I have felt like Alice in Wonderland for weeks now actually. Nonsense and fake realities, unelections for all I know.  So I wake up on Wednesday morning to work on a radio report about something that did not happen, follow Twitter updates on the situation by people who are mostly not in Congo and have unconversations with sources who can’t talk openly to the media. Thursday was a lot of the same, with the extra twist that results were postponed again, which by then wasn’t a twist anymore.

On Friday morning, a little bored, I decided to go to a mine with a freelance journalist friend I’ll call C, thinking that the results would probably be announced late that evening and -anyway- would probably be postponed again. We got up at 6.30 to leave around 7.30, except this being DRC we in fact left at 9.00 after a lot of drama involving the driver asking for a lot more money than we agreed on. Why not.

I’ll pass you the rant on how bad the road was, at this point I think I’ve lost a few centimeters from spine compression, but anyway, we made it to Karuba, a small town in the hills of Masisi. There, a few people warned us that “there is no road” to where we’re going. C, who is Spanish and speaks excellent French but gets a little confused sometimes with Congolese French, is shocked. “What do you mean there is no road?”, he said before turning to the driver who had already hinted that he did not know the way to the mine THAT well. “Are we on the wrong road?”, he asked him, annoyed.
“No, no we’re on the right road, there was no other road on the way”, the driver replied.
“But how can we be on the right road if there is no road to where we are going”, replied C.
“We are on the right road, but the road is not there anymore”, explained the driver, which only confused the hell out of C.

Vanishing roads in the land of vanishing ballots, that started to make absolute sense to me, but I kind of guessed that what these people really meant was that the road’s in extremely bad conditions and it was not going to be possible for us to reach our destination. A little clarification of French vocabulary later, we forged on, convinced that our own determination to visit the mine would magically make the vanished road reappear. Wishful thinking gets you a long way sometimes, but roads here are possibly the only thing that do not belong to a Lewis Carroll world and surely enough we stumbled upon a massive hole in the mud.

Vexed but with no other option than going back, we made our way to Goma, stopping at a market on the way so that our driver could buy potatoes (Earlier he claimed not having a single dollar to pay for the fuel, but since roads vanish here, dollars can very well appear, non?).

Back home in Goma, the driver (who has only worked half the time he was supposed to, thanks to the vanished road, and who we were paying more than we initially agreed on) doesn’t like my 10$ note. It’s not pretty enough, no no no, there is a small tear. I offer to pay him in Congolese francs instead, the local currency. The notes I hand him over are brown with dirt and lacerated, but with unyielding logic, he accepts them.

Exhausted I go to bed, the results announcement long forgotten. It’s 2pm and I’m looking at a long nap before getting back to work.

I wake up at 4pm, get dressed and walk over to the terrace after hearing my friends screaming my name from the top of their voice for 10 minutes. So its official, everyone has gone mad. Mad mad mad, I think.

As I reach the terrace I can hear Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, the president of the Independent National Electoral Commission, on the radio delivering a speech and I realized that I have ALMOST just missed the elections results! I sat down, tell my friends I had completely forgot and thanks for waking me up, try to turn the volume up, mess up, the radio squeaks and dies.

Thanks god we had butter to repair it and not jam to-morrow like the Congolese.

Filed under: CONGO DRC ]]> http://melaniegouby.com/2011/12/12/how-i-almost-missed-the-results/feed/ 2 melaniegouby Vanished road ©Mélanie Gouby http://melaniegouby.com/2011/12/10/kabila-reelection-goma-mitigated-celebration-in-pictures/ http://melaniegouby.com/2011/12/10/kabila-reelection-goma-mitigated-celebration-in-pictures/#comments Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:13:13 +0000 GoingwitheWind http://melaniegouby.com/?p=1935 Continue reading →]]> The elections were postponed for three days and when they finally came out, I think people were already either bored or indifferent. Goma at least has been very quiet, save for a little celebrating yesterday evening, but hardly any protest (nothing I’ve caught on camera in any case). Below are pictures of mostly Kabila supporters exulting in the streets, until rain came pouring down and sent every one home.

Not everyone in the street was happy about the results however, some people came up to me asking to tell the world that their victory had been stolen.

There is this feeling in the air, making you feel a little apprehensive, a little excited. It is a nerve-wracking wait, the election results, Congo’s future decisive turning point. With little internet and now no texting service since Saturday (Government’s policy to ‘limit disorder’), I have been half-cut off from the outside world since two weeks, burying myself in the developments of a fascinating moment in the history of a nation that has not often been given a choice. Congo, I hope you do come out stronger.

Photography was a small part of the work I did last week, but possibly one of the most enjoyable. For the first time since I first came here, it has been easy to take pictures. Raising my camera was not met by aggressive reactions of people in the frame. I was even asked to take a few portraits of people voting. The enthusiasm was visible, especially in Goma, less in Masisi where several personnes told us they had been intimidated or plainly forced to vote for “a certain candidate”.

Some of my pictures were published here and here. Our bi-monthly radio show Face à la Justice was on the elections last week and is available here (in French). If you want to hear what Goma post-elections is like, you can listen to my radio report here (in French). It’s been a very busy week but as I said to a Congolese colleague today “Si on travaille pas maintenant, on travaille quand?”

The counting of votes did not start until late at night, many political parties’ witnesses had not eaten at all that day and still staid up all night. I was impressed by the dedication of everyone involved. For having witnessed counting of the votes in French elections, I can say it was done very professionally in the bureau I was in Goma.

I can’t resist posting this picture as well, possibly the cutest observer all over the country!

Today is the last day of the electoral campaign before Monday  when Congolese will go to the poll to elect their new president and MPs. Goma has been very animated as all parties have been out in the street campaigning, i.e. partying. Here are a few pictures taken from a motorbike as I was going to get the accreditation for me and the Uhaki News journalists (We still don’t have them, our file was lost in the mess that the CENI office in Goma is, hopefully we’ll get them today).
For more details about the elections and what to expect, I wrote this article yesterday.