Movement!

Our life here can be so interesting. Daily I see things that amaze me. Sometimes I shake my head and wonder how a farm girl from Iowa ended up doing what I do and living where I live.

Kinshasa is a huge city with a population estimated from anywhere between 8 -13 million. It was originally built to hold just a few million people, with that number jumping dramatically within the last decade because of people fleeing from the fighting. Imagine a city holding several times the population that it was built for; crowding, wall to wall people, constant movement.

Kinshasa is a city that MOVES. At all hours of the day and night you can find some sort of movement; people fighting for transportation, navigating crowded walkways, fighting to get ahead in a traffic jam, bartering for local foods, etc. But there are two, one minute periods of the day when you can find absolute stillness.......the raising and lowering of the Congolese flag. There's a military camp by the kid's school. Around the time that we take the girls to school every morning, we often run into the flag raising ceremony. It's really not much of a ceremony; usually a couple of military men march out and one stands at attention while the other raises the flag. But what is amazing is what happens on the street. Everyone FREEZES; cars, taxis, pedestrians, vendors......there is absolutely NO movement. If someone is in the process of paying a cab fare both parties stop. It's freeze tag, where once you're tagged you're supposed to freeze in that exact position. If the flag ceremony is happening on a stretch of road where you can see for a good distance, people will freeze for a good 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile on each side of the flag.

Here's to a moment of stillness among the millions..........