Coaching Pan African Youth for the US

Five students heading to the US for a 3-city, 3-week tour with their teacher Bovid Atouta, 
President of the Congo Fulbright Scholar Alumni Organization

One of the most enjoyable opportunities I have had here in Brazzaville is to work with young people who are earnestly trying to becoming fluent in English. I met many of them at the weekly English Club program of the US Embassy. Upwards of 80 young people come weekly to hear a short talk in English and engage in a Q&A afterwards. Some who come can recognize a phrase or two, like "Good question!" Others are skillful enough to get up and ask about American foreign policy in the Mideast and Ukraine.They can be tough.

Another group of about twelve meets every Wednesday to watch a film or an episode of West Wing. They take apart the fast talk and the sports idioms that abound to try to understand what is going on. Then they address questions like, "If you were president, what would be important to you?" On that one specifically, the answer was a resounding, "Jobs!" Unemployment is very high here, especially among youth. Some things seem to be universal. They want opportunity, just like our twenty-somethings who can't find work.

Recently when I ramped up my French study, I also became very involved in coaching a group of high school students who have been selected to represent Congo in the State Department's Pan African Youth Leadership Program this fall. All of them had participated in an essay contest during Black History Month and it was from those entrants that five were chosen based on their current demonstrated leadership, their English ability, and their essay. As you can see from the photo, four are young women and one is a young man. He is the only one who has another year of high school to finish. They all come from private high schools in Brazzaville.

According to the Department of State's partner in implementing this program:

This dynamic leadership development exchange program will bring together 72 African students and adult mentors in three cohorts from across Africa, for three weeks, to strengthen their understanding of civic rights and responsibilities, respect for diversity, and the importance of community engagement. Special emphasis will be placed on opportunities for economic empowerment and skills based development.

Each Friday morning I meet with the Congo group and their mentor in the Embassy Information Resource Center for 90 minutes. We practice conversation in dialogues and talk about alternative (polite or more polite) ways to say things. They ask me questions about the U.S., American families (they will stay with three host families each), and what the weather will be like. The first week or two they were a little shy about showing their English. But after Stro included them and their teacher in a big welcome dinner honoring visiting NBA and WNBA veterans (to which they all came beautifully dressed and used their English!), they have warmed up. The last day I spent with them, it seemed like a contest as to who would start a new dialogue first. I have seen their pronunciation and confidence grow in three short weeks. I am at the stage in learning French where I can be completely sympathetic. It seems like a perfect line-up.

In September they will travel with Bovid, who is a former Fulbright scholar and Kansas University grad, to Washington, DC, where they will join other African youth for the program. They will live with a host family and eat breakfast and dinner with them. After a week in DC, they will move to Chicago for a week, and then finally to Portland, Oregon, to close out the program.


In our final session together I explained the word "bittersweet," when I described my feelings about leaving. Then I gave them each a Vermont post card addressed to me and asked them to write me a message in English during their visit to the U.S. I assured them they could say anything so long as it is in English. I know it will be fun to hear from them.

They will see a subway for the first time, probably eat the inevitable Big Mac, and visit some of our best sights and institutions. Through their host families, they will establish a real connection with Americans who do not live in the headlines. But best of all, they will begin to see themselves and their whole group as future leaders of Africa. Given the very high proportions of population under age 14 in their home countries (in Congo the median age is 17!), they represent the vanguard of Africa's future. Only they can imagine it.

Brasseries du Congo

A label that is exported all over Africa.

On Friday afternoons, the US Embassy is officially closed, which does not mean everyone stops working. But it makes a good time to organize community activities. That's the job of the Community Liaison Officer, also known as "The CLO." This week our CLO arranged for a tour of the local brewery, called Brasseries du Congo. Never one to pass up a brewery tour if it is available, Stro signed us up as soon as she got the invitation.

Unloading bags of corn from France.

The Brasseries du Congo dates from 1952 when they got a license to bottle the Belgian beer Primus. It is located not far from the port in a part of town that is highly industrial/commercial. The operation is highly mechanized, so 30,000 bottles are produced hourly by only 400 employees. At least some of them are highly trained technicians managing the quality control testing and operating the computerized brewing and bottling process. Still, one of the three main ingredients used, corn, was being unloaded by hand this afternoon. The chief ingredients come from Europe: corn from France, hops from Czech, and malt from Belgium.The company is wholly owned now by Heineken, whose international quality standards apply. A range of labels is brewed here, the differences among them the result of variations in the basic recipe. Most beer is in the fermentation tanks for 13 days.

