Wednesday, February 22, 2006
The Traffic Cop is a Limpet Fish.
On Monday we drove back into town to visit the professional friend of a journalist who Tuuli and I met at a ceremony of thanks to the World Bank in a swanky Brazzaville hotel. We attended that bizarre lightning fast consumption of free food and beverage in the hopes of meeting the chairman of Brazzaville's association of homosexuals living with AIDS-the first association of its kind that we have encountered in Africa. But, as the National Coordinator of all projects against HIV/AIDS in the Republic of Congo explained to us, the association is still essentially in the closet and tends to be camera shy. We were lucky to come out of the event with the contact information for Mr. Serge, the managing director of RTG@, an internationally broadcast, Kinshasa based television station.
Mr. Serge connected us with Nelly, his health correspondent and a beautiful woman. She agreed to show us to an exemplary HIV/AIDS organization and she was in the process of doing so when a pushy and corrupt traffic cop blocked our way and then jumped into her lap, demanding that we pull off of the road. He directed Sean to the hang out of his obnoxious uniformed henchmen and began trying to extort money from us under the pretense that Sean was not respecting the necessary distance between the Stingray and the vehicle before it. Nelly took the first round of debate; Tuuli and I attempted a second and third. Our miserly offering of money for soft drinks was accepted and promptly forgotten until, eventually, Mr. Serge was driven over from the station in suit and S.U.V. to ameliorate the situation. His gracious behavior unhooked us and somehow simultaneously equipped us with a personal police escort for the rest of the day.
The Stingray has three seats. We subjected Nelly to the shared indignation of the back seat/pantry/closet and I sat behind the gear stick on the tape containing divider hump to avoid sitting on our adversary's lap. He barked directions at Sean and interrogated us on our backgrounds and marital status. Nelly turned the tables and we learned that he has no wife but five children, some of them in school. Our interview and site visit lasted a few hours, during which our bright blue and yellow helmeted limpet fish sat awkwardly in the background witnessing how a woman roughly his own age living with AIDS organizes a school and skill training center for hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children. As we walked to the second branch of her project, the policeman stopped traffic for us whenever we crossed a street; he also yelled at any motorist whose conduct displeased him.
On the way back, I asked him if this was his first time conducting journalistic research. He answered, in good faith, that it was and that he understood for the first time that you actually need an education to perform work of this variety. He was contemplative for a while; then I tried making him feel awe of and admiration for his altruistic fellow city-dwellers. Then I got him to admit that Sean is a good driver. Then he started yelling at people again. That lasted until one in a group of students passing on foot bopped Sean in the face through the open window. The policeman seemed to miss that particular infraction and begged Nelly, after we were clear of the group, which could have ripped him in half, to explain for us why the students were so "naughty." Their anger, she said, stems from the government's failure to assist them with costs, especially the costs of transportation. As a result of this, many thousands of them must walk long dirty distances at least twice a day. They have grown to resent motorists, and, apparently, Sean's face.
On Monday we drove back into town to visit the professional friend of a journalist who Tuuli and I met at a ceremony of thanks to the World Bank in a swanky Brazzaville hotel. We attended that bizarre lightning fast consumption of free food and beverage in the hopes of meeting the chairman of Brazzaville's association of homosexuals living with AIDS-the first association of its kind that we have encountered in Africa. But, as the National Coordinator of all projects against HIV/AIDS in the Republic of Congo explained to us, the association is still essentially in the closet and tends to be camera shy. We were lucky to come out of the event with the contact information for Mr. Serge, the managing director of RTG@, an internationally broadcast, Kinshasa based television station.
Mr. Serge connected us with Nelly, his health correspondent and a beautiful woman. She agreed to show us to an exemplary HIV/AIDS organization and she was in the process of doing so when a pushy and corrupt traffic cop blocked our way and then jumped into her lap, demanding that we pull off of the road. He directed Sean to the hang out of his obnoxious uniformed henchmen and began trying to extort money from us under the pretense that Sean was not respecting the necessary distance between the Stingray and the vehicle before it. Nelly took the first round of debate; Tuuli and I attempted a second and third. Our miserly offering of money for soft drinks was accepted and promptly forgotten until, eventually, Mr. Serge was driven over from the station in suit and S.U.V. to ameliorate the situation. His gracious behavior unhooked us and somehow simultaneously equipped us with a personal police escort for the rest of the day.
The Stingray has three seats. We subjected Nelly to the shared indignation of the back seat/pantry/closet and I sat behind the gear stick on the tape containing divider hump to avoid sitting on our adversary's lap. He barked directions at Sean and interrogated us on our backgrounds and marital status. Nelly turned the tables and we learned that he has no wife but five children, some of them in school. Our interview and site visit lasted a few hours, during which our bright blue and yellow helmeted limpet fish sat awkwardly in the background witnessing how a woman roughly his own age living with AIDS organizes a school and skill training center for hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children. As we walked to the second branch of her project, the policeman stopped traffic for us whenever we crossed a street; he also yelled at any motorist whose conduct displeased him.
On the way back, I asked him if this was his first time conducting journalistic research. He answered, in good faith, that it was and that he understood for the first time that you actually need an education to perform work of this variety. He was contemplative for a while; then I tried making him feel awe of and admiration for his altruistic fellow city-dwellers. Then I got him to admit that Sean is a good driver. Then he started yelling at people again. That lasted until one in a group of students passing on foot bopped Sean in the face through the open window. The policeman seemed to miss that particular infraction and begged Nelly, after we were clear of the group, which could have ripped him in half, to explain for us why the students were so "naughty." Their anger, she said, stems from the government's failure to assist them with costs, especially the costs of transportation. As a result of this, many thousands of them must walk long dirty distances at least twice a day. They have grown to resent motorists, and, apparently, Sean's face.
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