Kin la Belle
Corresponding from Congo: Week 1
Comment ça va?
Bonjour, mbote, and greetings from Kinshasa, the sprawling capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on the southern bank of the Congo River (not to be confused with the Republic of the Congo just across the water). Friends, family, and colleagues, thank you for sending me well and following along with my time and learning here. I’m reporting from my first week in the DRC conducting infectious disease research with the USDA Veterinary Scholars Program, supported by the Agricultural Research Service and Boehringer Ingelheim and in collaboration with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB), and Kinshasa School of Public Health. I am thankful for the opportunity to be here and for the generosity of my hosts in helping me settle in.
“Comment ça va?” means “How are you?” in French. I’m happy to share that, so far, ça va bien (it goes well)!
1. Place
Kinshasa is a growing equatorial megacity home to more than 17 million people. I wake up to tropical birds cooing and trilling; by 8 a.m. their chatter is punctuated by bleating horns and human voices in mixed languages carried by the breeze. I arrived with the turn of seasons, transitioning from wet to dry (Congolese winter) the week before my plane touched down. Temperatures this past week sat comfortably in the mid-70’s to mid-80’s with mornings a particular delight as I am able to sit outside and sip a cup of coffee while the sun rises. The air here is tinted vaguely orange—a combination of dust, smoke, and general air pollution that intensifies to a deep pink during sunset on the evening commute home from the office.
I live in relative luxury with access to mostly air-conditioned and well-sealed spaces that keep sweat and mosquitoes at bay. I put on sunscreen and bug spray every morning but am pushing my Western body to its limit by brushing my teeth with tap water. My housemate, Sydney, had a warm bowl of pasta and muffins waiting for me upon my arrival, and I have access to a full kitchen, for which I am grateful. When I’m in, I’ll be cooking vegetarian this summer (read: beans). Fresh food in inner-city Kinshasa is expensive, as unreliable cold chain transportation hikes importation costs. Arugula is $40 per bag, and I just mistakenly bought 3 Pink Lady apples for $18 (the cost of my inability to speak French passably). I will be savoring every $1.50 slice. I can pay in a mixture of USD and Congolese francs, which are vibrantly colored bills when you can find specimens that haven’t been worn brown through the changing of many hands. I’ve been working on introducing myself in French, historically the language of colonization and now the official language of state, as I have greeted many new colleagues (“vétérinaire” is a tough mouthful). I’m also working to master some basic phrases in Lingala, the most popular indigenous language.
2. Project
Every morning, I ride into the office with Sydney and Nicole, my manager, who lives next door with her family. Lanes are optional, but our drivers, Elie and Fabrice, make sure we arrive at our destination in one piece through heavy traffic that includes pedestrians, motos (motorcycles), and buses. We primarily work from an office at the INRB, the national human medical research laboratory, and our veterinary counterparts at LaboVet welcome us into their space, too. The two campuses are nestled within the same city block, but there’s no direct access between them—a physical reminder of the barriers that continue to separate human and animal health. People who conduct work in both facilities (me) must walk out the gates, around through the dust and cars and street markets, and into another set of gates to pop into a lab to check an experiment or quickly chat with a colleague; the alternative is to cross a sewage ditch, scale cinderblock walls topped with razor wire, and jump down on the other side. For now, we walk—with the hope of a future literal One Health pathway.
I spent my first week getting up to speed on the project I’ll be working on this summer primarily focused on Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), an RNA virus in the family Bunyaviridae that can be transmitted to animals (mostly ruminants like cows, sheep, and goats) and humans by tick bites or directly through contact with blood or tissues. Most people exposed to the virus work in agriculture or slaughterhouses. There’s currently no vaccine and no cure, and WHO has listed the virus as a priority emerging disease to direct increased attention to its characterization. The project team at USDA and in the DRC is developing a system of sampling animals and ticks to test for the virus to map its prevalence throughout the country. In the coming weeks, I’ll be going on site visits to farms, abattoirs (slaughterhouses), and villages around Kinshasa to participate in sampling and also developing laboratory processes for tick and blood sample testing. In the first week, I read (a lot) and drafted a tick testing protocol adapted to LaboVet capabilities that we’ll hopefully begin to troubleshoot in the week ahead after supplies arrive from the US with another visiting researcher.
3. Paige
I survived a 27-hour travel day (thank you to friends and family who covered that solo trip in prayer, including an especially tight and sweaty connection hustling through the Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport) to sink into bed for a few hours of sleep before literally hitting the ground running the next morning for the Congo River Marathon 10K race through the streets of Gombe, a posh downtown loop filled with embassies, hotels, and restaurants. I had my first peek of the Congo River while coasting down a hill on the route. My new friends and colleagues were gracious to include me in their outing, and I had fun stretching my legs. I took home 40th overall out of more than 400 runners and was the first American to cross the finish line. I discovered I can walk 10 laps in the L-shaped drive of my 7-house compound to total a mile with my morning coffee and have been moving my body with circuit workouts and trips with my housemate to a gym a few minutes down the road.
Because we’re often together due to security or transportation logistics, I’m going to have to be creative to find space to recharge my introvert batteries. I’ve been thankful to be included in happenings and goings-on here in Kinshasa, as life revolves around social gatherings planned by a loose network of international workers. Many events are shared by word of mouth or large WhatsApp chats. I’ve observed 3 social classes that don’t tend to mingle: the transient international community, wealthy and politically powerful Congolese, and everyone else. The American community revolves around the embassy, with our research team as an adjacent group with more freedom and flexibility, supporting fellow travelers with spare Ziploc bags and hand-me-down toasters.
In an overwhelming deluge of new sights, sounds, feelings, and perspectives, I’ve defined 3 questions to focus my time and work here in DRC:
How can I be helpful?
What can I learn?
Where do I see God?
Walking into each day with these questions on my mind has helped to focus my attention and alleviate frustration when the day does not unfold according to my plan. I would appreciate continued prayer to find rest in the Lord, even when I find myself in uncomfortable situations I can’t control or change.
4. Planet
Featuring a new (to me) notable natural feature each week, let’s chat about the Congo River (link to a 3-minute YouTube overview video). It’s the deepest river in the world, serving as an international border between capitals Kinshasa (DRC) and Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo). Air France flights between Paris and these two capital cities actually loop between the 3 destinations, stopping in both Kinshasa and Brazzaville on every arrival and departure. The river serves as a boundary for a large compound whose quiet paved streets I got to run early on Saturday morning while visiting one of Sydney’s friends. I admired the swampy flats extending into the distance where several boats paddled across the vast expanse of the water.
Blessings on your week ahead, friends. You can reach me on my US number with WhatsApp (I’d love to hear from you). I’ll see you soon!
Despite the physical barriers you are facing, your thoughtful story-telling will certainly break down the socioeconomic & cultural barriers that separate us from one another; and will help foster more empathy and understanding for a better future! Constantly inspired by you!
What an incredible adventure and calling! Thank you for the opportunity to learn and grow through your experiences, observations, and perspectives in a part of the world that is so different than ours! Keep up the great documentation of your journey- it is fascinating! Looking forward to learning more about your developments in the field! Say well ❤️