Hello from Bamako, Mali

Dodgy internet connections and a number of other events have kept me from my blogging duties, but I’m back online. Yes, my wife and I have moved to Mali. We made the decision about a month ago. She was offered a position from ACME out of the blue – literally, within hours of finding out that the position was open, ACME made the offer – so after a few days of prayer and deliberation we felt that it was the best thing for us to do. The next few weeks were full of work as we had to finish up work in Kinshasa, get rid of the few possessions we’ve accumulated over the past seven months, and get ready to move to Bamako.

We got just about everything taken care of although, as previously noted in this blog, not having an internet connection for those last few weeks threw a spanner in the works for me. I was able to successfully get most of my work done before we left, and I can work remotely from Mali to polish off the last few tasks I need to wrap up before I can effectively hand off my work to whoever will be taking care of it next.

Getting out of Kinshasa was a headache. First, we weren’t able to get a flight on Saturday as we had originally planned so we took a flight on Sunday instead. Arrangements had to be made to take care of that, but having an extra day to prepare for our departure wasn’t the worst thing in the world. The bigger problem was that my visa for DRC had expired in early March and without a valid visa, I wouldn’t be able to leave the country. You’d think that for a country as tough to get into as DRC, they’d be anxious to kick you out. Nope. We initially thought they’d just let me leave and not let me back in, but after talking with a few other expats in the days leading up to our flight out, we learned that there was no way I was getting out of the country, at least not without greasing the palm of an official. The travel company that took care of getting us to the airport and handling our bags worked out an “arrangement” with an official to the tune of $80. I sat in the airport waiting area and sweated it out for a couple hours while that was all taken care of. The official waved me past the immigration officials when it was time to board the plane, and that was that. I was leaving Kinshasa after almost eight months.

The flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was uneventful and we spent a low-key evening in a hotel before we boarded a plane to Bamako the next morning. It was a six hour flight from Addis to Bamako – not much to speak of besides another rather poor selection of in-flight films.

How is Bamako? Hot. Hot, hot, hot. Everyone I talked to in Kinshasa who had been to Bamako said it was going to be hot. Indeed, it sure is. I started to get a sense of what I was in for as the plane descended into Bamako. You know how they display the plane’s altitude, time of arrival, and outside temperature on the monitors in the cabin as you’re flying? When the plane was about 3000 feet above ground, the temperature was at 75 degrees and it just kept climbing as we descended until it was nearing 100 as we touched down. The terrain was on the barren side with lots of dust, a few scrubby-looking trees and bushes, and not much else.

I will say that the Bamako airport is much nicer than Kinshasa – no hassles from security, no problems in immigration, and local men looking to make money assisting you with your baggage were helpful and yet not overbearing or pushy.

I’ve been here for a week now and besides the searing heat (it was 104 at 5:00 in the afternoon yesterday), Bamako is a nice city. It has less of an international feel compared to Kinshasa. There’s a fairly large American presence here, but I don’t get the impression that the expat community here is made up of people from all over the globe. I think there’s more Americans and especially French here than anyone else in terms of foreigners. Could be wrong on that, though.

The roads here are way, way nicer than in Kinshasa and drivers are much more polite. However, I now have to contend with the swarms of moto riders infesting the roads. It appears to be the primary mode of transportation in Bamako. It’s common to see a pack of 20 motos in your rearview mirror, or six of them lined up at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green. What’s more maddening is that they drive all over the road and sidewalk and pass cars any which way they can.

At first, I was constantly watching every moto on the road, making sure they were watching what they were doing and not about to run into me. After a short time driving, though, I realized it’s best to take a more zen-like approach where I almost ignore them and just go with the flow. It’s almost like swimming in a school of fish – even though I’m surrounded a dozen motos, they always stay a foot or so away from my vehicle. I could be changing lanes, turning, speeding up or slowing down, and they successfully maintain that one-foot buffer.

Next week we should be moving into our permanent residence, a small house in the northeast corner of town. This week will involve shopping for appliances and housewares, getting an internet connection at our new place, and becoming more familiar with the city and streets.

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.

Sorry...

Sorry for the lack of updates. The internet has been out of service at our place for almost two weeks now and I don't know when or if it will get back up before we leave. I'm still around, trying to finish up stuff for work and prep for a move, and I hope to be updating again at some point soon, either from Kinshasa or in Mali.

