16 novembre 2007
I was shot yesterday night
Yesterday Thursday November 15, 20:00 hrs, Eastern Standard
Time, Washington, DC. I just finished the Swahili class I hold
on Mondays and Thursdays on my street, not far from home. On the street, a few
blocs from home, my daughter’s mom calls to inform me that she’s parked in
front of the house, she’s just returned from grocery shopping and I need to
hurry up to help get the heavy bags inside the house. A neighbor---a white guy
who’s worked in Sierra Leone---sees
me, says hello, and crosses the street on the side where I am. He tells me he’s
just returning from the “Brookings Institute,” the liberal think-tank, where
Hubert Vedrine, the former French Foreign Affairs Minister, has given a talk. Suddenly
two hoodlums---two hooded black guys---cross the street towards us. The guy on
my left is holding a handgun trained at me, and shoots, aiming at my left eye
from a distance of less than 3 meters! I
hit the ground, hollering, and I badly hurt my knees on the pavement. My
neighbor, who thinks I’ve been hit, runs back, hollering too. The two hoodlums
flee the scene on foot. I pick myself up, go where my neighbor was standing and
both of us attempt to get into the house of this guy who’d just opened his
door: he immediately shuts the door in our faces! Detectives, called by my
neighbor from his cellphone, arrive 
on the scene, secure a perimeter, and quickly
find the case of the bullet. My daughter’s mom, who’s heard the gun report,
calls my cellphone: the call doesn’t go through; my phone, having fallen from
my jacket pocket, is scattered on the pavement. Worried, she drives up the
street and finds the neighbor and me reporting to the detectives: she scans me
from head to toe, thinking I might have been hit without realizing it. A
detective tells her: “It’s kids, ma’am, high on some drugs, who wanted to shoot
at someone! Had they been professionals, they’d not have missed… Plus: they’d
have finished him off as he tells me he couldn’t get up having hurt his knees”…
In July 2005, Charles Matembe, my childhood friend, had been shot and killed in
his Mercedes Benz in the neighborhood “Bon Marché” in Kinshasa… In the city, some people claimed it
was some “payback” for God knows what; others claimed he died of “sorcery” as
some family members were mad he didn’t share his wealth!... I wonder how my
shootout incident could’ve been interpreted in Kinshasa… At any rate, a detective---a burly
guy called Joseph Radvansky---gives me his card on which he’d written the
number of my case: 157141 (Fifth Districk)… I would’ve been just another
statistic today: horrible! Yesterday, I didn’t have any beer in the fridge. The
first thing I did today was to buy two 6-packs of “Samuel Adams” which I’ve
already drunk by half… And it’s only around 14:30 hrs in Washington, DC. Cheers, everyone!
I took the picture above today: it's the spot where the hoodlums crossed to shoot at me.
on the scene, secure a perimeter, and quickly
find the case of the bullet. My daughter’s mom, who’s heard the gun report,
calls my cellphone: the call doesn’t go through; my phone, having fallen from
my jacket pocket, is scattered on the pavement. Worried, she drives up the
street and finds the neighbor and me reporting to the detectives: she scans me
from head to toe, thinking I might have been hit without realizing it. A
detective tells her: “It’s kids, ma’am, high on some drugs, who wanted to shoot
at someone! Had they been professionals, they’d not have missed… Plus: they’d
have finished him off as he tells me he couldn’t get up having hurt his knees”…
In July 2005, Charles Matembe, my childhood friend, had been shot and killed in
his Mercedes Benz in the neighborhood “Bon Marché” in