I'm sitting on a balcony on the 5th floor of an apartment in a suburb of Paris. It's about 6 in the afternoon and the sun is already casting long shadows on the ground. Children are playing after school in a park across the street. Their laughter floats across the cooling air. This is the first time I've really had to sit down in more than a week. The Congo is a whole other world away. The contrast between Brazzaville and Paris is beyond words. They just can't be compared. Th Congo has nothing. Absolutely nothing. A civil war destroyed anything they had. The electricity still goes out today and many roads in the city aren't paved. I've met people in Singapore who complain that life there is bad. They have to rethink that thought because life in Singapore is in no way bad. Also life is not boring there. Go to a place with nothing and you can say life is boring. People have to also rethink their thoughts on the Congo. This isn't the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There is a huge amount of potential for development in the Congo because everything needs to be developed. In the week that I was there it was safe. We drove over a 1000 km in the countryside and there were no problems other than potholes and people walking on the road. 

I'm gonna stop writing now because I have to go.