Our Day in the DRC: Fun and Games for All

So, after meeting the mayor and exploring our relic of a hotel, we woke up the next day ready to see as much as possible that day before moving on. Adventures awaited.

Given the, er, "patchy" tourist infrastructure available in the newly-liberated UN protectorate of Goma, David and I found we basically had to rent a car, complete with driver and guide, to get out of the city and see the area at all.

We thus passed a lovely morning with Jacques and Alain, visiting the beautiful lakes, the refugee camps, an orphanage, and the ruins left behind after the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in 2002. This last was pretty impressive to see, as the thick lava leveled whole swaths of the town before hardening in place, leaving wide black tracks across old-town Goma. The rippled black rivers now double as a nature-made road network, but I think for driving comfort I would prefer some of the worst that Ethiopia has to offer.

For the sake of my father the geologist, we also went up to the monitoring stations where volcanologists monitor a series of indicators to predict seismic activity. They told us about each of these in excruciating detail while I privately remembered why it is that I have no interest in following in my dad's rocky footsteps. (I plucked up a couple of weirdly bubbled rocks from the ground for him though.)

Freed at last and escaping in haste to our car, I started to ask David what he wanted me to translate, but he stopped me short - "Don't bother."

Interestingly, we learned (among other things) that the other volcano, not to be outdone by its twin, is ALSO now set to erupt. They predict the event as happening "not this week but possibly next", and they think lava's going to flow away from Goma this time. So that's nice.

After the volcano and the orphanage, we drove out to the refugee camps. Unlike the carnage of the lava flows, which despite their destruction had moved far too slowly to kill anyone and which have not registered as a painful tragedy in local memory, this was a scene of legitimate misery, and David and I shied away from going in. Something about wandering around to gawk at displaced, tormented families in their ad-hoc UNHCR shelters seems a bit .. insensitive.

Our final sight-seeing stop consisted of the amazing lakes that surround Goma, made more unusual by the fact that enough lava flowed into them in 2002 to leave behind considerable methane deposits. (Go ask my dad if you want to know why or how.) The local population, come to the shore to collect the methany water, found us more than interesting entertainment, and while I gawked at misty Lake Kivu, they gawked at me.

The locals weren't the only ones to mark our arrival with interest, however, and before long we were joined by two men, one in civilian and one in military attire. Wanting to see our papers, they requested we walk over to their ramshackle shed of a police-post set up at one side of the rocky shore.

We have often been stopped like this, especially in zones with high UN/military presence, and neither one of us was particularly alarmed. Not until we got inside and produced our papers did I realize there would be a problem.

Casting aside David's passport, the civilian, at pains to convey his importance, flipped through mine from the first page to the last with a critical eye and an idleness which made made me suspect he had nothing better to do. I pointed out both the visa, obtained at the embassy in Kigoma, and my valid entry stamp - dated only the day before - but neither of these things seemed to mollify him. After scruntinizing them both, he launched an impressively creative series of attempts to declare one or both illegitimate.

First the bureaucrat pointed out the date listed on the visa, the date of application, as a "false entry". Then he insisted that since my visa gave "une seule entrée", it was only for one day. Monsieur reached a new level of the ridiculous when he declared that the official signature validating my entry stamp was actually someone scribbling on it, rendering it void. After all these attempts fizzled out into nothing, he began to interrogate me more closely on why we were there, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at my claim that we were only tourists. "If you're tourists," he pressed with knowing skepticism, "what are you doing in Congo??"

It's kind of a hard question to answer, if you think about it.

I said something to the effect of seeing the volcano, and the lakes, et cetera. It sounded pathetic even to me.

Monsieur Bureaucrat went back to the one-day point. I pointed out the words on the visa that granted "un séjour", or "one stay", prompting a new discussion quibbling over exactly how long "un séjour" signified. Awkwardly, although the stamped visa actually stated "un mois", a month, the quality was so poor it was hard to make out the "mois." Mr. Bureaucrat seized upon this point, prepared to take it as far as possible. (By the bye, he had still not so much as glanced at David's papers.) Gaining momentum from his conviction, he made a great show of squinting at the stamp and declaring it completely illegible, which unfortunately wasn't far from the truth.

Alain the driver, who had come to appoint himself something of a personal bodyguard for me over the course of the morning, chose this moment to reveal his shining armour and began to argue loudly that my papers were completely valid, as they were, and the hold-up ridiculous, as it was. Unfortunately this did not have the best of effects on Mr. Bureaucrat, who got angrier in turn and began to claim that I was also missing a whole extra set of papers, some mysterious "carte de séjour". I began to sweat and looked over at David, who, incomprehensibly, looked calm, disinterested, even a little bored. I had the impression he was perhaps mentally charting out the details of our travel through Guinnea-Bissau.

I looked back at the bureaucrat who, thwarted by Alain and the lack of support from the other three or four police/military (who knew?) hanging around the tiny room, gave up on my passport and idly picked up David's.

It was then that he got his big break.

It seems that the official at the border, in stamping David's entry date, had carelessly allowed the date to fall mostly on the "sortie" [exit] line as opposed to "entrée". While the mistake was fairly obvious to everyone in the shack, the fact remained that David had never officially been stamped into the D.R.C.

An excited flurry possessed Monsieur, and he eagerly went back to my passport to see if mine had shared David's stamping fate. No luck there, though; while mine too had been carelessly done, the date was amost entirely on "entrée". Disappointed but not defeated, he resumed his case with David's and began busting out the big guns. Soon the words "investigation" and "chef de police" began to fly menacingly around the room. It abruptly occurred to me in a horribly hilarious realization that I actually had the personal cell phone members of both the Mayor and the Commandant de Police de Goma. Jacques pulled out his portable to call his boss at the tour company, only to be quickly snapped at to Put that phone away! No calls!!

