Author: mc7858attitude

Becoming waterproof

There are several signs. Denying few coins to all sort of mendicants for an assorted range of good reasons. Treating harshly the street kids ‘because otherwise they will not respect you’. Pulling the leg of a handicapped man (and this phrase is a bad example too).

I am definitely becoming stranger to the local environment. I am affected by the merciless virus contaminating most of international bureaucrats who recreate all over an impermeable globe avoiding to being affected by the circumstances.

Even the guilt feeling, faithful escort within those exotic missions is quieter, almost silent.

Time for a change?

End of May

This is an endofmay blog, I’m writing to avoid a gap, to fill a possibly empty space, to leave a memory of this month.

I came back from Congo.

Not precisely back, as I went to Roma and not Barcelona (from where I left almost two years before).

Now going to Ivory Coast (again, this time really again).

Today on ‘Repubblica’ an article on Ivory Coast on the first page. Just because of the world championship.

I’m probably going back to Abidjan for the wrong reasons, but, at the end, it’s the job.

Kin-Brazza-Kin

We went to the other side.
We did the same we could have done here; some shopping, lunch in a café, breakfast in an international hotel, newspapers.
Not much for the discovering of a country.
But without telephone, far away from the office and by way of a trip on the river as adventure topping.
Old Brazza would be revolving in his grave.

The Commission

The Electoral Commission is much alike a Ministry: long corridors, bureaux, people wandering around.

The upper floor is carpeted: less people, less noise, less animation.

Everybody seems to know me and greets me.

It’s a nice feeling, as being part of some thing.

(Of course, I appreciate better these details since I decided to leave).

My vote saved my country

I’ve voted abroad. A piece of one of the six foreigner senators is mine. I have contributed to the healing of poor Italia. May not last long, but it is quite a satisfaction.

Why did we suppose remote Italians were right wing? They might be, but in Italy the problem is not to have the right in government, but to have thugs occupying the power for their own interest.

Welcome back, old, tired, confuse but yet decorous Italy.

And now I become a ‘Boltonian’

After my upsetting swift towards christian democrat stances (see the blog of 9 February 2005) I am now becoming a supporter of the new US Ambassador to the United Nations, the moustached Mr. Bolton.

Of course I can’t like him, but his suggestion to eliminate some floors of the ‘Palazzo di vetro’ and the assumption that nobody would note the difference is a substantial one, which many could subscribe. I do. If the 50% of UN personnel in this mission would disappear, that would not cause too much trouble for the RDC. What’s more, it could help.

 

The ‘brousse’

Finally, I went around in Congo.

It was not the tropical forest neither the navigation of Congo river, but it was different from Kinshasa.

Kabinda, Mweneditu, Mbuji Mayi; bad roads, long queues of small traders pushing overcharged bicycles under the sun for many kilometres to gain some francs in the town reselling the mais purchased from the producers.

Once, we got stuck in the mud (souvenir de Cambodge). We had to sleep in the vehicle and ask for the help of people from a nearby village to go back on the road.

I’ve bought a ‘daba’, primordial engine for field work, still used everywhere.  20 years ago I bought another one, in Burkina Faso, as a gift for my father. He would have made a good development worker.

 

Betelo

It is around 500 meters from home to the office. We go walking along a little street plenty of money changers, cabines telephoniques, small businesses and food sellers.

At first they called me Jean Baptiste. Then Simon Pierre or, often, Simon Betelo (probably in lingala, meaning unknown, might be stone: pierre), now, sometime, Jesu. It happened also in the Kasai region.

I suppose the reason is a combination of my clear and ample clothes and my growing hairs and beard, in a country (a continent) where all males are nowadays headshaved.

I’m not sure if I like it, but I got used to it.

I generally do not answer to those salutations, from time to time I just smile.