Welcome to the DR Congo

When we arrived in Kinshasa it was with an almost dreamlike feeling. Taxiing down the runway in a massive plane and looking out on a different world than the one we had left only a few days ago.

There were a few people working alongside the runway on one side of it and in one area was sure that was small children I could see as we taxied by.

Workers stopped to stare and watch as this mammoth Boeing 787 Dreamliner arrived giving the impression this is not a real common experience.

The airport gives testimony to this as well. There are no other planes being unloaded and in fact, there aren’t many planes to be seen period.

The man next to us speaks for the first time but Russell can not quite understand him and thinks he’s saying salsa. We have to remember we are not in Arizona and salsa is most likely not the word he would be using. This country speak French.

Welcome to Kinshasa, DR Congo…

Getting into the country was not difficult. That part came later when we were leaving, but I’ll share that in another post.

Once we cleared customs and picked up the checked baggage we had to put our luggage through an x-ray machine before we could go to meet our hosts outside.

By the way, you remember all that luggage we left with?

Well the 2 biggest ones were all things for the wedding given to us by the bride to take over. Bridesmaids dresses and such. So those 2 were not ours, 4 suitcases were left in Pennsylvania (because my 2 younger kids stayed there while we went overseas) and my 1 (sniff, sniff) suitcase was lost, so our share of luggage on this trip to the Congo was 2 carry-ons. That sounds better doesn’t it because that WAS a lot of luggage to begin with.

After we greeted our driver whose sister was the one getting married, we headed into the city of Kinshasa. What an experience that city was!

I have many, many pictures and I’ll be sharing a fair bit because I want you to be able to visualize it as much as possible.

One of the first things that we saw were people sweeping the highway. This highway is miles long, but there were several diligently sweeping the dirt that had accumulated. Can you see the tiny broom head this lady has on the end of her stick? It would take a while to do anything with that.

The streets were always this crowded with people walking up and down selling things and in this particular area, going to market.

You crossed the streets at your own risk. Seriously. There is no such thing as right-of-way for pedestrians. And cars didn’t travel slow. If they could, they went zipping right along.

If you don’t have courage to nose your way through, you don’t get anywhere.

Very few pavement markings for the drivers to even pay attention to…

Here’s a good example of that. And notice, the man pushing his cart down through the middle.

Also, pay attention to the motorbike there. See the baby strapped on to its mother?

They’ll push these carts for miles and some are quite loaded to earn about $2 for the day.

Here’s that same motorbike I showed you 2 pictures back.

Sometimes you would pass cars with only a few inches to spare.

It was wild, as you can see.

They had a few unusual stop lights. Robots.

When it turned green, the arms folded down and the whole body swiveled.

Pretty fancy.

The “buses” were quite a bit different than what we have in the States. Almost like mini-vans but a bit bigger.

And dented…woweee… telling a story without words. haha

But I feel I’m overloading you with pictures for this particular post, so I’ll continue the transportation “story” in the next one.

There’s so much to share of our trip. I hope you all find it interesting!