Oh my god, I thought, this isn't America. We don't get a phone call.

Inspection of David's passport resumed, and the discovery of his proper Rwandan exit stamp at bordering Gisenye on the same day as his Congolese stamp (incidentally, also the same day we claimed to have entered) seemed to bolster our case. We both left Rwanda on the 30th, and one of us entered Congo on the 30th; how could the other have left Congo that same day without ever entering it? Pointing this fact out with deliberate, crystal logic Alain began to grow more energetic in his defense. Finally pinned down, Monsieur snarled back at Alain, finger pointed dangerously, "Tu m'ennerves - [you're pissing me off] TU M'ENNERVES!! Il faut pas commencer d'abord par m'ennerver!! [You had better not start by pissing me off!]"

All was quiet. Monsieur very seriously telephoned his boss for back-up. Then Alain and Jacques were ushered out, and David and I were left alone with Monsieur Bureaucrat and the first soldier. The tension seemed to ease, and Monsieur even began to joke with me a little, asking what souvenirs we'd bought in DRC. Still terrified, I admitted David had bought a mask. Monsieur then glided to the question of asking what souvenirs we'd brought with us from America. Upon hearing that we didn't really carry souvenirs from home as we were tourists, he pointed to my $7 plastic Target watch and said it was quite a nice watch. I was shocked. Even on the day of purchase the thing hadn't been much to look at, and after three months of life with me in Africa it neither looked nor smelled too pleasant. When I pointed to it in disbelief, he asked if maybe I wanted to give it to him as a keepsake. You know, to remember me by.

A normal bribe I would have been ready for, but this??
French is not my most eloquent language, and I stammered back, "But Monsieur.. it smells."

He then shifted tack, pointing to the soldier and describing how the man was hungry. He began to elaborate on this point with some emotion, asking what I had that I could give the plump, hungry soldier, while I wondered privately what a Target watch could do for someone's hunger. Put on the spot, I confessed I had some biscuits in the car. The soldier said he would happily accept a biscuit.

But what about for me?? the bureaucrat persisted. Me, I don't like biscuits.

I had kept up a running translation of all this to David, who volunteered at this point that he had an egg in the car. Monsieur brightened. An egg? He seemed to like eggs very much. An egg? I gaped. What?? Quoi???

David offered the egg to him cheerfully. I was distraught - he had purchased four eggs fresh that morning, one for each of us, and I had already scarfed mine down. Whose egg was he giving away?? He answered it was his own, but he was prepared to go without. Monsieur was exeuberant, and accepted the offer with kingly grace, declaring why don't we all go and fetch the egg from the car. Allons ensemble chercher l'oeuf. Don't forget the biscuit! the soldier interjected. And the biscuit! Monsieur assented.

So, we all trooped outside and met up with the soldier/policemen/Alain/Jacques cluster. Not knowing where to begin, I said to Jacques, "The monsieur wants an egg."

"What?" Jacques was understandably confused. "Un quoi??"

"David's egg," I went on, feeling ridiculously as though I were trapped in a scene from Catch-22.

Alain, however, was decidedly stubborn about unlocking the car for the egg-fetching, so we ended up standing around on the rocks waiting for the bureaucrat's boss to arrive while the population stared at us and I stared, this time, miserably at the ground. I tried to look as forlorn as possible, wondering if we'd be able to use crowd appeal to get free. At some point during this time another of the police bureaucrats, this one in a Muslim cap, sidled up to David to ask him, "So, do you have 1500 francs for me??"

Quicker on his feet than I, David chose instead to recite the Bismillah, the opening verse of the Qu'ran, in which the reciter begs the lord to help him stay on the straight and narrow path. Shortly thereafter, the Muslim left David alone.

The noisy arrival of the awaited chief was cause for much excitement, and we all trooped back into the shack with our growing bevy of police/military men. The boisterously jovial big-fish-in-small-pond generously shook hands with everyone present before seating himself grandly in the shack's only chair. Passports were produced, pages pawed through, stamps examined, and at the end of it the chief came to the same conclusion as the rest of us: it had been badly stamped. What do you know.

Monsieur le Chef benevolently dismissed the issue as pas de problème, and our passports were returned to us. Everyone in the shack was suddenly patting someone else on the back; we were all best friends now. Spreading his arms wide and smiling broadly, Monsieur le Chef declared immortally to us, "Vous voyez, [you see], le Congo, c'est le pays d'hospitalité! [Congo is the country of hospitality!]"

Yes. Clearly.

Monsieur le Bureaucrat was, this time, all smiles and sunshine, and I was happy to play along as our conversation moved us closer to the door. "We have to be careful, you know," he began, "but of course! one never knows," I picked up the slack, "especially now, after the war," he continued, "you really have to be careful," I completed understandingly, and we all shook hands again and walked out smiling.

I began to book it as casually as possible for the car with Alain. We got there, we got in, we shut (and I locked) the doors. Allons-y, I said, let's go, let's go...

It wasn't quite over yet, though... one final shake-down remained. Monsieur le Bureaucrat had followed us with the hungry pot-bellied soldier to the car and, tapping on my locked window, he returned to the issue of the biscuits. I was stubborn and suddenly forgot great expanses of my French. What biscuit? who said anything about a biscuit? I have no idea what you're saying. David and Jacques safely in the car, I said goodbye with much politeness to the would-be biscuit-stealers, and we drove off.

We didn't start laughing until we got a good distance away, but once we did it was hard to stop. Then David started us all up again by declaring suddenly from the backseat: "You know what? I'M GONNA EAT MY EGG !"