We were driving to Uvira following the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The limp boy must have electrocuted himself a minute before we arrived. His twisted silhouette hanged against the grey sky of the late afternoon. A pretty landscape turned suddenly dark.

His drool ran down his forehead, his body jerked the last of him. The young women below, arms reaching out towards the sky, condemning the electric post, were screaming in horror. We called the electrical company, in vain. We could only stare, waiting for divine intervention. It never came.

“We shouldn’t touch the white man’s stuff”, an old man said. Another woman said that “the boy was from the electricity company”, lying bluntly, covering up the attempt of electric theft, all too common in Congo. Maybe she was the one who sent him up there to get electricity for her mud hut.

They cut the power. They took a ladder, descended the body to the ground, gently. The boy disappeared under a crowd of grievers. He had been playing football this Sunday afternoon, someone said.