First Impressions

Forget game parks or even Victoria Falls, the ultimate African adventure is crossing the border into the DRCongo at Kasumbalesa. Trucks queue up for ten kilometers either side of the border. The road is a too narrow blacktop, unmarked and uncontrolled. Cars carefully squeeze their way though the line of giant transports, pot holes and mud holes adding to the difficulty. Scores of unemployed young men vie for the position of traffic director, hoping for payment for their help. Hundreds of people walking in the road, bicycles and motorcycles weaving around the traffic. Venders set up stalls as close to the road as possible, close enough to add to the push of people and cars. The smell of sulfur from poorly tuned diesel engines fills the air. Back in the 1990’s this was a terrifying place, now it is just an amazing intersection of commerce. Police and soldiers are few, and the crowd is on its own to negotiate its way to the new immigration and customs buildings. Both Zambia and DRC have built new buildings this last year. This seems to have made life easier for the immigration and customs officer, they are safe behind their desks in spacious, air conditioned buildings. I guess this has an indirect positive effect on the masses. The officers are in a better mood.

Here’s a political reflection: The U.S. has exhausted its global assets in waging war, while China has been busy spending its American dollars in far away places like Africa. Chinese construction companies building roads and Olympic sized soccer stadiums, Chinese mining companies taking over the mines, Chinese trucks and cars. Last night I walked downtown Lubumbashi to see the night life. A jumbotron screen on the former post office building, now owned by the Chinese telecom company, was showing American professional cage fighting. We’re getting our global economic butts kicked by the Chinese, and its not even on our political radar.

The DRCongo is still the most broken place in all the world. I am personally overwhelmed by the need. On the other hand, there is a special kind of excitement here. In all of the chaos, there is hope. On the bus to Kitwe, a preacher was preaching his New Year’s sermon on Psalm 104. He said, “You can’t stop a thing, when it is the thing’s time.” He was certain that this year is the time to eradicate malaria and AIDS, the time for those on the bus looking for work to find a job, family relationships to be repaired, and I would add, the time for nations to be healed.

Bob

Lubumbashi