Internet is back up

It's been a stressful couple of weeks for me due to a number of reasons, but one of the biggest was the internet being down at my house. We're supposed to leave soon to move to Mali (probably next week) and I've been scrambling to get some of the websites I've been working on up onto the internet before I leave Kinshasa. Kinda hard to do when you don't have internet access. Thankfully, I'm back in the game and have gotten the ball rolling on getting these sites live soon.

Big week here in the DRC - the national team won the African Nations Championship. Last Sunday afternoon I was at our usual game of ultimate frisbee at TASOK. Right after we finished the game, we heard a tremendous roar from the army base that's just on the other side of the wall from TASOK. Someone mentioned that the Congolese football team had a big game that day and we figured they must have won.

After the game, I hung out at TASOK for a while. As an hour or two went by, a few friends sent me text messages saying that there were crowds of people celebrating out in the streets and I should be careful driving home. As I started making my way home around 7:30, I came upon a mob of a couple hundred people filling the street. They were a little rowdy, but a happy kind of rowdy, at least as near as I could tell. Following the advice that was sent to me in the text messages from earlier that night, I drove extra slow as the crowd parted around my car. I honked the horn in a celebratory way, smiled a broad, congratulatory smile, and flashed victory signs to everyone. I guess that convinced them I was celebrating too, except I was just on my way to meet up with a different mob of joyful/rowdy people. They all pounded on my car and yelled "mundele" at me (the local term for white person) and walked on, cheering and smiling. I passed through without incident and made it home in one piece.

The next day, the president declared that Monday was a national holiday so the city effectively shut down. Nobody went to work, meetings were cancelled, stores were closed, etc. The streets were empty. And then Wednesday was declared a half-day in Kinshasa because the Congo team was returning from the tournament and they wanted to have a big parade to celebrate their return. I was at TASOK for some meetings that morning. Around 9am, I was informed that the school would be closing at 11:30 and everyone should get home as quickly as possible and stay out of the streets for the rest of the day in case things got rowdy. Whoa. I had to fight an incredible amount of traffic to get home and spent the afternoon and evening working and watching a few movies.

At any rate, congratulations to the DRC team and the people of the DRC for their victory. It's always good to have something to celebrate, especially in a place that can be as difficult to live as this, and it's great to see people so proud of their country.