Onward and upward

Life is very busy for me at the moment so I can't write the lengthy blog entry that this news deserves, but my wife and I are moving to Bamako, Mali in a few weeks. She's accepted a position with ACME and they want her to start right away. This came up out of the blue and caught us off-guard. After some lengthy discussion and prayer, we decided to go for it, so we leave Kinshasa in a few weeks. Everyone we've talked to says that Bamako is a fantastic city with wonderful people, so that's encouraging to hear. Bamako is a very safe country and it seems like there's a lot to do there which is a change from Kinshasa.

When I have time I'll write more. Guess I'll have to change the title of my blog site to "Seven and a Half Months in Kinshasa."

Working for Uncle Sugar

I thought I’d write a bit about the work that I’m doing here in Kinshasa. I was quite fortunate to be hired as a contractor at the US embassy, as I mentioned back in September. Since then, I’ve been working with a variety of organizations around Kinshasa that are affiliated with the US Embassy in some way and helping them create websites. I didn’t expect to come here and be a quote-unquote webmaster, but the work has been interesting and definitely more diverse than anything I’ve done prior to arriving here.

At present, I’m working on about seven different websites as well as working on the US Embassy-Kinshasa site. Only one has gone live – it’s a site for the Kinshasa Hash group. The other six are mired in the bogs of development and the work comes in fits and starts for a number of reasons:

The internet is slow and flaky here and the power goes out a lot. This means my productivity is way below what I would be able to achieve with a stable electrical supply and a non-flaky internet connection. It can take all day to upload content to a site if the connection doesn’t die on you in the midst of the data transfer. The electrical current varies from flickering to non-existent to normal, and there will be days where it’s fluctuating between flickering and non-existent for hours at a time.

Web sites are a new concept for a lot of people here. Well, they aren’t a *new* concept, per se, as much as they don’t really know what they’ll use a web site for once they’ve been given one. For example, I’m building a site for an alumni organization that’s made up of Congolese who have been to school in America in some capacity. A web site would offer them a great opportunity to network with other alumni, the universities they attended in the states, other Congolese, etc.

Initially they were most interested in what kind of logo they would have for their organization, and if it was possible to animate the words in the logo so they could spin around. They also gave me a lot of personal photos that, while nice, really don’t belong on a professional website.

Last week we had a workshop at the US Embassy and talked about what a website is for and what should be on it. We were able to scrap such requests as a live webchat option for members, a directory of all US Embassy locations and addresses worldwide, and a comprehensive list of US policy statements on any and all international matters. Now, we’ve narrowed it down so that we’re just looking to get news, calendar, history, donation, and contact sections on the site.

I guess what I’ve had to get used to is the way the internet is seen here. It’s not seen as a business tool as much as a bit of a novelty. It’s kind of like the way the internet was seen back in the late 90s, where people weren’t exactly sure what it could do for them. The web is here – people just don’t use it in their day-to-day lives like most of those in the West do. Here, most users have to go to internet cafes to access the web so they can read email, look at their Facebook pages, or check on football (soccer) news. Rather than use the web to communicate to Congolese here in the city of Kinshasa, it will be more helpful for these organizations to communicate with Congolese spread across the DRC via a website and, by extension, those who have left the country and are now living in North America or Europe. It’s a great way for them to reach the rest of the world.

Payment is not easy to come by. One of the conditions for me working on these websites is that these organizations will have to pay for the hosting of their sites themselves. I’ll create the site, but they’ll have to find a way to pay a web hosting service to host the site. Web hosting isn’t that expensive, maybe $100 a year, and the cost isn’t the hangup. The problem is that nobody around here has a credit card. Everything in Kinshasa is paid in cash, and web hosting services accept payment via credit card. When pressed, people around here can find a way to pay for something with a credit card, but it tends to take a while to scare up those connections.

Things just move slowly here. The tired old joke here is about how so-and-so is late because they’re on “Africa time” and while it’s tired and not funny any more, it’s true. People show up for meetings hours late or don’t show up at all, and despite countless emails and phone calls, I’ll go for weeks without hearing from someone I’m working with on a website or need content from. At first it was frustrating for me, but after a while I learned how to deal with it. It might be tricky for me to handle developing six different websites at once in a faster-paced environment, but when I’m only hearing from my collaborators twice a month (if that), it gives me a lot of downtime to switch between several projects.

