I just moved from my boss’ house to the apartment of a friend of a classmate of mine (apparently, everyone in my class knows someone who lives somewhere). She’s got a very nice apartment in a part of town that doesn’t get its electricity cut ever (or nearly ever). This is a big deal, I suppose, because everyone else I work with (with the exception of one person) has to deal with these unpredictable power cuts, often lasting for days.
Anyway, Jenna arrived last Wednesday night at around 11:30pm and we’ve been hanging out and exploring the town since then. There has been a conference of the Catholic Bishops in town and it’s a major deal for the city of Bangui. Lucky for us, the largest Catholic church in town is half a block away. I would show you pictures, but I just found out that it is illegal to take pictures in Bangui. Let me repeat that, IT IS ILLEGAL TO TAKE PICTURES IN BANGUI. What?!
Not that I’ll let that stop me, but the new rule is that I can’t take pictures any place where there are men or women in uniform.
That said, at this conference of Bishops, it was a very interesting scene: in the enormous front lawn of the church were the Bishops. They were sitting on risers with a cloth awning that had been constructed specifically for the occasion. There was very loud music playing from underneath a tent next to the risers — it sounded like a kwassa kwassa with a full choir or something: very very festive and loud. There were thousands of people crowded around the risers and the tent, both sitting in chairs and standing, and there was a rhythmic movement of the whole group. Moreover, virtually everyone was wearing paper hats with the name of a saint or something (pardon my ignorance).
Then, on the outskirts of the enormous, 3000-4000 person crowd were the gendarmerie and the military. There were guys with rocket propelled grenades, rifles, machine guns, and then these groups of two or three guys riding around in the back of pick-up trucks manning what looked to be anti-aircraft guns: these enormous cannons (and sometimes batteries of four guns), ominously not pointed skyward.
It lets you know something about the safety situation here: it seems that one might worry less about the private citizen and more about the military and political conflict. As a co-worker was saying to me: the people around here don’t have very much power, but they see that the people who do have power are the people with guns and a uniform — what would you do?
