him up and dragged him out of the street. Then everyone turned toward our car, and they saw me sitting in the front seat. They saw my big sunglasses. Christine told me they thought my sunglasses were a video camera of some kind, they thought I was filming. They started to crowd around the car, screaming. Our driver just pulled out and escaped up a dirt road. All the while, the Conrad Hilton judge was in the back seat.
“We decided to do interviews at the office instead of in the field.
“At the office the next day, we heard that the security situation was getting worse. Zainab said I should go back to the hotel and pack our bags, and we could be on a plane in a few hours. ‘Just lie down in the back of the car on the ride back to Orchid,’ she told me. So the Women for Women car pulled up in the middle of the street and I was walking from the office gate to the car, when all of a sudden I heard ‘pow-pow-pow-pow.’ About a hundred scared-shitless Congolese were running towards me. Christine yelled, ‘Don’t run! Don’t run!’ But I ran straight back to the gate, and all these people were crowding around, trying to get back into the compound while the security guys were trying to close the gates.
“I stuck my arm in through the crowd and they pulled me in. Zainab was just standing there asking, ‘What’s going on?’
“I decided I wasn’t going anywhere. So I started to film the rest of Zainab’s interview, then we heard shots again, right outside the gate. I dropped the camera and ran around the compound in circles, because there was nowhere to go. Zainab just laughed and said, ‘It’s worse in Iraq.’
“I was like, ‘Stop laughing. It’s not funny.’
“She says, ‘I laugh in these situations.’
“We left that afternoon.”
RICKI’S WARNINGS ARE flashing in my head like a stoplight, so the news about Orchid being overbooked does not land well. In the States, I am not known for my restraint when unhappy. Now I feel as if I have one foot on the brake and one the accelerator. Every minute of my countdown to Congo, every warning, presses down harder on both.
But I’ve also been forewarned: People in Congo don’t get mad. It would be viewed as a temper tantrum—it’s something you don’t do, like crying in a board meeting. As one Congo travel veteran warned emphatically, “If you lose it, just pack up; leave. You might as well never come back. You will have permanently lost the respect of the Congolese.”
So I smile at Christine and laugh. “Flexible is the name of the game in Congo,” I say. “It’s no problem.”
We pull off to the side of the road and I get my first glance of the border crossing, just a simple bridge, shorter than a city block. I recognize it from Lisa Ling’s report. I pull out my broadcast-quality HDV camera.
I position myself with the bridge in the background. Christine holds the camera for me, trying to be low-key. It’s illegal to film borders. I try to control my face twitching and I dive right in with the commentary. “I’m standing on the border of Congo . . .”
As we approach the bridge, leaving Rwanda behind, I’m amazed that this old, rotting wooden bridge from Belgian Congo is all that separates the country from Rwanda. On the other side of the bridge, a man lifts the old metal gate and lets us through.
Whew. That was easy.
We drive up a hill about two city blocks before we hit the real border crossing, on the Congo side. Men in shabby tracksuits, sporting Kalashnikovs, lurk by the side of the road. I get out and enter a small cement-block room, where Congolese border officials size me up, stamp my paperwork, and usher me out again. Back in the SUV, three men approach and survey the car’s contents, standing uncomfortably close to my window, glaring. One of them presses my hosts for God knows what. His eyes confirm the folklore—they tell me I’m in Congo, with their hard, glazed-over look that makes me wonder what he’s seen, what he’s done, and if there is a soul left inside.
Christine meets him with a laugh. Is she teasing him? I can’t tell, but I’m taking mental notes. Laugh. Laugh. When in danger, laugh. Everyone is your best friend.
They want to search the car. My driver shoves cash toward the man and says something. Christine translates, “The driver told that guy to buy himself a Coke.”
As we pull away, I hum to myself that Coke ad from the eighties, the one they played during Saturday morning cartoons.
I’ d like to buy the world a Coke,
And furnish it with love . . .
Something, something, turtle doves . . .
It’s the real thing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Real Thing
WELCOME TO BUKAVU, a far cry from Rwanda. I stare out my Range Rover window, which is rolled all the way up tight, and comb the scene on Bukavu’s main drag. The landscape is identical to what I saw in Rwanda. Hills jut along the lake, forming pockets and outcrops draped with greenery. Each hill, dotted with compounds, is a mirror image of the next one.
In Bukavu, however, the signs are everywhere that all is not well. It feels raw and dusty. Corroded shopfronts and old lakeside villas stand like outlines in chalk, sketches of a dignified past, imprints of a grandeur that has been stripped and rotted under the chokehold of chaos. I can picture the villas filled with pleasure seekers—people on holiday alongside Mobutu in the lush gardens, savoring tropical fruit and tea with sugar and milk. Today, the old villas are either roofless, crumbling shells or they’re shrouded by high cement walls capped with razor wire and jagged shards of glass, men in hand-me-down security uniforms stationed at their rusty gates.