The factory also produces soft drinks, such as Fanta orange and Fanta grenadine. In addition, they make a low-alcohol shandy-type of drink under the Primus label called Primus Radler Citron. 

From small tube to bottle!

Almost all the African beer comes in glass bottles with old-fashioned caps. They look like a McDonald's Super Size Me drink. Except for Guiness and Heineken, the beer bottles contain 65 cl or about 23 ounces of beer. Brasseries du Congo is moving toward replacing the glass bottles and old-fashioned caps with plastic bottles and screw-off caps. They see big gains in breakage reduction and the sales angle that such big bottles of beer can be enjoyed on more than one occasion due to the screw-on top. We saw machines that take what look like test tubes and "souffler" them (blow air into them) to shape them into soda/beer bottles (instead of glassblowing, it is mechanized plastic blowing). Unfortunately, in the absence of recycling programs the empties are more likely to find their way into the river, gutters, or roadsides than be reused as bottles or turned into material to make something else.

Dusty Tembo bottles 

Trunk of a huge elephant
outdoor sculpture

Now, bottles get reused and caps are recycled into jewelry, household items, and objets d'art. One of the more interesting facts of life here for people who drink beer is that to buy a case of beer, one must present a case of empties of the same brand. This makes it hard to get going if you are entertaining and need beer by the case.  And when a beer suddenly is not available, one can get stuck with empty cases of no value. For example, due to a heavy border crackdown of all sorts by the ROC against DRC citizens who lived here without papers, one of the best beers in the region can no long be purchased in Brazzaville. Tembo (elephant in Lingala) comes from the DRC. We made sure to have some when we visited Kinshasa early this month. It was only when we got to the port on the DRC side that Stro thought to wonder if we could have brought her three empty cases and exchanged them for beer to take home (on the small motor boat with the TVs and other stuff). Alas no Tembo available on this side for the foreseeable future.


Beer is almost always served cold but unless one is drinking pretty fast, it gets warm by the time you're done. I try to talk Stro into splitting a beer with me for that reason. The custom when serving anyone a bottled drink is to open the bottle in front of them, pour some into a glass (or not) and replace the cap on top of the bottle. These two steps are essential in assuring the recipient that the beer has not been tampered with. It also serves to keep bugs out of the beer. 

A man's beer! 23 oz.

Some beers, such as Ngok (Lingala for alligator) are considered "a man's beer." I like the label, so have had Ngok on occasion, once to raised eyebrows. This brought back a similar memory from The  Netherlands many decades ago when I preferred ice cold jenever (Dutch gin) to sherry as an aperitif. Nice girls did not drink jenever shots.

Our brewery tour group totaled 14, all Americans from the Embassy and their guests (that'd be me). We not only got to taste the beer but came home with brewery bling--tee-shirts in the Primus bright blue with "Primus Ambassador" on the front. How perfect.

Life in Brazza: Villa Gentil

The greatest advantage of traveling and staying in one place awhile is that one's perceptions of the culture can actually evolve. A certain kind of appreciation for the way things are develops--as opposed to the usual in and out trips that conclude where they started, usually wondering why people don't do things like we do. So after a quick eight weeks with a few to go, I feel this appreciation growing. It does not erase the horrendous traffic, the public litter extraordinaire, or the need to be careful what water one drinks.

Brazzaville, especially after an all-too-brief flirtation with Kinshasa (10 times bigger), is kind of a big small town. Traffic at certain times of day is indeed horrendous. I have not yet figured out the rules of the road, but have happily observed that my daughter has mastered them. Motorcyclists often scold taxi drivers (2/3 of the vehicles are green and white taxis, mini-buses and big buses) about their driving errors. It's all friendly; no road rage. But begging forgiveness for cutting someone off by putting your hands on your heart in a mea culpa move is sort of unnerving. Add to that countless pedestrians, who navigate the roads at their own risk. And early (6:00 pm) dark-dark-dark. And dirt side streets with hills and refuse piles to navigate.

