Rev. Tracy, Global Citizen

Here are a few great blogs about the Congo, in case you want to learn more:

http://texasinafrica.blogspot.com/

http://www.congoresources.com/

http://www.endingextremepoverty.org/

http://www.newsaboutcongo.com/

http://www.codinginthecongo.blogspot.com/

The last one is the blog for Peter and Simon, the two Columbia PhD students
who are living in the same house as me and doing research on IRC's Community
Driven Reconstruction programme.

As I said, I went out to inspect the latrines that had been built in May.
Most were in good shape. They decided they needed to clearly indicate which
were for women and which for men, and I love how clear the drawings are!

At one block, we meet the custodian which gave Jacques (the water/sanitation
technician) a chance to talk with him about his work and recommend that he
clean the latrines every day rather than every other day. While we were
speaking with him (the man in the orange shirt), the Secretary of the
displaced person's group came (man in black shirt) and had a list of their
further needs. Always prepared! We were, of course, surrounded by children
as well.

All of the latrines we visited, even those in hard-to-reach locations were
very well used. In most of the public ones (as opposed to those at schools),
the community around had created covers (a flat piece of wood on a stick)
which I thought was good initiative. The cleanest were, not surprisingly,
the ones by a medical clinic.

At first, I wasn't sure why we were inspecting them, until we came upon one
which had been built in a bad spot -- right over where the water drains down
the hillside. Which means that the water went under the latrine and not only
made it unstable, but also washed the sewage out into the open. But 1 poorly
placed out of 32 or so seems pretty successful to me.

Sunday morning, we wanted to go see if we could talk with some of the
displaced people who were living in what had been a series of huts that
served as a depot for manioc (cassava). Stefan went in the car and the rest
of us walked down to find the street completely blocked by a crowd of some
1,000+ people! "What are they gathered for?," I asked Stefan. "I think they
are here to see us," he replied. Whoa. . .

The photojournalist, Roger, and Peter went off to look for photos. Jacques
and Bavon had gone earlier to look at some more latrines. Stefan and I were
standing there, completely surrounded by people. Then he says, "well, I
think we need to talk with them." So he and I went to look for the President
of the group, whom we located in one of the shacks. Stefan spoke to them a
bit and then decided that we should speak with them in groups, so we asked
for a group of women, then children, then men to come meet with us. The
women came in and we were, after telling them many times, able to get the
men to leave so we could talk only to the women. They were very clear that
they needed new or different housing. Stefan tried to understand why they
would want to live in plastic half-tents rather than the relatively solid
rooms with proper tin roofs they were in now. Apparently they were sleeping
15+ in each room (and otherwise living outside on roadside). This was not an
issue raised by the children (of course -- sleep over every night with your
friends!), but I can imagine that it would be very uncomfortable, on many
levels, to sleep like sardines with who knows how many other families. . .

The women also mentioned the need for food, cooking tools and clothes. The
children mentioned food and clothes. And that they were being hassled by the
soldiers. It's a common practice for soldiers of all types to just grab any
passing child and make them run errands, carry stuff, whatever. The other
thing mentioned was being attacked by soldiers when they (women & children)
tried to go out to fields in search of food.

The conversation with the men, commencing with the President, was
theoretical and general, but luckily, some of the other men spoke up and
also talked about the housing situation.

In the end, Stefan was able to assure them that Malteiser (another NGO
working there) would be by sometime to register everyone as displaced which
would then lead to distribution of food and non-food items. He also spoke
with them about their ideas about how to resolve the housing situation and
promised to speak with the Chef de Poste -- the local head of government --
about what could be done.

We thought we were finished, and it was 9am, time for everyone to go to
church, but no one was leaving. After hanging out for 15 or 30 minutes or
so, Stefan decided he needed to talk to the whole crowd. So he climbed up on
the hill with a couple of guys to interpret and recounted to everyone what
we had discussed in the meetings with the representatives of the women,
children and men. Everything was going along just fine until he said, "and I
can assure you that a team will be coming to register you within the next
weeks." At which point, his interpreter stopped cold and didn't say
anything. . . Interpreter no. 2 jumped in, but it was clear this was not the
news the crowd had been hoping for. In the end they took it fine and
eventually dispersed and we were able to go on our way.

