Letter from DR Congo: the final journey

Last week was the week for driving. I spent three full days on the road. And on the road you see some bizarre sights: trucks overloaded with sacks of goodness knows what, and on top of that, piled with people. Women carrying ridiculous amounts of firewood on their heads, cans of water in their hands and babies on their backs. Cars stuck in the thickest of mud where they will no doubt stay until the sun shines enough to dry it all up.

Soon the absurd becomes normal. What once would have made me laugh, question or at least pass a comment no longer attracts my attention. It’s just another sight along the way.

So we were travelling behind this motorbike for quite a while before I noticed what (or rather who) it was carrying. I saw a blue plastic chair strapped precariously to the back of the bike. Nothing unusual there. All sorts of furniture, animals and goods can be seen strapped to the back of bikes trying to balance their way along the bumpiest and muddiest of roads.

Then I noticed some legs dangling from the chair. “My goodness, there’s a person sat on that chair,” I said to my colleague. And she said: “Yes. I think he’s dead.”

I looked as we overtook the bike. Indeed, there was a dead person strapped into the blue plastic chair, on to the back of the motorbike. The body was covered in a kitenge, the traditional sarong-like cloth with a sack tied over the head. But the legs were dangling free.

The sight, though sad, was also rather comical and I had to suppress a smile. I eventually mused to my colleague: “You see some strange things on the road here, don’t you?” To which she simply replied, “Yes. You do.”

I wonder who that person was. Had their death been sudden? Had it been expected? What had they done in their life? Had they been happy? What impact had they had on the world around them? What will their friends, community, family remember them for?

Another soul, another life, another death.

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