Rather randomly, a Congolese (Brazzaville) student sent me a message on Facebook, saying he’d remembered me from my time at Villa Washington and wanted to reconnect. The Villa was the US embassy’s cultural centre in Brazzaville and each week (Thursday?) they held an evening in which someone was invited to give a short presentation – often a visiting American. Not so special you might think, but it attracted hundreds of young Congolese every week – and once inside the door almost everyone spoke English to each other. I was invited to watch, then came to speak, and I ended up presenting a few times and attending almost every week. Sometimes I would just give a short behind-the-scenes talk on whatever reports I had done that week. I could often record a radio vox pop (in English) as well.

Looking back it was perhaps a bit odd, but there was a certain vibe about those evenings that was infectious. I found it great to just hang out with the young folks who knew that the world didn’t give much thought to their country, and that they had the misfortune to be born in a country that didn’t offer them many opportunities. Outside the centre students used the street lights to do their homework in the absence of a stable domestic electricity supply.

Maybe it massaged my ego as well – I was treated like a star on those evenings (probably just for being a white foreigner from the radio), although in my own mind I was just another young person like them.

For those attending, there was a palpable sense that America offered an alternative to their francophone elites who’d sown up the country for themselves. In a sense, English was the language of hope, and the US must have seemed (from a distance) as the land of opportunity. I like to think that there was a distinctly non-francophone lack of hierarchy as well. The ambassador was in frequent attendance, as was a good friend of mine from the embassy, the Charge d’Affaires. These students were not people Congolese society considered important.

Those were happy times with a real sense of community – those young Congolese, the folks at the SIM mission where I stayed for most of my time, and the handful of local expats (largely ambassadors and diplomatic number twos) who met every Tuesday evening to discuss short stories.