Christmas check-points

I wondered where I was last year during the Christmas holidays, and I realized just how far from me, just one year ago, the perception and the idea of spending this Christmas in a place like Brazzaville was. Here I perceive few the arriving Christmas. I could also say that the only source of awareness is the calendar because, to my western eyes, all the typical signs that characterize it in my town, here are virtually absent, except that here, these two-week holiday, use other symbols to be recognized. In the streets lights and decorations are rare. Fake firs around are few and tiny, what’s more. The most plentiful is Asia, a big shop managed by Chinese people, who are colonizing Brazzaville, like the Congo, like the rest of Africa. The only place where I saw an unusual crowd and queues is Casino, a French supermarket of the homonym chain, the only European supermarket in town, with prices that reach even to be five times higher than in Europe. Then, the hot humid climate of equatorial Africa has none of the western symbolism of cold Christmas, whitened by snow. Next to the items missing, however, there are others that exist only here, and they can probably help a bit in understanding this country, or maybe even more than it seems. From mid-December, in fact, in many areas of the town, police checkpoints spring up like mushrooms. I asked the cause of this to different categories of people: whites, Congolese, the taxi drivers who carry me here and there in my trips in town. The funny thing is that I have collected at least five or six different versions, some quite fanciful, others appear to be off-the-record, another one I could define official (and came out directly from the mouth of a policeman, the least credible one) and yet others simply dictated by common sense. Without batting an eye, a taxi driver who seemed knowledgeable (but seemed only) explained to me that the problem would be created by the removal of the chief of police after a dodgy affaire that he would have had with a minister. Such removal would create a power vacuum, and the policemen do what they want until they can. Yes, because the controls are not aimed to nothing, but often end in a request for a small sum of money (if all goes well, a thousand francs, just over a euro and a half) to let it pass. And with the coming holidays, an extra salary is good. Another interesting version is the one according to which the checkpoint are in place because the Ninja rebel group, which is located in the South of the country, might have evil intentions in this period, and then it would be necessary to have strict monitoring. The official version, linked to it, is the most obvious, and not worth telling.
The question is ultimately quite simple: a simple policeman earns 40 thousand francs a month (less than 70 euros) and around Christmas is exploiting its minimum power, with the clear approval of his superiors, to supplement their income and afford a little celebration. One consequence is that taxi drivers try to avoid areas where they know there are check-points and another one is the unending queues and traffic jams. To go around in town these days, therefore, is not the simplest thing. But beyond these considerations, I find it humanly difficult to blame the cops, who commit abuse but they are part of a system in which certain definitions are quite slippery and in any case contain a sharp boundary between theory and practice. Also because then I discovered that most of the taxis in town (and you should consider they represent 80% of the chaotic traffic in the capital) are property of senior police officers in high levels, and, paradoxically, for this reason they licensed to drive (crazily) as they wish during the rest of the year (who would want to stop the taxi of his boss?). To want to look cynically, in the end the superiors give their subordinates a supplement of salary ahead of the celebrations, a bit to defuse tension, a little to boost the mood, a little because at Christmas we are all better people. But go and explain to taxi drivers.

