Normal Service Just Might Resume…

I’m 10 days on from returning after the Christmas holidays. These days, travelling home is so expensive and so needed, that such holidays become long breaks, and transition back into the not-always-so-routine of Congo living happens frequently and takes at best a few days.

I was just about over the hump of this process early last week when a moment of awareness almost helped me through. Inconvenient and uncomfortable as life often is here, you can’t help but appreciate the many unexpected conveniences: buying fruit and vegetables from the vendors at the school gate (gate-shopping?); stopping by one of the several cool and gleaming French-style patisseries to pick up fresh bread and pastries on the way home (the driver keeping the motor running while you do so); pausing outside the shop to buy phone credit from another street vendor, or even rolling down the car window in traffic to call him over to you; if the driver’s indisposed, hailing one of the ubiquitous taxis that will take you anywhere in town for just a bit more than one of your British pounds; quick-and-easy cash transactions that keep life ticking along…low-tech life can be so much less stressful.

TIA. This is Africa.

So why didn’t I share this uplifting, life-affirming thought a week ago?

Because I had NO F****ING WIFI! For a week AND A HALF!

That is all.*