Ça n’exist pas

When I was in Paris in July, I purchased a map of the “Congo” at Harmattan Books, which has a great selection of material about Africa. Although it was in the rack under “Democratic Republic of Congo,” the map I purchased was of the Republic of Congo, the DRC’s neighbor to the North. Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo’s capital, lies across the Congo River from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is where I am headed. While Congo-Kinshasa, the former Zaire, was once a Belgian colony, in Paris the much smaller former French colony gets to be called “Congo.” When I realized that I had the wrong map, I returned to the bookstore to exchange it. I met the clerk on the street as he was pulling down the gate and leaving for lunch. I explained the mistake and asked if I could trade it for a map of Congo-Kinshasa. His unhesitating reply sounded well-practiced enough for me to assume that I was not the first person to ask for a map of Congo-Kinshasa. “Ça n’exist pas,” he told me. To make matters he worse, since he was leaving for lunch, I had to come back later that afternoon to return the map for a refund.

A few days later, I was sharing the story of my trip to bookstore with a couple of friends who had recently returned from Kinshasa. I told them excitedly about a Lingala dictionary and grammar which I had bought there. Then, I began to tell them the story of the map. Before I could finish, I was interrupted: “Ça n’exist pas.” The same exact phrase.

As I have learned, it will be difficult to send and receive mail in this country of about 50-60 million people whose geography is unmappable to European cartographers. There is no functional postal service available. The government stopped paying its postal employees about three years ago. Even without pay, they continued to work and perform their duties for about a year. Then, needing to develop an alternative source of income, the postal employees brilliantly took over the post offices in many areas and rented out the buildings to small businesses like beauty salons and restaurants. The NY Times reported on this in the early summer in an article on voter registration. Registration meetings were supposed to be held at regional post offices, but in at least one case when the registrars arrived in the town, they found that there was no longer a post office, so they met under an avocado tree. The 2003 transitional charter scheduled elections for June 30, 2005, but allowed for two postponements of six months each. Voter registration is currently under way, and elections to replace (or retain) the present transitional government led by Joseph Kabila should be held no later than June 2006.

As a Fulbright, I have opportunities to receive some mail through government pouch, which is the way that official materials are shipped to the US Embassy in Kinshasa. (This system circumvents customs too.) Government pouch mail used to be processed at one of the postal facilities that was attacked by anthrax several years ago. So now, packages sent through government pouch are irradiated! In my case, this involves four 50-pound boxes of books, which I was assured is completely safe and that books are not damaged by process. Still, I am not entirely comfortable about spending the next year reading an irradiated library.

The address for the mail is another great twist on the geography of Congo-Kinshasa. I ship these to-be-irradiated boxes to myself at an address that looks something like this (this is not the actual address):
I.D.
2000 Kinshasa Place
Washington, DC 12345
I have been to DC but have never heard of “Kinshasa Place.” “Ça n’exist pas.” It is a dummy address that the State Department has created for pouch shipments to its embassies. I actually have a list of the pouch shipping addresses for all of the US embassies in sub-Saharan Africa. It looks like “2001 Luanda Place/Washington, DC”; “2002 Cotonou Place/Washington, DC”; “2003 Gaborone Place/Washington, DC”; “2004 Ouagadougou Place/Washington, DC.” Each “street” is named for the capital city of Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso…. There is even a “Brazzaville Place” on the list of what the State Department calls “pseudo addresses,” which is surprising because the US Ambassador to the Republic of Congo is based across the river in Kinshasa.

While I am abroad, I will have very limited access to mail. If you would like to send something, let me know. Once I am there, I may be able to negotiate some access to a non-irradiated pouch service which goes through a similar routing system--one based, not in Washington, DC, but in the even more unlikely locale of Dulles, Virginia. Hence, something like (again, don't actually use this address):
I.D.
2000 Kinshasa Blvd.
Dulles, VA 67890.
I have never been to Dulles, Virginia, but as for Kinshasa Blvd., I am pretty sure “Ça n’exist pas.” Stay tuned.