Life’s little detours

It was July 2002, and I had returned to Kinshasa after a long furlough back home in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). I had been working as a medical missionary for the American Baptist Churches in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1993.

Before restarting my work as a surgeon at a hospital out in the bush, I needed to get my papers in order. Both my long-term resident visa and medical licence to practise surgery in the country had to be renewed. This would take some time, butI was prepared to wait. Even missionaries who were always welcomed by the poor and needy were not immune to persecution and harassment from underpaid officials.

There was a time during the 1997 war when I was tried in a kangaroo court by drunken military officers. I had been accused of stealing a diamond worth US$3 million, which was supposed to be inside the bowels of a smuggler I had operated on. The case was later dismissed.

As I was waiting in Kinshasa for my papers, a fellow missionary arrived from the bush. Brother Friedhelm was our hospital’s paediatrician. His twin brother Jurgen was coming from Germany for a visit, and Friedhelm was determined that he should see everything that was worth seeing in the country.

Friedhelm arranged a visit to Zongo Falls, a beautiful waterfall about 150km south-west of Kinshasa, and invited me to come along. It was impossible to refuse as one seldom, if ever, got a chance to travel for pleasure in the Congo. Petrol, like all imported goods, was extremely expensive, so casual sightseeing was normally out of the question. I imagine Friedhelm paid several hundred dollars for fuel, supplies and the Land Cruiser he hired, a small fortune for a missionary, but he explained to me that it could well be Jurgen’s first and last visit to the Congo.