First Impressions

First impressions are always tricky, and seem so often to be subject to one’s physical state of being – are you cold or hot? Are you hungry? When was the last time you slept? But I will try this risky venture, to paint a picture of my first two days in Brazzaville. 

I arrived at night, and was driven to INCEF’s building, where I will be staying while in town. The city was dark, with much less light than in other large cities at night. When we turned off the main road, it felt as though we had suddenly turned onto a country road without street lights.

Here is a photo of the front garden, in daylight:

Since I had not slept at all on the two flights over, falling asleep the first night was not problem in spite of the time difference. I climbed into the mosquito-netted bed and fell straight to sleep. After about seven hours, I woke up and realized it was light and I might as well get up. Days near the equator do not vary in length very much throughout the year, so I am enjoying the early morning sunshine very much.

The first tasks on my first day: to change some money, get a local cell phone and SIM card, and get some food. Here, the network of American expats living and working in Brazzaville came to my aid, and connected me with a taxi driver who could help me accomplish all these tasks. I also got a short tour of part of the city, down by the Congo River, and around other neighborhoods. It seems as though the earth is trying constantly to reclaim the roads here, and often succeeds. Pavement will simply disappear, replaced by earth, boulders, potholes the size of a VW, and sometimes shrubs. Sometimes this requires a U-turn, but most often just a careful easing of the taxi around the obstacle.

Here is a photo of the rapids on the Congo River, a little bit north of the city center:

One communicative norm I have noticed is the tooting of taxi horns. Since traffic signals and traffic flow are almost completely arbitrary, drivers use their horns to signal different things to each other. A short toot, “bip!” seems to indicate, “I am here, look out.” It is used when other cars are entering the roadway, or when going around a blind turn, or when making an unusual maneuver such as going up on the sidewalk to get around stalled traffic (in which case the intended audience for the horn blast is the pedestrian in the greatest peril). A longer toot of the horn, “biiiiip!” indicates a driver’s intention to keep going on his course no matter what. “I’m coming through!” Truly irate horn blasts, with the hand laid heavily on the horn and sometimes pumped a few times, are actually quite rare and seem to be reserved for truly egregious violations of the expected norm of traffic flow, usually someone who has caused complete blockage of the road and is not responding nimbly enough to get out of the way.

INCEF’s executive director arrives on Saturday, and my observations of their work will begin at that point. Until then, I am finding my feet in Brazza and learning fast. The sounds outside my window during the day vary from noises I would, in other circumstances, have described as a riot to the sounds of a street party complete with dance tracks. In the evenings is gets quiet. There are new bird sounds in the morning (although I have yet to identify the birds), and a constant heat and humidity that may be my biggest challenge. Eight years in Seattle have weakened my ability to endure temperature extremes, or humidity of any kind. As I said, these notes on first impressions may be seriously affected by the fact that I feel as though I might simply melt at any moment.