I love my new camera

It has a wider angle than my previous camera. It zooms. It has point-and-shoot image stabilization. It takes videos. It takes macros (close-ups). It's tiny. It's rechargeable (no batteries to buy/throw away). It took me days of research to decide on. If you ask me, and you eat all your veggies, I'll let you know which of the hundreds of models it is. It's perfect.

I woke up in the middle of the night, on Saturday morning, realizing that I needed to charge the battery before morning. We had a big day planned. We were going out in the country again! This time, we were going with one of the Marines, Sgt Aaron Beck, who's in charge of the missionwide "Toys for Tots" program. But mostly, we were going with the Sisters (Franciscan Missionaries of Mary) because I'd met someone that had something very interesting to show them, out on the Bateke Plateau, in the same area as their land with the non-functioning well (see The Sisters and the Well): a model/school farm, already in operation, teaching Kinshasa street boys how to live and work in the country. Just what the Sisters want to do with street girls. Immediately we had set up the visit, and since it was almost Christmas, it could be combined with the Toys for Tots program.

We had stocked up on food for the tots, too. Almost accidentally! Here's how it happened. A grocery store in Kinshasa circulated an ad offering gift packages of food for employers to buy for their employees. I asked my cook and two housecleaners if the prices were interesting, and not too surprisingly, they said the next to largest box was the best value for the money. So I put in an order. I also thought Sam's two drivers should be included, and the gardner, and the guards. We found out there are five guards. I put in the order for three large packages, each with a huge, 25 kg bag of rice, 10 kg bag of cornmeal, and large reusable grocery bag filled with cans, bags and bottles: oil, sugar, tomato paste, sardines, etc; and five smaller packages, including the bag of rice and some of the cans. PLUS, frozen chickens for everyone.

Well, when all this food arrived at my house, it became a problem for everyone: how to get it home? So I offered to buy it back from them all, and they were happy with the deal. And I was very happy, because grocery shopping is a major hassle here, and all this well-packaged food was ready to go to the orphanages: La Grace de Dieu, Becky's home for street boys and another orphanage in Masina, the FMM's orphanage in Kintambo, and now, Father Guido's "Boys Town". He doesn't call it that, but I have a hard time with African names.

I had met Father Guido at an International Women's Club meeting. He is an Italian priest, who was sent here by his order, alone, 13 years ago, to see what he could do, and what he found most appalling was the condition of the street children. He had very little funds, but he more than makes it up in energy and contagious enthusiasm. He now has brought three African priests into his order, mobilized funding and volunteers from all parts, mostly his Italian connections, and he has built a center for street children in Kinshasa. And 5 years ago, he bought land on a lake (or large pond) on the Bateke plateau, and built dorms, farm buildings, a meeting hall, a schoolhouse, a solar powerhouse, water tanks, all as if there hadn't been a civil war going on.

So that's how we spent our Saturday. The road was long and painful, but we were in good company. The dirt road part was just as bad as going to the Sisters' place at Menkao. But when we arrived there, what a difference! A tree-shaded avenue leads to a campus with many buildings, connected by paved paths lined with flowers and bushes. Cows graze in a well-enclosed pasture, next to the henhouse and pigsty. Every kind of fruit tree including, yes, a small breadfruit tree, a trellis heavy with passionfruit, vegetable plots, pineapples, and, he said, they've put fish in the new artificial lake. Potable water comes from a spring 500 meters away. That's a lot of plumbing, so we asked who had done the work. We were surprised to find out that it was the same company that had dug the well and built the installations at Menkao. Padre Guido recommended getting back in touch with them, that it was likely they'd fix it. Except, being nearly the only competent people in Kinshasa, they're overwhelmed with work.

You can see my photos of this trip on snapfish. Internet connection is bad, so bad that I lost my first draft of this post trying to upload a video.

P.S. Actually, it wasn't lost. So, if you want to read a different version of the same story, look at the post below, "Padre Guido." Also, it has the snapfish link to the photo album.

