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.