One year

A year here. 

Over a year. 

I arrived 16th February 2013, and now it is March, 2014.  Everyone says this, so to say it again is a cliche, but I don't know where the time has gone. 

How things become normal. 

That here, Orion lies on his side, as though resting in the hot night air. That milk is either UHT or powdered. That Larium and radio check Wednesdays, and femme-de-menage Tuesdays, Thursdays, have become the routine, along with locking your car doors automatically on entry and visiting three different supermarkets just to get the ingredients for a G&T. That fruit is orange or yellow or white. Papaya, mango, passion fruit, banana, pineapple, star fruit, mangosteen, lychee. That I don't know what films are out in the cinema, or when the next season of Homeland will start. That I get most of my popular culture updates through a Whatsapp group with my university friends. That looking out of the office window I can sometimes see multi-coloured lizards doing press-ups on tree branches, red yellow orange blue, the bright, garish colours of a child's paintbox. That occasionally there is a gecko in my fruit bowl, wide eyed among the wrinkly skinned passion fruit. That the heat becomes welcome, so that the entire time I was in England over Christmas I thought about the feel of the sun on my skin, and missed it, terribly. That I can tell now when a storm is coming, when the air presses down around you, to the point that the only possible release can be rain. 

It has been a crazy, tumble, helter-skelter of a year, full of music and dancing, of meeting new people and experiencing new things. Full of sunshine and pineapples and brightly coloured fabric and swimming in rivers and learning the French subjunctive. And without wanting to get all sentimental on you, or too rose tinted, because honestly the itch-like-hell mosquito bites will never, ever be a good thing, and the bonkers road traffic, whilst amusing for the Instagram photos, is more than a little stressful in reality, all in all it has been really rather wonderful. 

Written in November

I wrote this in November.

Recently, these things:

Tying up bunting on a veranda, sheets of rain. On a horizontal cross piece between two vertical wooden supports, the tiny mummified skeleton of a bat. White bones, remnants of red brown fur.

The stick of the white kitchen tiles against my back as I watch the girl from Benin mix crepe batter in her too-warm kitchen. Watch her open sachets of vanilla sugar, zest a lime. 

A boat, noisy, the spray of water, the smell of petrol. And the speed, fast, so fast, so that with the sky above and the sky reflected on the river below, and the upwards angle of the boat itself, it feels like we’re flying. The way home, one motor not working, the craft low in the water, and slower than before. The setting sun, everything pink and gold, burnished, beautiful.

An ant bite, on my right thigh, that is painful, and hot to the touch, like a burn.

All these things. And this – that a cream envelope with a blue stamp can land on your desk. Inside, a thick card, embossed with the image of a tandem bicycle, two names and a save the date. On the reverse, handwritten in blue ink, two more names, mine and his, 'Dear B --- & M ---, hope you can make it'. A wave of sadness then. At what was, but no longer is.

For days the heat building and building, unbearable. Until yesterday, after work, the air cool, the sky bruise-coloured, yellow, grey, deep blue. A storm coming. Today we woke to grey skies, rain, seemingly endless.

Autumn from afar

Somewhere, it is autumn. Somewhere, the leaves are turning, russet, gold. Not here. Here there is only dry season, and wet. Rainy season now, and the hot days and dramatic storms that come with it. The flame trees are in bloom. Sometimes, driving to work, I glimpse one of them, mistake the blazing orange flowers above 

for autumn leaves in their final moments of glory before fall. Feel a twinge of sadness that I am missing my favourite season. California dreaming in reverse. 

***

This time last year we drove to Wales for a long weekend. Left London one Friday lunchtime, my little red car packed with waterproofs and walking boots, wellingtons, tins of flapjack and brownies. M and I taking turns driving, The National on the stereo. Crossing rivers and counties, eating jelly babies. 

We arrived first. Drove down the sweeping drive, house, creeper covered, sandy stoned, breathtaking in the setting sun before us. Found our way to the converted stable block at the rear where we would be staying. Had time to explore the many rooms, quirky bedrooms, bathrooms with views of sheep fields, huge living room, huge kitchen. Had time to light a fire and pour a whiskey before the others arrived, university friends travelling from London, Oxford, South Wales, a dozen of us in total.

And then, the most perfect autumn weekend. An escape from the city, an escape from the lists and planning and French grammar exercises that had already crept into my life only a few weeks after having accepted the job in DRC. 

