Georg was a street dog. Our chauffeur picked him up at a road side pet market, one of those places with about 40 parrots stuffed in a cage and forlorn monkeys chained to a tree. Georg was probably about 6 months old. Not full grown and quick to learn.
Four years later [...]
Wally with daughters, Kristel and Nathalie, in the 1980s.
Wally was friend, landlord, and fellow annotator of life as seen from the center of the world, i.e. Kinshasa. His shop got the news of his death last Tuesday; strange, how quickly a place can feel empty and abandoned with everyone still standing around.
That changed on Saturday [...]
I have many interesting neighbors here in Kinshasa, but polygamous Ralph is the most flamboyant. I spy shamelessly.
Ralph patrols in his full glory from a stepping stone.
Actually Ralph has a few cousins with similar habits. One displays amidst the barbwire on the back wall and one suns himself on the roof of the neighbor’s shack, [...]
Driving from Newark to Manhattan we go past open dock yards of thousands of shipping containers. Similar containers get unloaded in Matadi, D.R. Congo, with the goods of missionaries, humanitarian agencies, international aid organizations and government ministries. From Matadi they move to Kinshasa by train and sometimes on again by barge into the forest interior.
The [...]
The Congo is second home since 1974 when I came as Peace Corps teacher to what was then Zaire. It was here that John and I decided to marry, and it was here that two of our three daughters were born. We finished our educations – John with a doctorate in wildlife ecology and mine in plant ecology – then back to Congo and full-time working with Congolese for conservation of their last wildlife-rich forests.
teresehart AT gmail DOT com
