My time in the CAR came to an end. I said goodbye to the church members. As I and another American missionary, Andrew, were saying goodbye to all the kids in the neighborhood, they approached us, a few at a time, and gave us hugs or kisses or just giggled, covering their mouths with a hand.
Their crowd dwindled to an end and a little girl who'd always go into hysterics when she saw us, came into view. She couldn't see what was going on from the back. Suddenly meeting us face to face was too much: she struggled with her terror for a few moments and then started to cry, as usual. Andrew, picked her up and held her until she quieted down. I told everyone that, going by Fula-Fula (the truck) was a great experience, which I never want to repeat. I bought a ticket for a plane. The strange thing was, the planes didn't go straight from the CAR to Zaire. I had to fly into Congo, located across the river by the same name from Zaire and then take a ferry to Kinshasa.
The plane arrived into Brazzaville airport late at night. Nobody was meeting me there. At a luggage carousel a white and extremely blonde lady in skintight clothes, bulging in all the wrong places, was cursing in Russian as she kept on grabbing someone else's suitcases, while her African husband stood by and smiled apologetically. When I tried to calm her down in the language common to both of us, she almost blew my head off with a good dose of Russian swear words!
The leader in the CAR gave me a penciled map that was supposed to help me find the church center in Brazzaville. I gave it to a taxi driver, but it didn't seem to do the trick. We drove around and around the, obviously, poor and noisy area of the city,
I rarely had this kind of feelings, meeting my own family!
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