Mulled wine. Charades by firelight, and wink murder. Pumpkin carving. Communal cooking, bangers and mash, chilli beans, Full English. Toast with K's homemade raspberry jam. Bananagrams on the vast dining room table. Rambling country walks down leaf strewn lanes and alongside babbling rivers, through mud and over stiles. Exploring the garden, getting lost in the beech maze. Buying eggs from the farm shop, and the last of the rainbow chard. Plucking blackberries from hedgerows. Waking early, before the rest of the house, leaving M warm in bed, pulling on boots and slipping out the door to the first of the morning sunlight, leaves still frosted on the lawn. The stillness, the silence. The cold air with each intake of breath. The red of the Virginia creeper, the maple, golden beech and oak. Tiny mushrooms growing in tree stumps. A bright red and green gypsy caravan parked by two red tractors. The walled kitchen garden with late cornflowers and lupins, apples ripe on trees. 

***

A couple of bits of housekeeping:

1) A big, belated and cross-continental thank you to Hannah Seeds and Stitches for her very lovely mention a few of posts back. Truly, truly, made my day, and sorry I haven't thanked you until now. 

2) My posts are sporadic, even more so now that I am all the way in Africa, with internet that even at the best of times is not speedy, so I have now got a 'subscribe' option - top right - which should mean you get a nice little email straight to your inbox every time that I post.

Paint

The relentless tumble of life here, and suddenly it is September, and I have been here over six months, and it is starting, slowly, tentatively, in a two steps forward with the occasional lurch backward kind of way, to feel like home. Not fully, I still yearn for London, a dull longing that I am not sure will ever go away, and there are people I miss always, at times painfully so.

The week in August when I received news of a friend's engagement, a relationship begun on the green lawns of Cambridge, now to be life. An advance email with the news, before Facebook filtered it to impersonality. I was grateful for that at least. The same week, the news of another friend getting their dream job, the one they've been working towards for as long as I've known them. The sadness of knowing that you aren't there to celebrate either occasion, to raise a glass and punch the air and grin and grin and grin. Instead there is the moon, low and full and red above the water tower, the throb of cicadas and frogs to fill the night and the heavy weight of distance. 

The evening when a Congolese colleague, asks me if I like it here, if I am happy, I say, Oui, mais c'est...je ne connais pas le mot en francais...'bittersweet'. Because I am here, here, in a courtyard in Africa, under an avocado tree, eating river fish and fried plantain, cassava leaves, to the light of candles in the growing darkness, but I am so, so, far from home.

A low point, a few weeks ago, just before going on leave to New York. The thought of being torn between two places for the next three years suddenly seeming like too much. S, a friend and colleague, says to me well, you could always quit, go back to London. 

As though that is an option. 

To leave here.

To leave the bats which dip and swoop over the red clay tennis courts, catching the insects drawn to the floodlit expanse. The moths as big as my hand which flap in confusion under these artificial moons.

To leave river sunsets. To leave the tumble of bougainvillea over whitewashed walls, or orange trumpet flowered creepers on telegraph poles.

To leave nights dancing and dancing on flashing dancefloors until the early hours. Crawling into bed at 5am, exhausted, utterly, but happy, unquestionably.

To leave hand painted advertisements, dusty roads. Rainfall heavy and sudden.

The work which can be undeniably hard, challenging, frustrating at times, but also ultimately absorbing, fascinating, satisfying. 

Hummingbirds in the office car park, jewel bright blurs between red flowers.

Mangoes, fallen from trees, smashed to an orange, fragrant pulp on the running circuit tarmac.  

No, it hadn't even crossed my mind. To consider leaving here already.

This is just the beginning. 

The View from Car Windows

I haven't been using puddles, but instead, the view from car windows. Snippets of a city and the surrounding countryside, taken on my camera phone as they move past the glass. 

The bright blue and yellow taxi buses, rust spotted. 

Goats in car boots, on the roof rack of minibuses. Men with entire newsagents balanced on their heads, or fifty dozen eggs. At traffic lights, people selling giant wall maps, anatomically correct diagrams of the human body, dog leashes with no dogs, others selling dogs with no leashes. Once, a monkey, another time, a tiny terrapin, suspended on a string. Packets and packets of tissues, waved energetically in front of your windscreen whilst stuck at a red light. Roadside pepinieres, rows of plants grown in plastic bags, hibiscus and baby palms, gardenia and cactus. Vehicles overloaded with all manner of things, people, firewood, bundles of cassava leaves. Potholes and road sweepers, piles of dust. Trees made from exhaust pipes. 

Puddles

About a week in from being back in Kinshasa, still feeling glum at how very far I was away from my beloved London, I found myself at the Institut Francais one early evening after work. Found myself in a white walled room, bare save for the photographs on the walls, an exhibition of the work of photographer Kiripi Katembo.

Photographs of Kinshasa reflected in puddles, a mirrored city of blue and pink skies, floating rubbish. Beautiful somehow, despite the litter. And I don't know if it was the art, or the evening light, or the inventiveness, in a city where it is mostly frowned upon to take photographs and in some places downright forbidden, of using puddles to capture your images, but I went away a little bit more light-hearted than before.