“Ain’t no mountain high enough.” That is the refrain of Paloma Lengema’s life. How else could she have survived what she survived? First, in 1997, she went into exile after the strongman Mobutu Sese Seko was overthrown in the Democratic Republic of Congo (née Zaire). She was just nine years old and, worse, she says, “I had to leave my dogs behind.”
She left the DRC and, over a decade, lived and worked across the world. But perhaps you never truly escape your home. That may explain why she got a dachshund, because “Since we left Congo, I've always wanted a dog back in my life.” And the way she talks about pondu, a Congolese cassava leaf soup that divorces you from any miseries, is what chocolate is to Switzerland.