Open-air jeeps marked “UN” crawl up and down the streets; they are mounted with giant machine guns and cramped with Pakistani army guys whose hands never wander far from the trigger. Traders line the streets with wooden crates; they’re selling phone cards, cassava flour, soaps, or clothes that look they were rescued from Goodwill bins. The washed-out roads are more like dry river-beds. I was warned I will need an SUV to drive anywhere outside of Bukavu, but by the look of things, I’ll need an SUV to get anywhere inside Bukavu too. The air is different here. Rwanda breathes; purged of demons, cleansed with soft rains and the government’s progressive agenda, it hums with prospects. Not so in Congo. The air here is thick with paranoia, like rancid garbage dumped by strangers and left to fester in the yard.
Women, like pack mules, carry loads of cassava flour, firewood, stone, and other commodities up steep hills. Sometimes their cargo is twice their size. With the impassible roads and gutted local economy, there are few vehicles left and all the livestock and bicycles have been looted. The transport of last resort is the backs of women. They transfer petty goods to keep the essentials of life and the local economy crawling forward. Those loads must weigh, what, 150 pounds? Hunched over, women lug the loads with straps slung around their foreheads, digging into their skin. They are sweating, steady, focused. It’s a struggle journalist Ted Koppel once compared to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was destined to keep rolling a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back down, again and again, for all eternity.
Surprisingly, the Congolese se
em to be quite fashion-conscious. Their clothes are neat and pressed, with their hair in colorful braids or wigs; they wear traditional African wraps and dresses or sport American cast-offs: T-shirts, fashion jeans, and sporty tennis shoes. Many look worthy of a Diesel ad campaign. One local hipster seems perfectly packaged to open an indie rock concert as he saunters around in a tiger-print cowboy hat and a faux-fur-lined jacket, peering out from behind trendy sunglasses.
But all that primping can’t hide the unmistakable mark of war in these people’s eyes. I notice the eyes again when we arrive at the Women for Women compound, a two-story whitewashed building surrounded by round, open-air classrooms built of wood and straw. Morning classes disbanded some time ago, but three women linger in the courtyard garden of cosmos and marigolds. Two of them inch towards me, curious. With the impenetrable language barrier between us and no one around to translate, we smile and attempt a few false starts at conversation that can’t get beyond “Hello.”
“My name is Lisa,” I say, pointing to myself. “Lisa. Lisa. I am a sponsor.”
They say something back in Swahili, but it is completely lost on me. We smile with resignation. I watch an older lady standing at a cautious distance. She doesn’t smile, barely looks at me. I see the glazed-over look, the same one I saw in the guy at the border. I move closer to her. We say nothing.
Inside, staff members abandon their lunch to enthusiastically embrace me. “So you are Lisa Shannon!” They ask about all manner of personal details: my home, my cats, the would-be wedding. They have translated hundreds of my letters, seen my photos countless times. A tall, full-figured lady says, “You tell your sister I say hello! We are both big ladies; I am her Congolese twin!”
I’m grateful for the warm reception, though headquarters in Washington made something clear. When staff members from headquarters visit offices in other countries, they stay no more than three days. No way will the staff host my five-and-a-half-week visit. The Congo office is slammed, short staffed. Christine was gracious enough to pick me up from the airport, give me access to their office for Internet use, and assign a staff member to arrange all my meetings with my sisters, which will not start for another week. Other than that, I’m on my own.
That’s fine by me. I crack my Moleskine notebook open to my list of contacts, which is neatly printed in the back, a patchwork of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating here. Christine lends me a cell phone. I settle into the second-floor office with metal picture-frame windows that overlook Lake Kivu and spend the afternoon steadily working my way down my list: The International Rescue Committee, International Medical Corp, CARE, UNICEF, The Red Cross, Panzi Hospital, a child soldier center, and conservation groups. I contact all of them by email and phone, and I even leave the compound to make a couple of quick visits to the International Rescue Committee and International Medical Corp, escorted by Women for Women’s staff driver, moving from compound to nearby compound, as if they are secure islands.
Of the NGO’s young, disaster-hopping expats, only half return my initial call or email. The remainder say hello, talk enthusiastically of the programs they would like to show me, then never return a call or email again. It will take weeks for me to get it. My credentials, or lack thereof, don’t warrant their time. The Congolese on my list, however, all immediately arrange visits so that I can learn about their programs.
Christine interrupts my outreach efforts to introduce Hortense, a wild-haired single mom. Her big eyes, thin lips, and petite frame—though it is swallowed by her oversized office outfit—remind me of a woman in a Renaissance painting; she has a passionate, unmeasured manner. Christine glows as she describes Hortense. “She knows all of the women, every participant’s story. She will arrange and accompany you on all of your meetings with sisters. She is very good, this one. I really must give her a promotion.”
THE ORCHID SAFARI CLUB has my reservation after all. In addition to being safe, the club’s supposed to be the best people-watching spot in Bukavu. All of Eastern Congo’s power players drift through: government officials, mining executives, aid workers, Ukrainian bush pilots, journalists, military commanders. On the way in, I notice a sign posted on the door: DEAR GUESTS, WE THANK YOU TO NOT COME INTO THE RESTAURANT WITH FIREARMS. THE MANAGER
Inside, framed botanical orchid prints hang off-kilter and mold creeps along their edges. A water buffalo head mounted above a stone fireplace overlooks the dining room, which is dressed with white tablecloths and semiformal place settings. French doors fold back, opening from the restaurant onto the terrace, where lounge chairs with views of the flowering gardens and Lake Kivu are scattered. Tribal African songs drift in from the hills, mingling with Orchid’s ambient classical music.