Padre Guido

Saturday, December 22, a group of us took a trip to the country: Sgt Aaron Beck, the MSG (Marine Security Guard) in charge of the Toys for Tots program, Sisters Anita and Georgette, Sam and Odile, and Roger, the driver. The back of the vehicle was loaded with bags of rice, cornmeal, beans and other not-too-perishable items, and a big box of toys. First, we went to pick up Padre Guido at his center in Masina, where he showed us the new buildings for his streetboys and other people thrown into misery by all that has happened here. Then we got directions to the place out in the country where he has nearly 200 hectares that he's turning into a farming training center for those boys who want to get out of the city and into farming.


The drive was very long, but familiar: Padre Guido's place is past Menkao, past the turnoff for the sisters' land, and down its own, long, rutted, bone-breaking, joint-jarring path. But when you get there! wow! In less than six years (and they were not peaceful years here), Padre Guido has created a "Paradiso", as his Italian volunteer, Angelo, called it. A long avenue shaded by tall trees on both sides leads to a group of buildings, connected by flowered paths, interspersed with orchards, plots of pineapples, vegetables, grazing land for cows. A lake mirrors the white sky in the background.

The cute round huts are for guests. Any takers?

I had met Padre Guido at the Italian Ambassador's residence eight days before, where the International Women's Club was treated to lunch and the priviledge to meet and hear Padre Guido. I was quickly recruited for interpreting for the non-French-speaking ladies of the club. Padre Guido, originally from southern Italy, moved with his family to Milano in his teens, where the jobs were. His father missed the country life, though, so the family soon acquired a small farm in the countryside, where Guido learned farming and construction. He has the contagious explosive energy and joie de vivre of southern Italians. It's hard not to like him instantly.


What caught my attention, of course, was when he mentioned a place in the country for "reinsertion" of street boys into rural life. I just had to go see it, the Sisters had to go see it, and bringing gifts was of the season. We made it a plan.





I've uploaded pictures on snapfish, where you can see a lot more of them. It took hours to upload them with the weak connection we have here. Here's one with us posing on the grounds of the farm/school.



We toured the grounds. When Guido first came here, with two educators, an agronomer and ten boys, they lived in tents. Immediately, they cleared a patch of land for cassava, the staple food here. Then, they put up the first building, not far from the lake. Next to it is a water tank. The water comes from a spring half a km away, on a farm run by Italian nuns. It's potable. Water from the lake is used only for washing clothes, floors, etc, irrigation and for the animals. Quite a plumbing project!

More pictures on Snapfish:
If the link below does not work, copy and paste the link below into your browser
http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=649271198746418764/l=341911133/g=108896982/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

TAKA Black Orchid

I had planned for Tchako to be the hit of the party, but TAKA was!





All the guests stopped in the driveway to view this marvel and take its portrait.



"Taka" is the name my gardener, Alphonse, gave for this monstrous beauty.

If it looks huge, it's not a camera trick. This beast stands face to face with me, looking like it's ready to Pounce! The flower is larger than my wide-open hand, the "whiskers" are over a foot long.





The "eyes" at the top of the "antennas" look at me fiercely. Dreadful!


Here's a full standing portrait of Her Majesty.

Here's a close-up. I tried to put the white wall in the background so you could see it better. Does it send shivers up your spine?

Funding good works

I'm working on my security clearance application. Borrrring! But everything else I'm doing is not so boring. Yesterday, Sr. Georgette asked me to come help her. She's in charge of relations with donors and international organizations for her province (Franciscans, like other orders, have their own map of the world). We looked at various applications she's made for project funding. Basically, the traditional funding, which came from the Franciscan communities in Europe, has dried up. The European sisters are now in retirement homes - an expense instead of a source of income. So the FMM's have to turn to governments and NGO's for funding, but they don't know how to do that. All they had to do in the past was write a letter to their mother house in Rome, describing ghastly conditions here and saying, send us $50K to start building a clinic. Governments and NGO's are much more demanding: they want blueprints, pro-forma invoices, spreadsheets and timetables (understandably so, of course). Any advice is most welcome!

