Luxuries and necessities

The plane trip from the DR Congo capital, Kinshasa, to Tshikapa in West Kasai province was long enough for a nice little lunch service. That would be the last conventional luxury for a while but we were not exactly roughing it. It was a short walk over sandy paths from the airport to the brand new Centennial Center and guesthouse. Our baggage was hauled on the back of a truck. A young lady was summoned to carry my big suitcase the rest of the way to my room. It was a lot lighter than before but still too heavy for me and my bum knee.

The rooms smelled of fresh cement. Screens weren’t up on the windows yet but the beds were draped with mosquito nets. The bathrooms, each shared by two rooms, had sit-down toilets. This would become very important to me. I’d had plenty of experience with squat toilets in my world-traveling past and I thought I could deal with anything. But I was older now and temporarily crippled. Suffice it to say that during the whole trip I would have to use squat toilets only three times, and each time was traumatic because it had the potential to become an “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” scenario.

There was no water in the bathrooms, however. The cistern/pump/running water scheme was not yet functioning properly, and at the time we moved in the alternative barrel/bucket/pitcher scheme had not been set up either. No water, only one or two buckets for 30 people. Within a day, both the running water and the barrel/bucket system were functioning, though the latter was far more dependable than the former. Running water came to seem like a luxury, not a necessity.

The thing to remember was that the cistern at the bottom of the property, from which water was either pumped or carried to our bathrooms, was itself filled by carried water. Every drop we poured upon our dusty feet had been carried some distance in a basin atop someone’s head. I soon learned to shower with a pitcher and less than half a bucket of water. And I felt just as clean afterward as if I’d stood 15 minutes under a spray of hot water. Well, almost.

Cooks Anto, Anne Marie, and Albertine boil water for morning tea and coffee and cheer on the water carriers.

Before the opening service we were served a delicious meal, prepared in an outdoor makeshift kitchen. The center’s intended kitchen was even less finished than the rooms, just a large empty space with a countertop and potential sink. All the food prep and dishwashing took place outside on charcoal burners and in big plastic basins. African cooks may be used to preparing food this way but they are not used to doing it day in and day out for 30 people. Nevertheless, the women who served us did an amazing job over that week, providing three nutritious, tasty meals a day, singing while they worked. Once I tried to get my tea first thing in the morning, like I am used to doing, but that upset the routine considerably and I never asked again.

But during that week in Tshikapa, it was music that became both luxury and necessity. We got a taste of things to come as we arrived and were welcomed by the singing, dancing ladies of the Thousand Voices choir, dressed in the specially printed pink cloth marking the centennial. And later as the opening ceremonies got underway, choir after choir brought heaven to the hot, crowded hall. I knew then that for me it would be all about the music.