quiet

this photo was taken on our last day in kinshasa 30 august 2007.
we shot in makala, a neighborhood in Kinshasa where SNEL, the state electricity provider, was turning on the juice.
i was quite a novelty there. every resident under the age of 12 thought that i should be shooting them. people tried to get my attention by calling me "EMIINEM". it was a very intense experience. much different than the other places we had been.

when we were done, we hopped back in the truck and went to the airport. within 4 hours we were in the loving embrace of Air France. Unlimited beverages, Spider man 3 and a special insecticide treatment. Another 14 hours later, we were back in NY. Customs didn't even bat an eyelash at my DRC tourist visa or the 31 hours of video tape in my bag. The bags arrived and soon enough we were in a taxi with a new interactive LCD screen for passenger use. the weather in NY was almost exactly the same as Kinshasa. Overcast, humid and hot. But when we got off North Conduit Blvd. and turned onto Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, it felt very different.

Quiet.
Nobody on the streets. Roads that didn't make the axles buckle. Stoplights. Other drivers passed, their windows rolled up. Isolated.

I'm enjoying the return. Out for croissants at 7:00 am on saturday morning. A filmmaker was projecting his doc on North African hip-hop on the side of a building in Ft. Greene last night. I swam in the Atlantic Ocean yesterday and rode waves. Its nice to be home, on Labor Day weekend, in the sunshine, with friends.

But the Five Boroughs, a place I once thoght of as loud, wonderful and out of control, now feels a little tame. I am looking forward to getting back to Kinshasa.

End and Beginning

Thursday 30th of August, last day of shooting and last day in Kinshasa.

I had a sense of relief that the project was finally done, that i was on my way back home, and that i wouldn't have to bribe anyone for a long while. Well, things didn't go as smoothly as i thought they would... My visa was expired. So of course the lady behind the immigration desk took that opportunity to mention that if only I was congolese I would be fine, but since i'm not I have to pay $135 to get back to my country. I started speaking in lingala, tried using my smile hoping that i would be able to convince her to let me go without a fine. Did not work. She said: " How much can you give?" Unfortunatelly all I had was a $100 note and asking for change wasn't an option. She pocketted the money.

14 hours later I am in New York city and all I can think about is how quiet and clean it is. Even East New York seemed very nice and pretty to my eyes. Tired but happy to be back to my somehow safe and comfortable apartment, I start looking through the pictures and this one with my uncle Dominique and aunt Bernadette, probably captures quite well how I was while over there (i.e: well taken care of). I am already missing the housekeepers, the beakfast already made for you, the way the cook would ask me what i wanted to eat for lunch, the nicely folded clean clothes on my bed every night, the pool ( even thought it had mosquitos flying over it most of the time) and of course, being around my family and feeling so much love and attention from them.


Now, phase number two of our work has started.It will basically look like this: sorting out footage, deciding, arguing, editing and going back again to Kinshasa, hopefully soon.

I guess now will be the time to reveal a little bit more about the stories that we've capture, people that we've met and how eveything is going to look like. Keep reading, even though we're not in Dear Congo anymore, the adventures are not over yet.