You know you have been in a country for a while when you start knowing its streets. I flew out to Mbandaka a small town on the Congo River by myself. But having been there before, I now know its streets. You realise it even more when you start bumping into people on the street and your phone keeps ringing.

By Saskia Roskam

Congo Calling

About Saskia Roskam

Saskia Roskam, born in 1982 from a Cameroonian mother and a Dutch father, is travelling over the next six months through the Democratic Republic of Congo. In her fortnightly column entitled ‘Congo Calling’, Saskia shares with us the impressions of her journey.

During the first two months in Congo, I knew virtually no one. I felt like a complete stranger. My phone might as well be switched off because, really, who would pay the exorbitant costs of calling me all the way from the Netherlands? For one euro per minute, let me tell you, next to no one!

But as time passes, Kinshasa, this megalopolis of ten million people, suddenly starts to get pretty small and selected. I begin to bump into familiar faces on my early morning walks to the bakery and fruit stores. Nights out in any restaurant always produces another face. And soon you are getting calls from people you have visited in the past, inviting you for the weekend. And little by little you realise that you belong.

And then it gets even spookier. An email from a friend in New York mentioning that in fact he will be in town over the next week. Then another email from an ex-colleague saying he is in Kinshasa over the weekend and if we can meet up. And then when we finally meet, he tells me about a play directed in one of Kinshasa's neighbourhoods. I go only to find out that the director is an acquaintance from the town I grew up in. All of a sudden, this town seems like the place to be for you to meet the rest of the world. The phone directory in your mobile keeps growing and then  - as if you never knew it was coming - it is time to go home.

I did go home a few times in the past six months. But after a while even this gets tricky. You go back to your family and friends. But you find yourself in some sort of a warped reality. Half a year and your senses have grown accustomed to the sound, smells, temperature, faces and multitude of realities of Congo.

Of course you want to go home and see everybody again. Yet you also feel that you have attached yourself to this part of the world. And somewhere something quietly begins to ache as you enter the plane.  A wise friend of mine once told me that the origin of suffering is attachment.