Mundélé

The first word I learned of Lingala, one of the main Congolese languages, is Mundélé. The mundélé are the whites, who are always noticed at the first moment and studied, squared, analyzed in the gestures, clothing, in the way of talking, laughing and moving.
The mundélé living in Brazzaville (generally staff working for embassies or international organizations) are seen mainly downtown, where the city apparently tries to give the maximum offering a few stores and night clubs of european mould. In the rest of the city instead, popular quarters, markets, on the minibus that for 150 francs (a bit less than 25 euro cent) will take you everywhere, the mundélé never show up except on rare occasions. The white people I met here in Brazzaville, and of whom I have been host, have houses often surrounded by 4 meters walls, which don’t lack any comfort: generator, air conditioning, TV, european food products (here typically they cost three or four times more). I realize that while my choice was the result of a desire nurtured and rocked for years, in their case it was primarily a series of combinations to have brought them here. The will (or need) to continue to live as they lived in their country prevails in them, with the consequence that they suffer much the loneliness and the detachment from their country.
For the work that I do with my colleagues, I live the everyday life of Brazzaville and I often go into the slums, in the poorest areas of the city, where running water, electricity and sewerage system are abstract and distant concepts. In my daily tours I often feel to be the focus of an unjustified attention. The glances that I notice (and I imagine that they are only a small part) are curious, sometimes seem to be intimidated, others open suddenly into big smiles. What I feel more often, however (and who knows how close or far from reality my impression is) is a strange mix of curiosity, admiration, perhaps even envy for the model and even the world that at their eyes represent a mundélé. Before coming here I have been warned that a white person here is actually green: he has the colour of the dollar (rightly or wrongly) with everything that goes with it in various situations that can occur daily. When it is the case that a group of people is noting me, it is almost unavoidable to raise a small chorus of "mundélé-mundélé-mundélé”. I have been told that there is nothing wrong with that, and indeed the presence of a white is often the source of amusement and surprise. I think, using my cultural code, that if I said "black-black-black" every time I see one in Italy, it would not be exactly the same thing.
The first time I took the minibus, among the other passengers an animated and amused discussion in Lingala has raised about the presence of my colleagues and me, and who knows what else. Even the other minibuses and taxis that we flanked participated in the opinions exchange, and from the windows they threw incomprehensible comments and amused faces. Although my participation was passive because of the language, the surprise and the good-natured laughter aroused by my presence amused me and began to show me a small part of the character and heart of the Congolese people, the simplicity and spontaneity devoid of a superstructure and of those mental blocks so common in my country when people have to confront others with a different culture and customs.

My arrival

I arrived in Congo Brazzaville yesterday. About eight hours from Paris, flying over half Africa. Available for each seat, a screen with a rich menu including movies, news, music, documentaries, games and various other amenities. I feel as if the Western culture wanted to accompany me with its wealth until the black heart of Africa, that maybe it is going to come up with a final attempt to change my mind or remind me what I'm giving up for the year to come. I'm curious to look at the lands I’m flying over, but the clouds and a view partially covered by a wing don’t allow me to see much. I see the compact yellow brown colour of Sahara and then practically nothing else. At sunset, I see the sun burning clouds on the horizon, making them tremble while drawing beautiful and somehow violent shapes. I watch charmed my first African sunset.
When the aircraft prepares itself to land, outside is already deep dark. My curiosity is rekindled my curiosity, I catch a glimpse the lights of Brazzaville: orange, dim and rather sparse lights indicate houses and cars. When we are very low, I recognize a long queue of cars: naively, I did not expect to see a traffic jam on the way out from Brazzaville.
The runway is dimly lit, but apparently it’s enlightened enough to make a landing without any problems. I try to scan the world beyond the window, but with the little light even the rain makes the vision blurred. When I’m out on the ladder, the sweater that sheltered me from the air conditioning of the plane sticks on my skin.
In the hall of the airport, a large room lit by bare neon, a policeman makes me fill out a form where I have to declare that I have no H1N1 symptoms. After a punctilious passport control, I go to get my bags and I am overwhelmed by the chaos and Congolese guys of all ages who offer me their help to bring out my two heavy suitcases. Some people enter, get out, come back, take bags and bags, push carts talking and shouting. I find the way out; in the meanwhile, a policeman is creating trouble to my two colleagues, Alice and Claudia: he would extort something, but that’s not his lucky attempt. At the exit Laura, the volunteer who awaits us and that we find in the chaos that reigns supreme even in the parking outside the airport, manages the situation perfectly and the policeman has to leave his purpose. In me confusion prevails over any other sensation, too many new stimuli, too cheerful and perhaps nervous confusion, and then the rain that continues to fall, dark and dim lights that don’t help me to focus on the place where I am.
A taxi takes us to what will be my house for the year to come. Even from the back seat I can see little, for a moment I think of De Niro in Taxi driver and all the water that flows on his windshield and the deformed and liquid lights in Manhattan. Then I think that the difficulties of reading the whole new world that surrounds me are not just metaphors, they don’t concern only the difficulties associated with the encounter between cultures. Instead, they are more basic. Sensorial. I make a huge effort to see. Places. The black faces of people. Streets. Houses.
Once home, I have dinner with my new colleagues. We talk about everything and nothing, because I know that the advice and guidance, yet useful, remain theoretical until I will be in concrete situations whom those advice would like to answer even before a question is asked.
I wish to start. And I wish the day to come and finally light will be; I have a great desire to begin to focus on this new world.