Most days I start work around 8am. Working from home has its advantages as there’s no commute time, I can wear whatever I like, and lunch is whatever I feel like cooking up. Today I have a sort of Andrew WK getup on (white shorts with a white t-shirt and I’m a little unshaven – no long hair, sadly). I spend my days playing around with software to develop websites, meeting with people, making phone calls, emailing, and researching. Last week I spent a couple days taking pictures at a local school to add to a site I’m working on. Once a week I go to the US Embassy (not dressed like Andrew W.K., of course) to meet with my boss and spend the day there. I really like my boss a lot – she’s been a big help in connecting me with people around town, getting me supplies I need to do my job, and helping me with advice and problems I run into.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve actually come across a few other job opportunities but I’m pretty happy with what I’m doing now. The work is interesting and varied, I’m learning new skills and using my work experience, and I get to work with locals and help them help themselves. I’m sure that all sounds like it came out of a Peace Corps brochure, but it’s the truth.

Another voice from Kinshasa

I've gotta pass along this blog entry from our friends Adam and Sarah Sensamaust. Adam teaches at TASOK and Sarah is a contractor as the US Embassy, like I am. They went to Thailand over Christmas break and left their dauschund mix, Falafel, in the car of Joseph, a Congolese guy who's also apparently a budding dog-sitter. Joseph was kind enough to email Adam and Sarah while they were on vacation and keep them posted on Falafel's well-being during their absence. I think his emails are fantastic and I wanted to share them.

Our new apartment, and my gig as a substitute

Our return to Kinshasa has thus far been a return to normalcy, at least as normal as things can be around here. Day to day life is fairly ordinary provided you’re used to things regular power outages, bathtub-sized potholes, and staggering administrative inefficiency (to name a few).

Last Friday, my wife called me while I was at work to say that our landlord called to tell her that we had to move out of our apartment the next day since they were going to begin demolishing it. As I mentioned in a previous entry, we were told we had to move out of our apartment and there was a lot of scrambling on our part and ACME’s part to find us a new place to live. On the day we started moving out of our apartment, the landlady told us that an apartment was available in the same complex as our current apartment, and we could move in after we got back from our vacation. When we returned from our trip, we were told that they had to install new windows and block up some old windows in the new apartment, so we should sit tight for a while. We both figured it would be weeks or even months until the new windows were installed. I was surprised to hear that they were ready for us to move so quickly.

As it turns out, there were no new windows installed. I guess that’s a project for later on down the road. Our new place is pretty nice. It’s a one-bedroom instead of our old two-bedroom, but I’d guess the square footage is the same as in our old place. We now have a bathtub, running hot and cold water in the bathroom sink, nicer air conditioning units, and better furniture (both apartments are furnished). The only things missing from our new place were an internet connection and a washing machine.

We had our internet installed on Saturday, and today they’re installing the hookups for our washing machine. They had installed a hookup for the water line for the washing machine last week, and it failed in a spectacular fashion on Friday. The valve was barely held together and when I went to turn the water on on Friday, the valve burst and started spraying water like a fire hose. I was soaked, the bathroom walls were soaked, and our apartment started to flood. After some confusion and a number of frantic phone calls, the maintenance guys rushed in and figured out a way to stem the flow to a drip, and we then spent a few hours on Friday cleaning up all the water. Thank goodness we have tile floors. Here’s hoping the work they’re doing today is of a much higher caliber.

Last week I had my first experience as a substitute teacher. I got a call from the secretary at TASOK, and she asked if I could sub for the computer science teacher who would be in South Africa for a week-long conference. I said sure, why not? I had three classes to teach – middle-school computer science, high-school computer science, and the publications class. The middle-school class was learning to use formulas in Excel and create a three-panel brochure in MS Word. I taught this class with another teacher. The high school class was learning the basics of Adobe Illustrator and they had to create a party invitation or a business card. The publications class was working on the yearbook and I mainly answered questions about the software they were using. In my downtime between classes I helped teachers and students with their various computer questions. The students were all very good and very motivated learners, although some of them have torrid Facebook addictions. Guess some things are the same no matter where you are in the world.