Still recovering from the jetlag and the shock of arriving back in Toronto on Saturday to freezing temperatures. My last day in Congo included a visit to a school in Pointe Noire that is involved in our education program -- Africa Genie school -- where I expected to see a presentation or activity but found instead that I was pretty much a one-man panel, answering questions from these bright, lively students about life in Canada, the environmental issues we face and what young people are doing to overcome them, all conducted in French (my French has improved dramatically over the course of my three days in Congo!). Their energy and enthusiasm were wonderful and at the end they presented me with a book of letters from students to their counterparts in Canada. They would love to start an exchange with a Canadian class, so if there are any schools that are interested and can work in French, please let me know!
Then I began my 27-hour journey home, starting with a short flight to Brazzaville from Pointe Noire. Fortunately I had time to break my journey in Brazzaville for a couple of hours and the airport wasn't looking too appealing, so I took a cab into town to grab dinner on the banks of the Congo river at a lovely restaurant called Mami Wata. Incredibly atmospheric sitting outside, watching the twinkling lights of the DRC on the other side of the river, and dug-out canoes being poled up the murky waters. There was a high-end cocktail party going on in the adjacent garden -- lots of French champagne and chi-chi appetizers being consumed. Extraordinary how a country can be at the same time so wealthy and so stunningly poor -- my taxi driver back to the airport just shook his head when I brought the subject up.
Almost home, but still had to get over the biggest challenge of the trip - boarding a plane at Brazzaville airport which I think rates as the worst I have ever experienced anywhere in the world. There were no fewer than three luggage checks and four passport and boarding pass checks before you could get on the plane -- each one a melee of sweating people pushing and shoving to get to the front. Quite a relief to board the Air France plane and be allowed to sit quietly in the cool for eight hours.
It's taken the last few days for my journey to even begin to sink in, and I suspect will be much longer before it really comes home to me. I am filled with gratitude to everyone I met along the way -- all of our dedicated JGI staff and their teams, all the committed teachers, health workers and microcredit committees and of course all of the chimpanzees. Everyone, without exception, was friendly and helpful and has left me with positive images of the countries I visited -- of extraordinarily cheerful and resourceful people working to overcome the challenges they face and to provide better lives for their children, to enhance their communities and to protect the animals and the nature their countries enjoy.
It's hard to reconcile all this with the images we see in the newspaper and on television of the ethnic violence that has erupted recently in Kenya. But perhaps that's my biggest lesson -- Africa is huge and complex, and its various countries and peoples differ vastly from one to another. Generalizing about the continent is unhelpful and potentially dangerous, and we need to understand that what we see in the media reflects only a minute piece of all that Africa (or each one of its countries) really is. If you want to understand you need to go.
I'm now officially signing off from my travel blog -- thanks to everyone who posted comments and to all of our dedicated partners and supporters that make the wonderful work I saw in Tanzania, Uganda and Congo a reality. You're the best!
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