Home for the Holidays

Okay so it has been a looooooong time I know since my last post. But, I am catching up. First up, elections and the holidays. For those of you who are not familiar with African geography, a little lesson. Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo are two countries separated by the Congo River. The extra interesting part is that the two capital cities face each. We had been on lock down as a result of the election tensions and I was thinking that I would not be departing for the US on 9 Dec as originally planned. But then, the call. On the morning of the 7th I got a call saying that there was an option for me to leave 2 days early but it would require me to be ready in 2 hours and to leave via Rep of Congo, Brazzaville. I scurried like nobody's business and managed to be ready in the time given (though in fact I had more like 5 hours). It was a colleague and me who hopped in the armored car, got dropped off at the river port, dragged our heavy luggage down the boat dock ramp, and hopped into the Embassy's speed boat. 7 minutes or so later I am in another country and officially on my way. An interesting experience but made for a longer version of an already long trip!

I spent a week and 1/2 in DC for work then headed home to Tucson and the round robin of scheduling to squeeze in as many visits as possible. It was a crazy trip but I was back in Congo by the 29th. It was a much needed break though I felt horrible leaving my friends/colleagues behind during such a critical time.

The election results and inaugurations are done. There is however, more to come as the "done" is only for the presidential seat and we still have all of the local jurisdiction counts to come. And I guess we use the word "done" even though we have the election declared president and a 2nd separately declared president. And then there is the problem that in Kinshasa alone there were upwards of 18,000 candidates (I might be slightly off)for local seats. So, there are sporadic issues and while we are no longer locked down to our homes and or just to the city limits of Gombe (downtown neighborhood in which we live/work) we still use caution. So, that gets you a bit of an update prior to the end of 2011.