We left Bunyakiri by 11am and as we were driving along, Stefan said we
weren't going straight back to Bukavu, but up past Kalehe so Susan, the
photojournalist could get some photos up there. There is a "spontaneous" IDP
camp there -- that is, not one that is yet being managed by UNHCR with the
collaboration of the local aid organizations. As you can see from the
photos, these folks have used banana leaves to construct huts to live in.
And there had been at least one distribution of food, because I saw many
boxes labeled "USA -- vegetable oil" on them. We made our way to the pallote
(an open hut that is used for meetings) and talked with the President of the
local displaced committee (that's Stefan and Peter listening in the photo).

At this camp, we provided the materials for the latrines (Wamama is Swahili

-- I think you can guess what it means), one of which has a lovely view of the lake! As we were walking along, Stefan, Peter and I were again completely surrounded by people, including two young men who stridently asked us why the international community was doing nothing about their situation. Stefan was masterful in his reply, getting them to see the complexity of the situation (for instance, that both FDLR and FARDC troops attack them and run them out of their villages), and talking about current efforts in the US Congress to place an embargo on mineral exports from Eastern Congo, which are one of the root causes of the conflict.

 

After this we all climbed back in our trusty Landcruiser for the 3 hour bumpy ride back to Bukavu. I returned home hungry, pretty filthy, but very, very fulfilled by the whole trip.

Stefan, our RRM (Rapid Response Mechanism), and a few people from his team
were going to the field this weekend to do some follow-up visits.
Additionally, there was a photojournalist working for DFID (the British Dept
for Int'l Devt) who wanted to get some photos of internally displaced
persons (IDPs in aid jargon). Despite our Field Coordinator's initial
reservations, Stefan was able to get permission for Peter and I to go along
with them. (Peter is one of the two Columbia University researchers here for
two months working on a survey of our Community Driven Reconstruction (CDR)
program).

The original plan was to go up to Bunyakiri -- a few hours northwest of
Bukavu -- because there are a few thousand IDPs up there and some have quite
recently fled their villages in the hills as a result of the Kimia II
military operation. (Kimia II is an operation by the Congolese army: FARDC
and the UN Mission: MONUC to go after the FDLR: Front Democratique pour la
Liberation de Rwanda.) So Saturday morning at 6:30 or so we head to the
office where we meet up with Roger, Jacques and Bavon. On our way out, we stopped at L'Orchide to pick up Susan, the photojournalist, and Stefan gave Susan, Peter and I a security briefing
(none of which, thankfully, we needed to utilize).

The first part of the road was astonishingly smooth -- due to the currently
in progress work of a Chinese firm that is building the road. It was a
completely different experience than the night a couple of weeks ago when I
arrived in Bukavu. But soon enough we were on dirt track and thankful for
our sturdy Toyota Landcruiser. Our route took us through a national park
where one can go and see gorillas (hmm, well, provided it is peaceful
enough, at the moment IRC will not allow any of the staff to go there),
which went up and over the summit of the mountain range and, incidentally,
the continental shelf of Africa. (So that, on one side, the water flows
eastward toward the lakes and the Indian ocean and on the other side, the
water flows westward towards the Atlantic ocean.)

