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.