The Village

We are in Kalemie, the once thriving port of Albertville on Lake Tanganyika that has been marginalised by the lack of roads and a collapse of the railway system, and which I referred to as an impossible destination in a much earlier blog.

We are in the house of a colleague’s friend, and are offered a drink. The Coca Cola comes from across the lake in Tanzania, in a strangely different bottle. The beer is from Lubumbashi, and arrives by the once-monthly train. We start to discuss the geography: how far is it to Lubumbashi? No one knows. Distance means much less than time – 4 or 5 days, we think. No, someone says it’s less than that: now that the road is so good it is 3-4 days if the ferry over the lake is working. Finally someone comes up with an actual distance: 600km.

The isolation has contradictory economic impacts. Beer is double the cost of what it is in Lubumbashi or Kinshasa, but electricity, at only $10 per month on a fixed tariff, is far less. Housing is ridiculously cheap. To take a case in point, we are sitting in a three bedroom house which, though very rough at the edges, is quite spacious and fairly solid. The rent? $150 per month. One tenth of what it would cost in central Kinshasa.

I had previously admired Kalemie from the air, as it acts as a sort of hub of the UN air system. From up there it looked neat, if somewhat empty. On the ground it it’s a bustling, run-down, overgrown, village. Only the cathedral and railway station (now enlivened by the arrival of a goods train) speak of prouder times.

The hotel we have been sent to looks excellent. It has a welcoming courtyard, and the external verandahs have hacienda-style arches. But as it gets dark, I try to put my light on. Nothing doing. Same in the bathroom. I ask someone to mend it, and though knowing that it was something bigger than a bulb, sit patiently while the staff balance chairs on top of tables and try a succession of bulbs with no effect. After nearly two hours of debate, and fruitless waiting for the manager to appear, they agree to change the room. What I didn’t know was that the room I was moved to was empty for a reason, but by that time I was so fed up with the delays I didn’t really care.

It wasn’t long before the full horror of the plumbing sank it. Shower: no water. Wash basin: no water, no plug. Loo: no seat, water trickling through full-time, so the cistern never fills up.

The management had thoughtfully (knowingly) supplied a little barrel of water, and a small bucket which I could use to wash in. After a wash I did the normal thing and emptied the bucket into the basin. Mistake! The drain from the basin wasn’t connected to anything, and the water simply drained out onto the floor.

The next morning, we were supposed to leave for the airport at 5.45, but when I went to check with my colleagues they told me that since the airport didn’t open until seven they had changed the pick up time to 6.45. This was odd, because when we had arrived yesterday one of the UN staff had told us to check in at 6.00. I could only hold my tongue as the arrangement had already been made.

The long-lost Manager turned up at 6.30, and I took him to one side and complained about the lack of light and the plumbing. He had an unlikely story about how a motorbike had crashed in to their electrical connection the previous evening, which had caused my problem. Then he went on to explain how difficult it was for him. The problem with the toilets seats, he explained, had started when a very large man had squatted with his feet on the seat, village-style, and had broken it. After that he had been ordered by the proprietor to remove the seats from all the toilets.

“You can go and look at them,” he said, “they are all piled up at the back”.

He went on to complain about the lack of good plumbers and the fact that they lie about their capabilities. The complaints went on so long I began to feel sorry for him.

Meanwhile there were more pressing problems. Our car was late: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes – now it turns up.

“Why are you so late?”

“Sorry, sir. We had a problem with the petrol.”

It seemed that not only that the car had run out of petrol, and the owner had only managed to beg or borrow enough to get the car to the hotel. So our first stop had to be at a typical local petrol station consisting a few 5 litre plastic bottles standing on a wooden table. We lent the driver enough money to buy 5 litres and then were off at truly crazy speed, sending bicycles and motorbikes hurling into the dust in terror. To take our minds off the driving, some conversation seemed appropriate.

“What’s going on?” I asked, “Can’t they even organize petrol in time?”

“This,” my colleague replied, who had recently lived here for about a year, “This is a village. You have to get used to doing things the village way.”

Meanwhile we were getting frantic messages from Kinshasa and Lubumbashi who had very efficiently been contacted by the UN air service to the effect that our seats were about to be given to standby passengers.

We made it with no more than a minute to spare. Ten standby passengers sloped off in misery at the prospect of having to wait two days until the next flight.

Just to confirm the fact that we were leaving a village there was a notice I had never seen before in a UN air terminal. “NO LIVESTOCK ALLOWED ON UN FLIGHTS”