The Ambassador's House

I wish they'd let me keep this invitation. The entire crew was invited to the US Ambassador's house last night for a concert by a Brooklyn hip hop band that had been flown out for the occasion. Rap and hip hop are HUGE in the DRC and they're supposed to be playing for a crowd of 10,000 in Kinshasa tonight but there's a massive thunderstorm going on so I'm not sure it's happening.

The event was surreal--a bizarre mixture of expats and Congolese and politicians. I chatted with the Ambassador about his awesome chocolate labrador Sydney and he showed me the house's art collection, which included Warhol and Lichtenstein. Apparently the Embassy curates the house's exhibition every 15 years and it had just been updated.

Some of my new friends and coworkers:



I've been observing and acknowledging and trying to find the words to explain my experience of being a white person (mundele) in Kinshasa. It is a bundle of privileges and expectations and assumptions that I have never encountered before, even when previously traveling in countries where I stood out for my skin color, and whatever race theory and activist practice that my college education and social groups in the USA have taught me are completely irrelevant here. I can't fight racism in the same ways because everything is completely different. I don't know how to be an ally in a culture I don't yet understand or in a language I am still learning. And through it all the core issue is that my skin color equals money, and if it was "just" a class issue the situation would feel more transparent, but of course one seldom comes without the other. Not only that but there is the enormous issue of my safety in a corrupt country with no infrastructure that is in the middle of a massive war. I'll try to put into words my experiences and struggles with these issues once I've got over my (expected but overwhelming) culture shock of being in the middle of them. Stories or experiences by other people who have traveled to anywhere in Africa would be much welcome, so maybe I can sift through this all with more perspective.

This evening it started raining, big fat drops that were larger than quarters. Soon they blended together and then turned into a flood. The desert girl in me has never seen rain like this and it's fascinating. Owen and I sat on the front porch and watched the water collect and I counted seconds and miles for each clap of thunder. Keba our Belgian shepherd panted flat-out in the wet grass and got soaked, occasionally rubbing her wet face against the garden plants to get the rain out of her eyes so she could see us better. The storm is still building, with the palm trees bent sideways in the wind out our bedroom windows and thunder rolling almost constantly like white noise in the distance. Only routine power outages for a few minutes so far today and nothing storm related yet...