We came to a village where we had heard they had been attacked at the
beginning of the week, so we stopped there and talked to some people. (See
the photos) At first glance, it just seemed like a roadside village, but
then I noticed something odd. It was a Saturday morning and the place was
virtually deserted. The little shops were all closed and boarded up. There
was one woman selling yams and a few children around, but that was about it.
Jacques and Roger started asking around and a few young men came forward to
talk about what happened. Last weekend, FDLR troops had come into the
village, broken into places, looted the shops, and then kidnapped a few
people to carry the booty back to their camp. The pattern of behavior was
not that unusual, but what was new and significant was that the FDLR was
coming right down to the main road. For many months now, they have stayed up
in the hills and only looted from villages up there. But now that MONUC and
FARDC were moving into the hills, they FDLR felt comfortable coming down to
the road where the FARDC used to be stationed. And they are right. The
people from this village called the FARDC Saturday, after the Friday night
attack, but no one showed up until Tuesday. . .

Once in Bunyakiri, our team split up and I went off with Jacques and Bavon
to check out some recently built latrines and a school. One of the things
that the IRC RRM (Rapid Response Mechanism) team does is construct (or
sometimes donate the materials for others to construct) temporary/emergency
latrines and schools in places where there has been an influx of IDPs
(internally displaced persons). Bunyakiri has thousands of people who fled
their villages in the hills after violent rampages by the FDLR. For the most
part, they are living with local families -- friends and relatives that they
know -- which makes them somewhat invisible. However, they are definitely
putting a significant stress on what little local infrastructure there was.
Since February, there have been several waves of new IDPs moving into
Bunyakiri. In May IRC deployed a team who built this emergency school and
around 34 blocks of latrines at various locations throughout the area.

Since the entire village evacuated, they came with nothing, but among them
were their teachers. So IRC built the school (with UNICEF plastic sheeting,
15 benches per class, and blackboards) and provided a pack of materials for
each teacher, a pack for each student and a recreation pack for the school
with footballs, nets and that sort of thing. We went to check on the school
and for the most part were pleased at the shape it is in. There were a few
benches missing, but all the blackboards were still there and all but one
square of the plastic sheeting. When they build the school, they cut each
panel of the plastic sheeting for two reasons: a) to allow the wind to pass
through and b) so that soldiers who might want to steal the sheeting are
discouraged (since it would only provide them with a leaky roof). Our
inspection was well-attended by local children. I was also pleased to see
the boys latrines on one side of the school and the girls latrines on the
opposite side -- yet close enough so that any disturbances could easily be
heard or noticed.

More on latrines in the next post.

Portraits of some of the internally displaced people I met in Bunyakiri.

When I was in the US in May, I saw this book -- one of those ubiquitous
theme photo books -- entitled "Loo with a view". It was, yes, a book about
toilets around the world in interesting and unusual places. Well, here are
my nominations for two entries. Both are IRC emergency latrines -- the first
from Bunyakiri and the second from a spontaneous displaced persons' (IDP)
camp north of Kalehe.

Icons of my youth.

Slate would call me Gen-X.

Memories:

- Listening to "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch girl" on my
fluorescent orange and pink radio as I sat on the bus from North Carolina
to Massachusetts when I was 7.
- My older brother spending hours and hours in front of the bathroom
mirror, blow dryer in hand, to get that perfect feathered "Farrah Fawcett"
hairdo. Now it sounds a bit. . . hmm, odd perhaps. But it as the 70s and it
was a fantastic look for him.
- Julie in Denver introducing me to "Off the Wall" - wow, little
Michael Jackson grew up!
- Doing door security duty in Brussels in the summer of '83 with my
little boombox and my "Thriller" tape. As people returned from the local
pub, we had our own disco right there in the lobby.
- It took me many, many "rave" type dances to learn how to dance to
this newfangled electronic music. The whole time I was just wishing and
wishing someone would slap on some Michael Jackson so I could *really*
dance.

I could literally trace the first 25-30 years of my life to a Michael
Jackson soundtrack.

My friend and colleague Mavie died yesterday in a hospital in Brisbane from
a fungal infection. She was a fellow UN Volunteer in the Solomon Islands,
posted in the most remote province of Temotu. She was committed,
intelligent, thoughtful and strong. My heart aches at her passing and I pray
for her 20 yr old son.

Go with God, Mazvie.