A man in his mid-seventies lunches alone at one of the tables, looking over some paperwork. He’s the owner and, I imagine, the Last Belgian in Congo. He spends his days wandering around the terrace and restaurant, greeting guests and directing the Congolese staff. We exchange casual smiles. He says something in French that I don’t understand. Because of the language barrier, I am never able speak with him.
But the rumors fly. I will collect bits and pieces about him—perhaps fact, perhaps urban legend. They say he was born to Belgian colonists on a plantation and has never married, but owned this place with his brother who died a few years ago. Rebels invaded the hotel once, and he hid with the staff above the guestroom ceilings. On another occasion, legend has it, he was shot in the foot and had to retreat to Belgium for nine months of medical care. They say the Rwanda-backed RCD militia once camped out at the hotel for a long stretch and still owe him US$60,000.
The Last Belgian seems to me a breathing museum piece, the last of his species, like Congo’s answer to a Tennessee William’s character or the tropical male equivalent of Scarlett O’Hara, haunting the halls of Tara. He seems to be playing the tragic leading role in the final stage production of a faded colonial dream, making his final stand in his small Orchid kingdom, ordering around Congolese staff members dressed in red oxfords, black pants, and bow ties. They radiate the stiff friendliness of obligation, though in private conversation with patrons they are rumored to admit they despise their employer. I would not guess it, even though their graciousness feels manufactured, as in, “Madame would like some tea?”
As for safety at Orchid, that apparently lies in the eye of the beholder. This evening, military commanders are in the house. Never mind the sign on the doorway; they’ve brought their girls and guns. I watch a commander, his uniform buttons straining with postmeal bloat, while three girls sit by him quietly, smiling and laughing on cue. This is the kind of place that allows the illusion of elegance or influence or power if the lights are low, visitors’ eyes are squinted or don’t scan the corners of the room, conversation is kept vague, and nobody asks too many questions.
The Orchid staffers show me to my room and give me a key, which, out of defiance or nostalgia, is still labeled ZAIRE. I dump my bag in the room, a nouveau Elizabethan safari cottage with a bold, flower-print bedspread in 1970s orange, green, and tan, along with Tudor-style wood accents, a dim light, and a slow fan. The bed’s mosquito netting has tiny rips and tears. In the bathroom, the rim of the yellowed plastic tub is lined with peeling, mildewed caulking.
Christine picks me up and we stop at her home on the way to dinner. Though she is the country director of an international NGO, Christine lives in her childhood home while awaiting her wedding next month. I sit in the dim living room—though it’s late January, there are Christmas decorations still in the corner—with her younger brothers and sisters and a six-year-old orphan with that unmistakably vacant, glazed Congo stare.
Christine has just convinced her family to take the boy in. He has suffered severe neglect and illness and has only been here a few days. The adults are in the next room while the other children are fixated on a Congolese TV show shot on low-end video, something about men breaking into a woman’s home. I call the orphaned child over to me and he sits obedie
ntly, stone-faced, at my side. He doesn’t move. He won’t interact. I can’t elicit a smile. He is a little island.
I don’t notice that look again in Congo. Yet back in the United States, when I review my video footage, it will be there, in the eyes of nearly every person I interview.
CHRISTINE AND I APPROACH the guesthouse where Kelly is staying with her group tonight, located on Bukavu’s main road, near the boarder. She invited us for dinner so we can hammer out the details for the remainder of our trip. After a draining day, I’m exhausted and desperate for the anchor of a travel buddy.
Kelly greets Christine and me at the guesthouse door, which has been left open and unlocked beyond an unguarded metal gate. The group’s bags sit exposed in a bunkroom, with the door flung wide. I reach back and touch my camera bag, as though I could forget the twenty-five pound monster that will stay glued on my back for the duration of my trip. Kelly fills me in on their journey so far. “Kinshasa was rough,” she says. “Very aggressive. Tons of people. But here, everyone is so mellow. It’s pleasant, safe to walk around. . . .”
Are we in different countries?
The place is spare and lit with fluorescent lights. I’m introduced to the church delegation as we take our places at the table for a traditional Congolese meal of whole, deep-fried fish, which my vegetarian credentials excuse me from eating. Something feels off. Conversation is strained and tense with the pale, sweaty missionaries. An American doctor quizzes me about Run for Congo Women and my contacts in D.C., while fussing with precise spellings as she takes notes. Patrick, the group leader, jumps in and asks occasional questions. But each time I start to answer, he turns away to talk to someone else.
Kelly casually drops into conversation that she’s hired her own car and driver and plans to do the homestay for the duration of her time in Bukavu, which is several weeks shorter than my planned stay. I stare at the fish skeletons on their plates, at the way the other guests pick at the bones.
