At last... an update

Yes, I know it’s been a few weeks since I last had a real entry on here. It took forever to get our internet connection set up, so as I result I have lots to talk about…

We Move In

At long last, we’re in the apartment we should have been living in when we arrived here back at the end of July. The wait hasn’t been that bad, especially when we were house-sitting. Well, all those power and water outages were a bummer, but aside from that we were holed up in a pretty nice place for three weeks. We were waiting to move into our apartment since it was being rehabbed a bit and, while it’s not as grandiose or swanky as other places we’ve stayed in, we like it a lot. It’s a small two-bedroom apartment that’s about a five minute walk to Acme and we’re a stone’s throw from the main road in town, yet not so close that we have to deal with the traffic and congestion.

Here's the apartment complex:

and here's a picture slightly to the right of this, of the road in front of our complex:

Of course, moving into a freshly-rehabbed apartment doesn’t mean that everything works perfectly. The refrigerator, stove, and toilet all didn’t work properly and the bathroom sink had a leak so we woke up to a flooded bathroom and hallway after our first night here. Kudos to the building management, though, as they immediately fixed any problems we encountered. That’s way better than some of the stories I’ve heard from other people around here. As I understand it, landlords here expect you to fix any problems yourself. Your sink leaks, you call a plumber, schedule a visit, and pay for it yourself. The staff here has been super-nice and I have zero complaints.

The apartment has a foam mattress (hey, no bedbugs!) and mosquito net. It’s been surprisingly bug-free in here for the most part, and that may be because I’ve seen a couple small geckos and skinks traversing the walls and ceiling. The water pressure in the shower is great and we have plenty of hot water. Best of all, they’re pretty quick to fire up the generator when the power goes out. Where we were house-sitting, you’d have to needle the guards to turn on the generator and most of the time it wasn’t working (or so they claimed).

As an aside, all of Kinshasa has been experiencing severe power outages over the past three weeks. Rumor around town is that the big dam up the Congo River that supplies power to the city is undergoing repairs, so as a result the power goes off in the entire city for hours at a time on a daily basis.

The only bummer about this apartment is that we’re right near a small stream that flows to the Congo River. This stream smells. I mean, it really really smells. I’m trying to think of a way to describe the way it smells and the best I can do is imagine yourself being downwind from an open sewer line on a hot, sunny day. Wait, that’s exactly what it smells like because that’s exactly what it is. The stream is full of garbage (of ALL kinds, hint hint) and since it’s still the dry season, it ain’t movin’ too quick so the trash and funk just roasts in the sun. Taking the path along the stream shortens the walk to the main road from five minutes to thirty seconds, but I still debate whether I should take the shortcut or not due to the stink. Thankfully, we very rarely catch the scent in our place – only when the wind is blowing a certain direction.

A few pictures of the river, just so you know what I'm talking about:

Despite the funky river, we’re happy to be finally moved in and settled somewhere. We’ve been living out of suitcases since the end of June and to finally unpack everything is like a dream. Over the course of several weekends, we made shopping trips around the city to pick up what we needed for the apartment – things like cleaning supplies, kitchen stuff, towels, etc. We still can’t find cookie sheets anywhere, though we did finally come across some clothes hangers at one of the fancy stores in town.

Getting Sick in Africa, or Life as a Generous Host

I was also sick in the Congo. I should preface this next section by saying that I’m not someone who goes to the doctor a whole lot. I don’t want to be stupid about things, but it seems like most times when you go the doctor when you’re sick, they tell you to go home and rest and drink lots of fluids. I can usually figure that one out on my own. Don’t get me wrong – I know when I’m really sick and need antibiotics or tests or whatever, but I’d say more often than not I try to let my body take care of things itself and I tend to wait things out rather than rush to the doctor at the first hint of an illness.

A little over two weeks ago I started to notice that I would wake up in the mornings and just not feel good. My stomach would be bugging me, I didn’t have much of an appetite, and I didn’t feel like myself. After a few days, I noticed that things were getting worse and worse, so much so that by Friday morning, the time-to-go-see-a-doctor alarm was going off in my brain, and off we went at 6:30am to see what was up.