Le paillote , aka my some time office

Lizard friend

The "parcel" where I spend most of my time is an official US residence referred to as Villa Gentil, which means "nice house." This means for one thing that we have 

Twice weekly water truck delivery.

many comforts that are not available to all here. We have potable water, AC (not needed right now when it is a "cold" 70 degrees F.), a multi-system TV with more channels than I care to watch. There are bananas growing and a kitchen garden that promises masses of tomatoes at some point. In the back garden is a screened gazebo with electricity and a ceiling fan which makes a great office on a nice day. There is a yoga studio with a spinning bike and TV/DVD to support fitness goals. Like even modest residential settings, the house sits behind walls. There are highly professional guards at the gate 24/7. I have to alert them when my French tutor is coming so they will admit him. Villa Gentil is also only a seven minute walk to the US Embassy, which makes for a great commute for Stro when she doesn't need her car or isn't being driven somewhere for a meeting.

These tiny orchids are my fave.

Thanks to Godar, the gardener, the garden has grown and prospered in the past year. In fact, it is almost unrecognizable. Bougainvillea and trumpet vines now curl over the wall at the top and bloom, making the parcel inviting to those outside (and many small lizards and birds inside). Thanks to Chanelie, who keeps house, and Well-come, who cooks, we are fed and kept tidy and clean (including our laundry) and Stro is able to do the representational entertaining she likes to integrate into her work. When the power goes out (regularly), the generator comes on so the interruption is minimal. There are guest bedrooms and an office as well as large public spaces and a huge screened porch (complete with hammock) where we eat breakfast daily, all of which make for a terrific space to host parties, dinners, and the occasional promotion ceremony.

And thank to Team Gentil,

The fab porch

Stro has hosted many such events here since I arrived. They ranged from lovely casual lunches on the porch to sit down dinners for six to twelve to a rollicking dance party for 100, to special receptions for visiting musicians and basketball stars. Most visitors show a lot of interest in her art and photography as well as a growing artifacts collection (masks, musical instruments, etc,). It is definitely a Foreign Service house! I have had the good fortune to meet incredibly interesting people and through them have been able to put a few of the cultural and political pieces together. The one thing I know for sure is that there is a lot more to learn.

Family Entertaining

Stro with Erin Anna

Team Gentil (The house is named Villa Gentil), aka Chanelie and Wellcome, work very hard to support Stro in her own work. We decided it would be fun to give them an extra day off, bring in a guest team, and serve a lunch to them and their mothers and children. So we chose a recent Friday afternoon when everyone was available. I was excited to meet their mothers and the children, especially Erin Anna, my Erin Strother's namesake, who is all of six months old now and has long outgrown the little dress I knitted for her. 

Monica is entering high school

We enjoyed beverages and hot canapes of samosas and a hot pepper sauce and got acquainted inside before going out to the porch where we had two round tables beautifully laid with flowers and tablecloths. Wellcome's boys, Prodige (&) and Ilyes (3) and Chanelie's daughter Monica (14) were all equally shy and quiet. All of them had presents from Vermont, such as books, wooden toys, goat milk soap, maple candies. Erin Anna, who also got a pair of red Keds for when she is about one, was the center of attention and she graciously put up with being snuggled and hugged by all the adults. In fact, she is such a placid baby we did not see anything but stares and smiles form her all afternoon. But we must have worn her out because while we ate she crashed on the couch.

Crashed

Both moms are teachers and are on vacation at the moment. Leontine, Wellcome's mom, lives in Pointe Noire and comes to visit when school is out. Chanelie's mom, Monique, teaches here in Brazzaville. Everyone arrived beautifully outfitted in pagne, which we also wore as a sign of respect. Our guest hospitality team of Antoinette and Beaujolais offered us a substantial Congolese lunch featuring fish with vegetables, beef brochettes, mixed green vegetables (spinach and small green eggplants), and plenty of both rice and manioc root. For dessert they gave us a dish of fresh fruit, including passion fruit and mango, pineapple and bananas. 

Fish & vegetables

Ilyes and Prodige checking
out the hammock

When they got bored at lunch, the boys tested out the hammock. Their conclusion was not a wholehearted endorsement but maybe more like, this is weird.Then the real fun began. Stro has a new toy called a "ngongo." This one is very old and was used to send messages in the bush or village. After observing Monique play it, Prodige got brave and stepped up. In the meantime the grandmothers were making rhythms with the shaken rhythm instruments Stro collected on a visit to the DRC. 

Prodige on the "ngongo"

Chanelie with a tray!

The entire visit was relaxing (though we had to keep Chanelie from cleaning up) and fun. The conversation was mostly in French, which meant I missed a lot but could follow a respectable amount of the conversational drift. We tried to take a group photo at the end but it was starting to get dark.

