Tuesday August 8, 1922

Chapter 2. The river journey.

The ship was moored at Boma pier by the time we had breakfast and it was not long after that meal that we set foot for the first time in Congo.

 Boma is the present capital (Kinshasa is to be the new capital city) and the boat stays here for 24 hours which gave us the opportunity for a walk on land and a visit to the local post office for a number of things; one or two official and business calls and finally a visit to the British Consulate.

But the great thing today was our introduction to Congo and impressions just crowed in all day – too numerous and too new to be recorded all at once – they will come gradually in subsequent pages.

Up to now our life has changed so gradually that each days new things could be dealt with fairly easily but today everything is so new and so different: so many things come into view all at once; so much is suggested from casual observations, so much can be deduced that I will leave a fuller description of impressions until these have been made deeper and more reliable by more extended observation and better conclusions can be reached by longer experience.

Nearly everything is different form the European standpoint: but not so very different from what I had expected from reading and hearing the experiences of others, but the fact of being here and receiving all these strange scenes through all my senses at the same time instead of through one sense at a time – such as the ear in hearing the noises of the Congo – or the eye in studying peculiarities – this is the thing that gives the feeling of “strangeness” even to the things one expected to find and does find as much as they were expected.

Already problems begin to show themselves

and solutions which seemed possible 

in Europe now begin to dissolve altogether!

It is strange how on matters which we are in “familiar” grounds. If we saw a goat or cat or dog we invariably called it a “Congo” goat, cat, dog etc. A banana tree, a mango grove or an orange tree being essentially tropical never received the label “Congo” because in our little experience it has never been anything else! How easy it is to live in a small world by failing to use the gift of imagination: already our travels have shown that.

Tips:

10 shillings or Belgian Equivalent to cabin steward, same to table steward.

5 shillings to bath steward.

Nominal sum to Band and deck steward.

Note for others:
- Customs dues are paid on board before Matadi: Bring plenty of money.
- At Boma visit British Consul for (voluntary) registration taking British passort with you.
- Customs declaration done on board after Banana. Any examination is made at Matadi – a detailed list of contents of each box, preferably in French is here very useful.