NOTE: As a courtesy to those readers with more delicate sensibilities, let’s just say the problem was digestive in nature to a degree with which I had previously been unacquainted. Yet, it wasn’t the obvious problem that most people would associate with travel to a foreign country. Perhaps I’ve said too much already, so I’ll just move on.

My wife drove me to the hospital and served as a translator to the nurses, explaining my situation. Forgive me, Kinshasa, but I was ready to be ushered into a shack somewhere, tended to by nuns with handsaws and big pots of boiling water, and I would spend most of my visit brushing away flies and making sure the medical equipment was free of dried blood. Nothing could be further from the truth. The nurses were very nice, spoke some English, took care to show me each time they opened up a fresh needle from a package, and asked if I had any single brothers in the States who would be interested in a Congolese nurse as a wife. Brian, you out there reading this? I hear she’s a good cook.

Anyway, they took a blood sample, stuck an IV in me to give me some fluids, and administered some anti-amoeba medicine intravenously as they suspected that I had an amoeba. After running a blood test, a doctor came down to tell me that they determined I had a bacterial infection in my intestine and as well as a tapeworm or amoeba, or both. Who knows where I picked it up – could be from the locally-grown vegetables, the trash that’s all over the city, or the Avenue de Tapeworm et Amoeba that I walk down each day on my way to French class. Actually, I made that last reason up. What I had was not uncommon and could be easily treated with some antibiotics. The doctor wrote out some prescriptions for me and sent us on our way.

Another interesting thing about living here is that you don’t actually need a prescription to get medicine. You can go to a pharmacy and ask for a box of Xanax or Rohypnol or whatever and they’ll give it to you. Prescriptions are on the cheap side, too, at least compared to the States.

I was still feeling weak and out of it for a few days after my visit to the doctor, but after five days or so I was right as rain. At least I know where the doctor’s office is now.

Oh, and I Got a Job

So, as I mentioned a few posts earlier, I had been offered a position at TASOK, the American school here in town. I would work in their computer lab as a tech and help out the teachers and students with computer problems. TASOK is a very nice place to work, and everyone I’ve met there is really great, but the pay wasn’t anything to write home about and since I don’t have a car, getting there each day was going to be a problem.

A few days before I’m set to start the job at TASOK, I get a phone call from someone I know here who says that they know of a possible job opening for me. They give me a name and an email address. I figure what the hey and send off my resume and a quick note saying that I’m new in town and looking for work, what do you have?

Later that afternoon I get a call from the person I emailed and they want me to come in to meet with them the next day to discuss my resume. As it turns out, this person works at the US Embassy in the Cultural Affairs office. Wow. I had contacted the Embassy a few times since arriving here and asked if they had any openings, but either my calls wouldn’t be returned or I was told to look at the website which didn’t have any positions I was remotely qualified for.

I went to the Embassy the next day to interview for a job, though I didn’t know what the job actually was. As soon as I met the woman who was interviewing me, before I even sat down, she said, “I’m not a religious person at all, but I think you were sent here by God.” This kind of blew my mind. One of my biggest worries about coming here was about finding work and it was something I had been praying a lot about for months and months.

As things turned out, the Cultural Affairs office had a need for someone with exactly my background – some tech writing, some instructional design, and few other odds and ends. Because I’ll be working on a lot of different projects, I’ll have a lot of flexibility with regard to my hours so I don’t need to come into the office every day from 8-5. This is great, since I don’t have a car. I’m still getting the details of work fleshed out, but already I’ve set up meetings with a few people about building some basic websites.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a million other things that have happened to me over the past few weeks, but it's late and this is at least an update. Once I get caught up on my email, I can post more about slice-of-life stuff here in Kinshasa. Let me know if you have questions and I'll do my best to answer them. After living here for seven and a half weeks, I'm starting to not think about how weird it is to pay some random guy on the street fifty cents to watch the car while my wife and I go shopping.