Leontine and Monique add some rhythms.

Team Gentil

National Day Parties -Just part of the job!

Flying the flag when Mdme Charge goes out

I came to Congo in the dry season for the weather. So all the diplomatic national day celebrations that come in May, June, and July are bonuses. There may be some members of the diplomatic community who get weary of these chest-thumping national pride parties, but not Stro! During my time here we have enjoyed four such celebrations, including the parties given by Cameroon, Italy, the U.S., and France (we missed the EU party in order to attend the final African dance class--difficult choices abound). For the last one she is the Charge L'Affaires, so we rated the big car and flag. This could go to one's head.

Every one of the parties was fun and fascinating, but I have to give the Best National Day Party Oscar to....(strains of La Marseillaise)...France! This despite the longest speech ever given by an ambassador at such an event (he's new--he won't talk so long next year). They made up for that with buckets of joie de vivre among the 600-700 attendees, or maybe it was the free flowing champagne (only available after the speech). Before the speech they had open bars and --another drum roll--beer ON TAP. I think the beer on tap and the beanie weenies with mustard may have been the Alsace-Lorraine contributions to party planning. Someone said there was roast chicken to go with the French potato salad but it disappeared long before we found the table still loaded with French cheeses and pâté, which I may have enjoyed too much.

During the speech

The decorations looked like a Fourth of July promotion at the Dollar Store. They were everywhere, but they did not have the pièce de résistance from the American "do" earlier in the month, a big arch of red, white, and blue balloons that everyone got to walk through between the receiving line and the bar. And they had time to copy too. Large screens put us right into the parade on the Champs Élysées, complete with horses and bands and continual World War I era music (the kind we might hear in a 1940s movie about France) that got a few toes tapping waltzes and polka steps. Très festive!

The parties share a certain formality of access. Invited guests must present their cards at the gate. List management is a big strategic deal for the host (and heaven help us if someone important did not get an invitation). Some countries combine diplomatic aims with representational aims. That's "diplo speak" for whether they invite only Congolese officials, friends, and other diplomats or also add in their own nationals who happen to live or be visiting in Congo. Cameroon's party, held in a huge walled courtyard at the Embassy, included both groups but seating was separate and assigned (by rank on the diplo side!). The ex-pats included a soccer team. Until the rains came (heavy but over quickly and we were under tents), the Cameroonian Ambassador, his spouse, and military brass greeted guests in a receiving line after an invitation checker verified we were on the list. In our case, the Ambassador himself escorted us to our seats after we went through the receiving line (there is always a receiving line).

It's always a pleasure to see
Pamman, the Honorary Indian Consul.

The host country takes the opportunity of the national day celebration to honor its relationship and perhaps special bipartisan accomplishments in Congo. Some events feature more speeches than
others. Guests stand informally and behave cocktail party style--making conversation, greeting
friends, meeting new people. I confess I felt pretty special at Italy's event when the Egyptian
ambassador greeted me warmly as an old friend with the traditional two-kiss hug. And by now I am on hug-trade terms with the Italian Deputy Chief of Mission.

Three especially handsome guests at the US party!

Invitations may specify the expected dress, usually "business attire," since the party almost always starts at 6:00 pm on a weekday. After seeing what people actually wore, I decided that the code only applied to most of the men and it was a signal that the dress code was not formal (as in white tie). African women, official or not, are invariably decked out in marvelous styles and colors commonly called "pagne." The ready availability of designers and seamstresses here results in what seems like a continual fashion show. You may see the same print made into different styles. Every dress is unique. The Non-African women are usually more conservatively dressed, and by comparison pretty unremarkable, except for the simply dressed and incredibly chic French.

Rilla with USEmb friends Ashton, Jen, Chris,and Tim

There is always food and countries have good or bad reputations for the national day party
food (the Vatican party is reputed to be best but alas we were away when that took place). Two of the parties I attended featured served canapés. The Cameroonians put on a full court press with a huge
buffet we were invited to by row. The Americans had an open bar and the best samosas and mini-brochettes in the world, the Italians passed champagne, wine and water, along with pesto-stuffed cherry tomatoes and teeny dishes of pasta with teeny forks. Food serves as the signal the party is ending. When the French began to pass small cups of chestnut creme and sorbet, we knew they wanted to wrap it up. The Americans just closed the bars and the jazz band started playing much more quietly. Both approaches worked.

