A faux pas, and the art of dodging traffic

I spent yesterday making sense of all my notes, slightly frustrated by how everyone I've spoken to has a differing opinion as to the crux of Congos problems. My driver Claude, about whom I feel no small amounts of white guilt for failing to recognize after I had met and taken his picture only 4 days before, took me around Goma for a spot of sightseeing. We saw many new dirtroads I had never seen before, and I'm quite sure we killed a good few of the motorcyclist teeming around our 4WD. Claude told me that there was at least 6350 motorcycles in Goma, and I said I was sure that there was at least that many currently stuck in our grill. Claude looked at my with serious eyes and said that he did not think that was true.
Later that night, Claude once again picked me up at the hotel, and this time I made a big show of knowing who he was. He seemed genuinely happy, allthought that might have been because of all the beer I had promised to buy him earlier, in an effort to get out of the crushing guilt.
He looked disappointed when he realized that I did not have a bag of beer with me to give to him, and even more so when he realized that I had meant for us to have a beer together.
However, any awkwardness soon gave way to us making plans to go out this weekend, when we realized we liked the same swahili song. Thank God for "Kotchi Kotchi".

Driving at night in Goma is a breathtaking experience, because the total lack of light in no way makes people drive any slower or more cautiosly, and at the same time it in no way limits pedestrians' lack of respect for the difference between sidewalk and road.
In the pedestrians' defense, Goma has no sidewalks.
Barreling down a dirt road in pitch black darkness, desperately dodging oncoming traffic and angrily shouting at houses that have the nerve to be in our way, we somehow managed to make it to our destination, leaving in our wake a trail of destruction that I was prepared to blame on the FDLR.
I had a meeting with Oxfam to discuss their recent report on the impact of the governments offensive against the FDLR, and was quite keen to get his view on the whole debaucle which is the DDRRR.
We spent a few ours discussing the problems of governance in a country of Congos size and history, and I left there feeling that my knowledge of Congo was gaining some cohesion.
I might just be able to make some sense of this country after all.