Ok, fine, arriving to Goma was a bit of a
shocker. The plane could have served any given Luxembourg-Vienna flight,
without the cheese sandwich. But then landing in Goma... difficult to describe.
As far as I understand it's only used for military/humanitarian/UN purposes,
it's tiny, looks like five warehouses have been quickly set up, and the people
waiting around, or maybe working there, or maybe unemployed, sit and lay around
the buildings, on the grass. The luggages are brought by a minivan from the
plane, then unloaded, everybody looks for their own and then the staff simply
removes the baggage tags. And they disappear with the passports for an
infernally long twenty minutes.
The road from the airport to the base is
impressifying: red dust everywhere, and although the traffic returned to the
proper side (the right one, haha), but lacks any basic system of rules (I have
learnt so far, that here you have to yield to the right when you're inside the
roundabout. You have priority going in.), by the side of the road women are
selling bananas and avocados, and men sim cards, and in general there is a mass
of people on the streets.
Then, like sudden cut in a movie, we stop for
a sandwich. We enter a building under (re)construction, with a French-style
bakery on the second floor. One that could easily compete with counterparts in Brussels. It's bright and
shiny, comfortable, I guess there must be wifi because half of the clients are
buried in their laptops; on the shelves croissants, baguettes, petits pains aux
chocolat, chicken sandwiches and strawberry pies. Freshly squeezed
strawberry-pineapple juice is served in lovely glasses, and the baguette is
fresh and has pesto in it...
This
feeling of sharp contrast is the main thing I remember from the first week
here: the world on the streets, the markets, even in the few shops is a
completely different one from that inside the houses protected with walls and
barbed wire fences. The road isn't paved and has potholes that could serve as a
playground for my nephew, but inside the compounds you have the feeling you
could be in any European city. I've seen apartments that would qualify as „too
much” even by Kirchberg standards. You see the generator in the court, because
electricity here is like happiness: you have to enjoy it when it lasts, because
you never know when it goes away and when it may come back, but once you enter,
flat screen tv and wireless connection is basic equipment, the kitchen makes
you envy the owner (or his wife), the living rooms are huge, with heavy dining
tables , every bedroom has its own bathroom. To be an expat is always a bit
absurd, and apparently absurd in a similar way, no matter where you are
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése