There was an old man in Kinshasa who claimed he could turn people into swallows and help them fly over the ocean to reach America. He only charged seven thousand dollars for it. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. People called him crazy but that would not stop them from lining up to get a consultation. Since her application for a student visa had been denied twice and the U.S. lottery hadn’t worked out either, Kabibi thought, eh why not, it couldn’t hurt to try.

Her friend Mirna tried her best to stop her. The man was a charlatan, she said. A scammer. Un aventurier. Kabibi was going to waste her savings. She should reapply to the U.S. embassy instead and be more patient. There were other ways…

Kabibi shook her head no. Mirna could not understand. Their situations were not the same. Mirna’s parents owned a successful business. Her fiancé had graduated with honors and was going to work at a bank. Mirna’s future was bright and secured in Kinshasa. It was the opposite for Kabibi. She was an orphan. For her, there was nothing to look forward to in the city. Besides, ever since she was a child, she had always dreamt about moving to America.

She had explored many options to leave the Congo. First, she had gotten in touch with Tonton Melchior, a big-bellied man who specialized in selling fake passports. He’d been great at it for years but had just been arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport, a bunch of falsified IDs in his luggage. He was about to serve a sentence in France for fraud and forgery.

Then Kabibi had talked to Mama Christiane, a tall, imposing woman who’d take groups of people to Kenya several times a year for a reasonable fee. There, she would connect them to other smugglers who’d send them to Libya and then Italy. Kabibi had considered making the journey, before realizing it was too dangerous. Many of those who’d attempted it had never reached their destination, devoured by the sea or worse.

And as for a fiancé… Kabibi had had one before, a young British expat who’d promised her the moon before vanishing as soon as his PhD research on Women and microcredit in the DRC got done. He had sworn he would write her a letter of invitation to come to the UK and then poof, one day he’d just stopped replying to her messages. So, if she wanted to believe an old man’s tale about turning people into birds, then what? It couldn’t be worse than being hurt by love, could it?

Mirna had no arguments left and the conversation ended. The next day, Kabibi went to see the old man. His name was Papa Ndeke. He lived in a small house, east of the city. He had a salt-and-pepper beard, walked barefoot, a wrapper tight around the hips and his face covered in kaolin. He claimed to have been taught shapeshifting by a century-old practitioner from his village. True or not, this made for an impressive resume.

Kabibi was only able to bring him three thousand dollars on that first meeting. Papa Ndeke wasn’t fond of payment plans, but he made an exception for her when he learned that she was an orphan. Besides, she was a hard worker. She worked in hotels, restaurants, hair salons… Wherever she could make some dollars. She promised the old man she’d give him the rest of the money quickly and kept her word.

Less than a month later, she came back with another three thousand dollars. She was hoping to get her lessons started, but Papa Ndeke said no. No teaching until the money was paid in full. That was the rule. In the meantime, he agreed to show Kabibi some testimonials from former clients: a postcard sent from Dallas, a letter from San Francisco, a picture from Montreal. Kabibi gazed in wonder at the precious correspondence. Soon, it would be her turn…

But Kabibi never got the opportunity to make the final payment to Papa Ndeke. The evening before she was supposed to return to his house, a report aired on TV. A Congolese man was on the run, wanted for having stolen a total of $185,000 from gullible prospective immigrants. The reporter said the man had run the same scam in Kisangani and Lubumbashi before. A picture of Papa Nedke appeared on screen and Kabibi almost fainted.

She didn’t leave her house and refused to eat for three days after that. The neighborhood badmouths openly mocked her, calling her naïve and stupid for falling for such a con. Mirna felt so bad for her that she offered to lend her some money, but Kabibi said no. She wanted to replenish her savings on her own.

It’s only to go back to school that Kabibi finally left her house the following week. Luckily for her, she had paid for the term in advance and didn’t have to worry about school fees. On her first morning back, as she was trying to focus, she got distracted by a bird that landed on the windowsill next to her. It had palmed feet, brown eyes and a salt-and-pepper chest. It was staring at her with insistence. Kabibi was stunned. Was it… Papa Nedke? It sure looked like him.

But why had he come to see her? To apologize? To teach her a lesson? Oh, yes. Maybe that was it… He was ready to cross the ocean, but he had come to say goodbye and let her know that it was possible, that his gimmick was not a lie. Kabibi looked out the window and nodded at the bird, silently, gravely. With the same gravity, the bird returned her nod and flew away. Kabibi watched it gain altitude and disappear over the horizon. “Kende malamu,” she whispered. “Travel safe.” Then she closed her eyes and promised herself that one day, she too would grow wings and take flight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash