https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=sKaQjZ3Uvf4
So hi, Jonathan. So Anders Vralsdad says, hi, Jonathan, can you tell me about the most extreme memory that you have from your time in Africa? Maybe it involves the basket behind you. Yeah. Was this a symbolism happens kind of moment? Yes, it was. And so indeed, I think I mentioned this in a video before, but for those who haven’t heard that basket that you see behind me right here, um, this is a Rwandan basket. And, uh, I, uh, we actually, my wife and actually bought it in Burundi when we were in the Great Lakes area of Africa at some point. And when we returned to Congo, we came to, uh, to the east of Congo and, uh, we were supposed to be there just for one day and then take a plane back to Kinshasa and, uh, and a war started while we were, uh, while we were staying there. And we got stuck in a Swedish guest house. We actually were in the newspaper and like the national Swedish newspaper, there was a picture of us caught in that, uh, between two walls as they were bombing and shelling the city. And so, uh, I just have the memory because at some point we tried to get the UN to come get us. Um, and so luckily the head of the UN in, in Congo was the Swedish guy. And so the people from the Swedish guest house had like an in with him. So they called him, but they could never come and get us because every time they would talk, it would start shooting again and there would be shelling and explosions. Um, and, uh, it was weird. Like we, we, the people were trying to kind of relax as the, the whole place was, was being bombed. And so they watched the meet the parents, they would like play the movie and then the bombing would become so loud that they would have to stop the, that they would have to stop the movie while, while we were just sitting there. Sorry, I’m laughing. You know, I laugh in the worst possible moments. It’s just, I’m not supposed to laugh here anyways. So finally they get, they get in contact with the, uh, the head of the UN and, um, and so they decided to come get us, uh, at the, at the guest house, but we need to get our stuff in a room. We were like in a, in a common building and we needed to go get our stuff in a room and that basket was in our room. And so I left the main building where you were and there was a shooter that was on the corner of the wall of our, of where we were staying. And, uh, and so there were bullets that were whizzing through the trees. And I actually, at some point, like these bullets were whizzing over my head and I had to, I had to kind of like duck on the ground. And I just remembered feeling this like rush, my goodness. It was like, it was the most insane rush that I’ve ever felt. Um, and so I went into the room and got this basket and, uh, we were, we were evacuated to the UN compound and there at the UN compound, everybody was drunk. Everybody was completely drunk and it was just absolutely insane. Anyway, so that’s the most intense memory I have from Congo. It goes on and it involves being threatened by weapons at, you know, uh, being caught in our, in our, in our house because everything broke down after that. And there were riots in the street. It was an intent, very, very intense time. But if you were interested, it’s very strange because where we were staying in the UN compound, uh, there was a punk band that, uh, they’re called some 41 and they were in the compound with us. I didn’t know about them at the time. I learned about them later, but they were in the, they were in the compound where we were and they actually filmed everything. And so you can find it online. It’s a, there’s a video called rocked in Congo, uh, which documents this whole event. And so I only watched it like 10 years later and maybe less, maybe like eight or nine years later, I watched this video and I’m watching this thing that I went through in this, like this, this video by a punk band. Anyways, it was, it was a wild, it was a wild town. So that was my most intense, but there are many, many that are at a similar level of intensity. Yeah. So that’s why I keep that basket there to remind me of death.