As the end of my visit comes into view, I regret I will miss the Congo celebration on August 15. but maybe that would be greedy. I think I have already had enough champagne and brie for this year.

Fun with International Borders

I am hopelessly behind in processing, let alone sharing, the many unique experiences of this trip to visit my daughter. But rising above some others is our adventure of  going to the "Other Congo," the Democratic Republic of Congo, directly across the river from Brazzaville.  A trip to the DRC sounded so simple. I got through the complicated and expensive process of getting a visa long before I left the States, but that was just the start.

One reason to go seemed obvious--it's right there across the river. Sitting at a river watering hole called Les Rapides, you can see Kinshasa in the haze. Another reason is that just about an hour north of the city is a bonobo reserve where it is possible to see bonobos rescued and protected from the bushmeat hunters. Then there is Woodin and Vlisca, both haute couture fabric houses that do not distribute on this side of the river.

Taking advantage of these possibilities required: a place to stay, a car and personal driver/port expediter on both sides, the aforesaid visas, and U.S. Dollars. And only crisp, never folded dollars in denominations of five and higher. We could not anticipate being able to use credit cards. Stro managed to accomplish all of the above through friends in Kinshasa who offered a house and car and vouched for a driver, Marcel. We figured if our host family hired him to take their children to school and their mothers to nail appointments he would be pretty reliable.

Getting out of Brazza involved getting our names on a hand-written manifest for a boat (based on passport and visa presentations). No commercial boat departs with less than a capacity crowd, so the published schedule is irrelevant. The day we crossed was grey (typical of dry season due to haze). The look of the launch was not exactly reassuring but they did have new life jackets for anyone who wanted one and we were inside (capacity about 40).  The crossing took about 20 minutes.

Then the fun started. I was about to have my second overwhelming cultural experience in a week. There are as many officials on the exit ramp from the dock as passengers. It seemed they all need to check our papers. We are trying to manage our bags while others are hauling in big screen TVs. People (mostly men) are everywhere and it seems they are all yelling and some are in uniforms. It's not great air quality and I have already been sick from same for several days. The first hitch is a guy demanding payment of a port tax, which our star Stro handled.

Then we hit an interesting wall due to the fact that a Congolese friend accompanied us. We were a party of three Americans, one a diplomat, and a professional Congolese woman. The  first objections had to do with how our friend was going to support herself while in DRC, the assumption being a single woman is a burden on someone or a threat of prostitution. She had a visa and a letter of invitation from an ambassador friend who represents another African country in Kinshasa. The port customs officer was not impressed. Our four passports got taken to three places and we were "invited" to wait in the VIP arrivals lounge, an air-conditioned experience we eventually paid five dollars a head for.

At some point in an extensive delay, they made our driver take the Congolese friend's phone to a place where he could print out and copy the letter of invitation. Bureaucrats everywhere need to have records. After two plus hours of waiting we were finally in receipt of our stamped passports and allowed to leave for our visit. Most of this standoff was a proxy fight with the ROC, which recently completed a police action deporting over 130,000 DRC citizens who were in ROC without papers. One small consequence of  this political act is a personalized form of retaliation against ROC citizens who want to visit the DRC. One guy even said, "Actions have consequences."

By contrast and only by contrast, the return trip out of DRC and into Brazza was uneventful. We still had a long wait until the manifest was full (fewer people are traveling back and forth since the deportations, so fewer boats) but this time did not get dunned for sitting in the VIP lounge.Then we made a mistake by paying our porter before he had our bags on the boat. You can see this one coming--he now wanted more money, which we eventually paid (pennies on his original extra demand) and the boat could then depart.

The return boat looked a lot more iffy than the first one. It was a small motorboat launch holding maybe 15 people. There were some life jackets. But the day was unusually sunny, we had life jackets, and the breeze felt great. I was also starting to recover from my malaise, though Stro was declining rapidly. The two of us sat up front in the bow and got giggles remembering other funny boat adventures we have had in strange places.

On the Brazza side, our driver was waiting. We had to fill out entry forms and wait quite awhile for the very manual process of checking and copying every passenger's passport and visa info into a handwritten log and then having other authorities (again, full employment for officials) check them.  After about an hour they let us finish waiting for our passports in the air-conditioned car. By then (having been early at the port in Kinshasa) we were starving and went straight to a great Lebanese lunch on the way home. I had seen yet another example of how my daughter's diplomatic skills, language skills, and big smile help her (and others) through the rough spots in an otherwise fascinating life.