Today we shot at an ambitious four destinations, and it was the second hottest I’ve been since I arrived in Kinshasa (the first being the warehouse by the docks my third day here). On every hot day there is sweat and uncomfortableness and fidgeting and gasping and exclaiming “il fait tres, TRES chaud!” to one another, but after a certain point I can ascend it. The heat gets so bad that I get dizzy and feel like I can’t breathe, and then at some point the pressure is released. My brain finds a way to disconnect from my body enough so that I can function. But today that didn’t happen. I think the temperature and humidity were beyond passable. I drank what felt like a gallon of water and sweat it all out.

Today also happened to be Jesus Christ’s birthday, according to the Kimbaguist sect of Christianity, which is huge in Kinshasa (“the church of Christ on Earth by the prophet Simon Kimbangu”). All the Kimbaguists in each community parade towards their center where there’s a huge festival. The streets were packed everywhere with incessant parades and since there was no way to avoid them we embraced them. They were pretty fabulous, and noisy: