Audio postcards from Lodja

Here are a couple recordings I made in the last week.

Our commute (à pied) on a cloudy afternoon.

On Saturday we were walking past a church as a singing group practiced outside. As much as I’d like to believe that several years of living in Africa makes me immune to sentimentality and allows me to see things as they are, their singing had me transfixed and even choked up as we passed by. The words are in Tetela, so I can’t tell you what they’re saying. I only just learned how to say, “My name is John.”

A pickup soccer game just down the street from our house.

The second recording was one of the impromptu parades that seem to spring up almost nightly. For a town without grid electricity, Lodja can be as loud as any American city I’ve ever spent the night in. While our neighbors seem to need little impetus to celebrate beyond a worship service or the fact that, hey, it’s Tuesday again, I’m pretty sure this was a celebration of DRC’s victory over Burundi in the African Nations Championship. Unfortunately, Ghana kept DRC out of the tournament semifinals. The Black Stars beat the Leopards a few days later.