I am so sick of living in Congo
I am taking two days off right now in Goma instead of going on vacation because four days is not enough time to leave the continent. I’m telling you, if you think African warzones are exciting, think again. Some missionary may be getting shot right now on a remote road in Rutshutu territory but it is boring as a Kansas corn field where I live. The stimulation consists of relentless, pervasive shitty/sleeziness, like the flight path that is above my bedroom by about five meters and results in my being woken up every hour all night and morning by an airplane that sounds like it’s about the crash into me and is carrying probably some minerals that rebels extracted as part of a terror campaign in the bush. I don’t see the rebels, just the devastated women and children they kidnapped and/or raped brutally. One airplane crashed just down the street last year leaving a crater. And the pilots are probably my drunk Ukrainian next-door neighbors, the ones who spent three hours one night going back and forth with two prostitutes they had hired with the following conversation:
Pilot drinks vodka shot: “I’ll tell you what money is…”
Prostitute: “Money? I need a lot of money.”
Pilot: “Money? I’ll tell you what you’re worth. $20”
Prostitute: “I’m not giving you no more or no less for that.”
Pilot drinks shot, prostitute drinks shot and stumbles: “This is nothing.”
Pilot: “More than you’re worth.”
No sex commences, repeat conversation for three hours. Poor Tobias. My roommate actually had to try to sleep listening to that cause they brilliantly built our houses one inch away from each other even though they could have filled up the vacant lot/trash heap across the street and given us more room. But we did get to see into their rooms, and this drunk dude with the prostitute, who walks around the house in army pants and no shirt, sleeps on a bed of planks!
I am going to another frat party tonight at another gorgeous house on Lake Kivu. Tomorrow I will have a hangover and spend the whole day doing my laundry and wincing from the sound of the planes and wondering why the hell we pay our guards when all they do is sit on their street and jeopardize our security. They should be called insecurity guards.
Then maybe I will glance out the window at the dirt playground/trash heap and feel sorry for the kids playing soccer with no shoes on top of volcanic rock and the other kids eating from the trash or those breathing in the toxic black smoke that comes from the burning trash.
I want to move to Europe.
