I
won’t bore you with too many details about what I’ve been up to, but I did have
the opportunity to take my first trips out of Bunia. For the first, several colleagues and I took
an overnight trip to Beni, a large town just over the border in North
Kivu. The purpose of the trip was, more
or less, networking. We’re starting up a
new project just on the Orientale side of the border and wanted to glad-hand
some folks and see if there isn’t a possibility to expand south. At the same time, we support a number of
clinics along the route we took, so I was able to some of our ongoing work
first-hand.
The
road to Beni – at least the first 150km or so – was, shall we say, a touch
uneven. At first, I approached it as an
off-roading adventure. Every bump made
me smile. After all, people drive all
over Colorado to find roads like this (and if you are so inclined, please don’t
start any fires)! It was beautiful and
interesting. I even leaned back and
pretended that I was in a, admittedly somewhat violent, massage chair at a
pedicure salon.
After
the first two hours bounced by, though, it was as if the chair had vengefully
begun shaking me to pieces, under the mistaken impression that I had
reupholstered its one true love. It
might not have been quite so bad were the speed more consistent, but our driver
seemed to make it a matter of pride to reach 80km/hr as often as possible, even
if only for ten feet before breaking for the next chasm. I supposed I shouldn’t complain so much, as
he apparently only does that in areas with lots of militia activity, but it
does add an extra layer of unpleasantness.
I did take some schadenfreude-based joy in that one of my Congolese
colleagues seemed to be having an even harder time than I. If such a thing was possible, I would have
said that he turned green.
It
was, somewhat improbably, a toll road.
Each barrier cost us between five and seven USD. This, in a country where 70 per cent of
population lives below the global poverty line, or 1.25 USD/day. Of course, the motos didn’t bother to pay and
just flew past. I cannot fathom how much
worse this road would be without the tolls.
It is possible that the money never actually translates into road work,
but I’ll try and stay optimistic. One of
my colleagues joked that when he is asked if one drives on the right or left in
Congo, he answers that they drive wherever there is a road.
During
a stop at one of the clinics, the health workers couldn’t help but take pity on
us at the sight of our ashen faces and gave us what looked like green
lifesavers. And so they were; the
candies fought the motion sickness and made the rest of the journey bearable. This isn’t to say that all of us needed
it. The driver seemed fine, of course,
and another colleague actually fell asleep, amazing as that sounds. There I was, wishing I had had the foresight
to wear a bra, and he was taking a nap.
Madness.
The
only tangible change as we crossed the border from stabilizing Province
Orientale to conflict-ravaged North Kivu was that the road was paved. We all cheered.
At
the clinic that saved our stomachs, I think at least two-thirds of the women I
saw were pregnant or had infants. Most
looked barely old enough to have even had a period. One was beaming – she had
given birth just two days before, and her husband would be arriving soon to
collect her and their child. She was
excited to get home and see her new wardrobe.
Tradition in Congo dictates that new fathers celebrate their wives with gifts
of cloathes whenever they give birth. A
lovely practice, I suppose, but think I’ll stick to on-line shopping all the
same.
There
were also several seemingly unattended children running amok, one of whom
couldn’t have been more than a year old.
Another, who I had thought was a girl based on the dress he was wearing,
lifted his skirts and answered nature’s call.
On the front steps of a hospital.
I was also able to count up to five – no, six – goats roaming the
property.
Even
so, the exam room in which we spoke to the director was tidy and well-lit. Sure, it might not pass muster in the US
(when was the last time the sheet covering the exam table was washed? Bet money not in the last week), but overall
it was clean. There was a washbasin and
an assortment of medications and stethoscopes.
The wall was decorated with an UNICEF poster and fertility
calendar. It had a soothing blue and
white colour scheme with cheery curtains.
The only thing that really got to me was the smell. It did not smell clean. The hotel we eventually stayed in didn’t
smell clean. My room at the compound doesn't really smell clean. I am
unconvinced that I will even smell clean again.
Generally
speaking, the children at the clinics were captivated by my skin (it might be
worth noting that I didn’t see another white person, or muzungu, in the two
days we were out). One little girl kept
grabbing my hand and rubbing it. Her
mother found this deeply amusing. Other
children were not so brave. Two boys at
a different clinic kept trying to work up the courage to talk to me. They actually squealed and fled when I tried
to shake their hands. I felt like I was
Boo Radley.
When
we finally finished our work and arrived in Beni, our first priority was
locating a hotel that fit our needs in terms of both security and price. And there were goats mating in front of
it. That was a fairly decent harbinger
of things to come. The bathroom was
equipped with a shower and toilet, but they had neglected to include running
water. Instead, a large bucket had been
filled with water. I took a shower using
my water bottle to ladle the bucket water over my head and had to fill the tank
of the toilet when I wanted to use it.
For
dinner, someone suggested we find a Chinese restaurant. I still don’t know if he was putting me
on. We didn’t end up finding Chinese
(which is, I think, something I should be grateful for). Instead, we grabbed dinner at a local
restaurant called Sous les Palmiers. I
think that every member of my group made the joke that there was not a palm to
be seen. We ate something resembling
coleslaw, passion fruit, fries, and whole fried fish. There were also some pleasantly hot
peppers. We ate with our hands. I was amused, however, that we used forks the
next morning to eat our omelets. There was
a distressing lack of coffee.
Beni
itself is quite an impressive town, easily three times the size of Bunia. Traffic moved briskly along the paved main
road and the traffic circles were actually defined. The majority of the buildings we drove past
brightly painted in a riot of advertisements.
Simba – butamu ya bietu! D’jino –
un explosion de saveurs! Vodacom –
Meliurex qualities. My personal
favourite was for a Congolese beer: Primus – Wakishahhhh!! I haven’t been able to find a translation for
that, but it certainly seems satisfying.
Our
team took the full advantage of the bustling metropolis to stock up on a few
things that are more difficult to get in Bunia, like extra wheels for the
motorbike fleet, gas (114 USD worth!), and cheese. The gas station we went to was slightly more
substantial than the lemonade stand-style you generally see around here (photo
– no smoking, no phone calls). It was
full-service, and the gas was filtered through a cheese cloath as it was
poured, rather like the wine at Downton Abbey (we’ve been watching a lot of
that during girls’ night). While waiting
for the tank to be filled (it took forever.
They had to use three different cans to fill the car’s two tanks), one
of my colleagues asked if I had any American music. I took out my phone and they searched
through, settling on Lady Gaga. So there
we were, listening to Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.
In the middle of the poorest country in the world.
Happily,
the ride back to Bunia was slightly less dusty than on the way down, as it had
rained the night before. Being a bit better prepared for the road this time around, at least
mentally, I was able to take some photos and enjoy Congo unfolding around
me. A totally arbitrary, non-exhaustive
list of things I saw strapped to motorbikes along the way included bunches of
bananas, chickens and goats both living and dead, precariously stacked jerry
cans full of water and fuel, six mattresses that hung over the back wheel and
were nearly dragging the bike off the road, bundles of sticks, aluminum siding,
panes of glass, struts that were easily 10-12 feet long. This is only slightly more varied than what I
have seen balanced on the heads of women.
Goodness. That took a lot longer than I had
anticipated. I won’t now go into the minutiae of the second trip, except to say that it was much shorter, infinitely
more relaxing, and involved waterfalls, cows, and a scarecrow of a M23 soldier
at the gates of a FARDC camp. Good times
were had by all!
