tshikapa feels like a place that forgot it mattered

well, here i am in tshikapa and honestly it’s like being in a half-dream. i checked the app and it’s 24 degrees right now, which sounds fine until you remember the humidity is at 74 and the air just feels like it’s holding its breath. i’m a budget backpacker, so this place has my signature mix of weird curiosity and ‘will this kill me?’ energy. first off, the diamonds. everyone talks about it, but out here it’s just old trucks with rusted trailers parked by the road, wtf is up with that? i saw a sign saying something about gravel quarrying but i didn’t care enough to ask. honestly, if you want history, go to kananga-this feels like a ghost town holding its breath.

so here’s the thing: i live in a room that smells like mildew and old mildew. it’s in a neighborhood where the buildings are basically giant clay bricks held together by prayer. i’ve never been to a place where the concrete is literally doubling as a flag of surrender. i walked past a football stadium today-dibumba or something-and it’s just a hole in the ground with scars from fights or maybe just kids kicking a ball around. the other one, kanzala, might be more exciting but i heard it’s just a fancy way to say ‘abandoned construction site.’ who knows?

weather update: it’s that slow-drip rain thing i hate. not heavy, not cold, just enough to make the dirt squish under your shoes. i just checked and it’s…still here, hope you like that kind of thing. the rivers are the only thing moving. the tshikapa and kasai rivers meet right here, which sounds cool but also feels like a setting for a bad horror movie. there’s a boat landing, right? i took a rumpled matatu to the edge and watched boats drift by. the guys at the dock were selling mangoes wrapped in garbage bags. great.

i came here because i heard it was cheap. cheap coffee, cheapʃ dirt, cheapʃ everything. the local market is a warzone of expired goods and aggressive vendors. i bought a bag of ‘freeze-dried’ bananas that claimed to be ‘tropical’ but tasted like sadness. keep that in mind. don’t trust the food. really. i ate something that looked like a spider’s placenta once and called it ‘steak.’ it was fine. i told myself it was fine.

neighbors? kabodi is east, sami is south. if you get bored, those places are just a short drive away. i heard kabodi has a ‘famous’ bushmeat stall where they serve monkeys. i didn’t go. sami is apparently full of people who lost their jobs in the diamond industry and now make art out of glass shards. i heard that. i didn’t verify. hear no evil.

somebody told me that the airport here is a joke. like, really. it’s just a tarmac with a tarp and a guy in a batik shirt pretending to be a receptionist. the last time i tried to fly out, the plane got stuck in the rain and the pilot said something about ‘praying for better weather.’ i’m not sure if he was kidding.

maybe i’m being too harsh. there’s a decent boat ride you can take down the kasai river. i saw a guy fishing with a flashlight and a net. his boat was leaking. he didn’t care. that’s the vibe. you can also just wander the streets and maybe buy a wooden carving of a dinosaur. trust me, it’s better than your ex.

if you want structure, check out tshikapa’s tourism board-it’s on a website that says ‘visit us and experience the diamond-rich wonders of the eastern africa heartland!’ which sounds great until you realize there’s no internet in 90% of the city. just go to tripadvisor. the last review from 2018 said ‘diamonds are the only thing here that sparkle’ and i laughed so hard i cried. yelp has nothing because no one uses yelp. mostly tourists use whatsapp groups to warn each other about dodgy hostels.

i met a dancer here. or maybe she was a dancer. we bonded over ballet and the fact that neither of us could dance anymore. she showed me a studio in the back of her house. it was a concrete room with a cracked floor and a single chair. we sat there and watched kids trying to dance to a broken radio. some were good. most were not. we left and i bought her a mango for 2000 congoleese francs. we both looked at each other like it was a profound moment. it wasn’t.

i’m leaving tomorrow. the border with angola is 125 km north and i’m not sure i want to take that road. the jeep drivers here are like they’re auditioning for a post-apocalyptic car chase movie. one guy tried to sell me a ‘vintage’ map of the drc for 5000 francs. it was a photocopy. i kept it. it maps to nothing.

here’s the map if you want to get lost:

. it’ll probably drop you in a rice field or a mine. don’t blame it. i wouldn’t blame it.

images:

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