Advertisement
Published: June 11th 2010
Welcome the Stuarts
Sign board welcoming day's guests at MPH - Methodist/Presbyterian Hostel - an affordable clean place to stay in Kinshasa. I think it takes anyone who will pay and provides three meals per day. Breakfast is included in your fare.Friday, June 11, 2010 Kinshasa, DRC
This is my first blog entry from the DRC. We arrived Monday night from Brussels with a stop in Douala, Cameroon. 3/4 of the flight unloaded in Douala so we had an empty flight to Kinshasa. I moved to an empty window seat to watch our liftoff from Douala. It is on the Atlantic at the mouth of a large river. It appeared there had been some recent flooding. We cleared immigration at N'Djili relatively easily. We learned later from a missionary here immigration at the airport has improved greatly recently with fewer arbitrary and officious stops provided you have the necessary visa and yellow fever vaccination documents. Yellow fever is the only thing the nurse checked. We were met at the airport by two people who helped carry our luggage to a waiting van. There we met our driver for our two weeks in the DRC Sammy. You will see his picture. The ride from the airport was unbelievable. In the dark we could only see movement in the shadows and throngs along the roadside. Cars and other vehicles came from all directions. I was not ready for the poor condition of the
Destination Kinshasa
Brussels airport waiting for our Brussels Air flight. airport road which is the first impression of the DRC for many people. Later in our travels I saw a billboard with a picture of the Congo Silverback gorillas with text in French saying "Tourism is our future." I thought "Good luck." Traffic has become a major issue here as the city population has exploded from movement from the interior escaping "les guerres" the violence. Kinshasa provides a relative security not present in the east. Dr. Clemmer a Baptist missionary working for a USAID-supported medical project lives in Kinshasa on the American school complex but flies on UN flights to Goma in the eastern Congo almost on a weekly basis. He said he has to go where the grants tell him to go so the US has shifted its focus to the violence-prone east away from the other hospitals in the rest of the country. He said those are on life-support. Other people you will see in the pictures are Dr. Ngoy, the recteur of UPC the Protestant University of Congo; Dr. Mampunza, the dean of the medical school and hospital at UniKin, the University of Kinshasa, and the developing medical school at UPC; and Pastor Kembo, the head of
Dr. Ngoy and Pasteur Jacobs
Dr. Ngoy recognizes Westminster's gift. the Baptist churches in the DRC. I'll add comments to some of the pictures to further describe what is going on. Riddle: How many people can you fit on a Kinshasa bus? Answer: One more.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.142s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 6; qc: 47; dbt: 0.1036s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mary
non-member comment
Nice photos
Looks like everyone is having a good time. The private dining room is very fancy.