How Mama Berthe brightens the days


The last weeks have been sobering. Flea wars, Mosquito attacks, Crazy-Midnight-Church and a surfeit of tricks, cheats, lies and threats to get any kind of money, my eagerness to work in the developing world has tremendously contracted.
So far ever Congolese that we worked with more closely has turned out to be money greedy, deceiving, and ultimately untrustworthy. Of course this a gross generalization, and of course, like anywhere else there is good people. I hope …

In fact Mama Berthe is my little angel that brightens up my day. She works at a little shop down the street, selling all kinds of stuff but most importantly bread and cake (corn muffin sort of things called “cake”). Every time I come to purchase her delicious bakery goods, she goes to the house in the back to get me the fresh and warm ones, instead of the ones that have been sitting in her shop. This little act of kindness, and good customer service seems the world to me these days. Matondi Mingi Mama Berthe (thank you very much Mama Berthe)
The web of lies, collaborations and tricks guys (male and female, religious and, well religious, because they all claim to be religious here) have been impressive … and devastating (fake bills, fake reasons, fake laws, fake resumes, fake prices, fake talk, fake businesses, fake promises, fake friends....)
Devastating also to my hopes and to this country. I guess making a couple bucks more of a Mondele is understandable. But the lengths these guys go to, to make you believe you can trust them and than try to take HUGE sums from you, is exhausting (sometimes literally thousands of dollars... which I would say is like trying to take 10,000s in our countries). I have reached a point of cynicism that no Colorless can be trust before even reaching my two months here. Thats sad, but thats reality.

A Lebanese guy that has worked here for 9 years, and runs one of the only good restaurants in town, shared his frustration about the locals with us last night. “They are careless, useless and unwilling to learn” he reckons after he has been burned so many times. I can understand his frustration, being at a similar point already and fighting against the racist tendencies that I feel emerging. I know that there is good and bad everywhere from my experience, but the amount of deception has been astonishing in the DRC. For now I am still trying to understand what has happened here. Especially the 4 decades under the cletocracy king Mobuto must have had an enormous impact.
On another positive note: the owner of the hotel has in fact talked to the mid-night Church and the volume has been turned down the last three nights. Bless the lord!
Let's hope that we meet more Mama Berthe's and more good and trustworthy Congolese … very, very soon!

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