The DRC trip keeps returning to my mind. Everything keeps drifting in that direction. Kinshasa and Goma, Bunia and Beni come up in conversations, in news feeds, in humanitarian debate wormholes down which I have fallen.

Last weekend I went to the zoo. I was with three well-traveled, cosmopolitan friends; the kind of friends with whom half an hour’s conversation can move easily through three different continents and several decades of history. A zoo trip is a great opportunity to take a long walk through pleasant surroundings with plenty of conversation-starting animal sightings. This trip was to the Pretoria Zoo. We chose this zoo for a very particular reason: Okapi.