Read Online A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lisa Shannon
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through.
Whew. That was easy.
We drive up a hill about two city blocks before we hit the real border crossing, on the Congo side. Men in shabby tracksuits, sporting Kalashnikovs, lurk by the side of the road. I get out and enter a small cement-block room, where Congolese border officials size me up, stamp my paperwork, and usher me out again. Back in the SUV, three men approach and survey the carâs contents, standing uncomfortably close to my window, glaring. One of them presses my hosts for God knows what. His eyes confirm the folkloreâthey tell me Iâm in Congo, with their hard, glazed-over look that makes me wonder what heâs seen, what heâs done, and if there is a soul left inside.
Christine meets him with a laugh. Is she teasing him? I canât tell, but Iâm taking mental notes. Laugh. Laugh. When in danger, laugh. Everyone is your best friend.
They want to search the car. My driver shoves cash toward the man and says something. Christine translates, âThe driver told that guy to buy himself a Coke.â
As we pull away, I hum to myself that Coke ad from the eighties, the one they played during Saturday morning cartoons.
Â
Iâ d like to buy the world a Coke,
And furnish it with love . . .
Something, something, turtle doves . . .
Itâs the real thing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Real Thing
WELCOME TO BUKAVU, a far cry from Rwanda. I stare out my Range Rover window, which is rolled all the way up tight, and comb the scene on Bukavuâs main drag. The landscape is identical to what I saw in Rwanda. Hills jut along the lake, forming pockets and outcrops draped with greenery. Each hill, dotted with compounds, is a mirror image of the next one.
In Bukavu, however, the signs are everywhere that all is not well. It feels raw and dusty. Corroded shopfronts and old lakeside villas stand like outlines in chalk, sketches of a dignified past, imprints of a grandeur that has been stripped and rotted under the chokehold of chaos. I can picture the villas filled with pleasure seekersâpeople on holiday alongside Mobutu in the lush gardens, savoring tropical fruit and tea with sugar and milk. Today, the old villas are either roofless, crumbling shells or theyâre shrouded by high cement walls capped with razor wire and jagged shards of glass, men in hand-me-down security uniforms stationed at their rusty gates.
Open-air jeeps marked âUNâ crawl up and down the streets; they are mounted with giant machine guns and cramped with Pakistani army guys whose hands never wander far from the trigger. Traders line the streets with wooden
crates; theyâre selling phone cards, cassava flour, soaps, or clothes that look they were rescued from Goodwill bins. The washed-out roads are more like dry river-beds. I was warned I will need an SUV to drive anywhere outside of Bukavu, but by the look of things, Iâll need an SUV to get anywhere inside Bukavu too. The air is different here. Rwanda breathes; purged of demons, cleansed with soft rains and the governmentâs progressive agenda, it hums with prospects. Not so in Congo. The air here is thick with paranoia, like rancid garbage dumped by strangers and left to fester in the yard.
Women, like pack mules, carry loads of cassava flour, firewood, stone, and other commodities up steep hills. Sometimes their cargo is twice their size. With the impassible roads and gutted local economy, there are few vehicles left and all the livestock and bicycles have been looted. The transport of last resort is the backs of women. They transfer petty goods to keep the essentials of life and the local economy crawling forward. Those loads must weigh, what, 150 pounds? Hunched over, women lug the loads with straps slung around their foreheads, digging into their skin. They are sweating, steady, focused. Itâs a struggle journalist Ted Koppel once compared to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was destined to keep rolling a boulder up a
Whew. That was easy.
We drive up a hill about two city blocks before we hit the real border crossing, on the Congo side. Men in shabby tracksuits, sporting Kalashnikovs, lurk by the side of the road. I get out and enter a small cement-block room, where Congolese border officials size me up, stamp my paperwork, and usher me out again. Back in the SUV, three men approach and survey the carâs contents, standing uncomfortably close to my window, glaring. One of them presses my hosts for God knows what. His eyes confirm the folkloreâthey tell me Iâm in Congo, with their hard, glazed-over look that makes me wonder what heâs seen, what heâs done, and if there is a soul left inside.
Christine meets him with a laugh. Is she teasing him? I canât tell, but Iâm taking mental notes. Laugh. Laugh. When in danger, laugh. Everyone is your best friend.
They want to search the car. My driver shoves cash toward the man and says something. Christine translates, âThe driver told that guy to buy himself a Coke.â
As we pull away, I hum to myself that Coke ad from the eighties, the one they played during Saturday morning cartoons.
Â
Iâ d like to buy the world a Coke,
And furnish it with love . . .
Something, something, turtle doves . . .
Itâs the real thing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Real Thing
WELCOME TO BUKAVU, a far cry from Rwanda. I stare out my Range Rover window, which is rolled all the way up tight, and comb the scene on Bukavuâs main drag. The landscape is identical to what I saw in Rwanda. Hills jut along the lake, forming pockets and outcrops draped with greenery. Each hill, dotted with compounds, is a mirror image of the next one.
In Bukavu, however, the signs are everywhere that all is not well. It feels raw and dusty. Corroded shopfronts and old lakeside villas stand like outlines in chalk, sketches of a dignified past, imprints of a grandeur that has been stripped and rotted under the chokehold of chaos. I can picture the villas filled with pleasure seekersâpeople on holiday alongside Mobutu in the lush gardens, savoring tropical fruit and tea with sugar and milk. Today, the old villas are either roofless, crumbling shells or theyâre shrouded by high cement walls capped with razor wire and jagged shards of glass, men in hand-me-down security uniforms stationed at their rusty gates.
Open-air jeeps marked âUNâ crawl up and down the streets; they are mounted with giant machine guns and cramped with Pakistani army guys whose hands never wander far from the trigger. Traders line the streets with wooden
crates; theyâre selling phone cards, cassava flour, soaps, or clothes that look they were rescued from Goodwill bins. The washed-out roads are more like dry river-beds. I was warned I will need an SUV to drive anywhere outside of Bukavu, but by the look of things, Iâll need an SUV to get anywhere inside Bukavu too. The air is different here. Rwanda breathes; purged of demons, cleansed with soft rains and the governmentâs progressive agenda, it hums with prospects. Not so in Congo. The air here is thick with paranoia, like rancid garbage dumped by strangers and left to fester in the yard.
Women, like pack mules, carry loads of cassava flour, firewood, stone, and other commodities up steep hills. Sometimes their cargo is twice their size. With the impassible roads and gutted local economy, there are few vehicles left and all the livestock and bicycles have been looted. The transport of last resort is the backs of women. They transfer petty goods to keep the essentials of life and the local economy crawling forward. Those loads must weigh, what, 150 pounds? Hunched over, women lug the loads with straps slung around their foreheads, digging into their skin. They are sweating, steady, focused. Itâs a struggle journalist Ted Koppel once compared to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was destined to keep rolling a boulder up a
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