Flat Tire

Sunday, Sam and I spent all morning and half of the afternoon at a 50th anniversary celebration of the Alumnae of schools run by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. The open-air mass started late due to heavy rains all night, and lasted a long, long, loooong time. When the choir finished the 10th verse of the Hosanna, in Lingala, and then proceeded to start all over again from the beginning, I have to admit that instead of praising God I had to ask Him to forgive me for barely standing it... It was also getting uncomfortably hot. We finally got away around 3 p.m., leaving the celebrations, which looked like they would continue late into the night. But before we could get far, we had a flat. A complete blow-out, to-the-rim flat, about a mile from home. Luckily, there was a "quado" (kwado?) only a block away. A quado is a sidewalk tire specialist. You know where they are by the stack of three or four tires on the sidewalk. The quado himself is in the shade of the nearest tree, waiting for clients like us, chatting or playing dominoes with other street service providers of all kinds. We flapflopped up to where he was, and let him put the spare on for us. He spoke surprisingly good French, and did a good, quick job. He charged us 1500 FC, which is three dollars. Later, we returned to pick up the blown-out tire, which he had patched. Cost: $10. It's been two days, and it's still holding up. But I'm driving extra-carefully.

Gouter-Partage and other stuff going on

Our Gouter-Partage was a success. In all, 112 tickets were sold, more than planned, and some of the goods for sale disappeared really fast.

Picture: French Ambassador, his wife, Sr. Georgette, and Y.T.

I printed about 80 flyers with breadfruit recipes and gave them out. We served breadfruit chips with hummus and guacamole, and coconut water and watermelon juice to drink. It was crowded, but people enjoyed it. The sisters had baked dozens of cakes for the bake sale, and sown lots of bags and dresses. They sold eggs, orange wine (made from fermented orange juice), avocadoes and breadfruit.





Picture: Breadfruit, avocadoes, coconuts and eggs (chicken and quail) for sale.



Sr. Cecilia, who is Japanese, made sushi with a friend from the Embassy of Japan. Sr. Zofia, who is Polish, made pastries.

Sam played, the orphans sang (much better than at any of the rehearsals).

Picture: Sam watches as Sr. Seraphine (from India) leads the children in an a capella song.


We showed slides of the village with the water problem. (Scroll down to see the pictures on the post "The Sisters and the Well"- I finally got them uploaded.)


Lessons learned: have the vending period first - that's where everyone rushed when they arrived. Also, forget the sit-down part, because the tables took too much room, (and were a lot of work to set up!) and people love to mingle, look at the paintings on the walls, go back to the vending tables, etc. And perhaps, set up a tent in the garden for some of the sales.

This is a Nativity by one of the artists, Mulamba. The bluish area is due to the reflection of the flash, which I tried to patch up with Paint.

On Friday, a group of four or five people will bring some food and maybe clothes to La Grace de Dieu. I hope this is the first of many visits. One of the people will be a Marine from our Security Guard detachment. They have a Toys for Tots program every Christmas, and also like to do a construction project, so they'll see if this orphanage suits them for both activities... It certainly needs all the help it can get.

I've been trying to get a security clearance for the Office Management Specialist job at American Embassy Brazzaville, but someone input my SSN wrong so I haven't even left square one of a process of mythical length and complexity.

Meanwhile, I'm doing some translations for the CDC on avian flu and chicken raising in Congo. What I've learned is that in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Bukavu, people live with their chickens, especially the local breeds, which are "débrouillard" and "brave" but "malpoli". The chickens are kicked out of the house in the morning, fend for themselves all day, finding their own food and water, occasionally getting into fights, and are allowed in at night - any chicken not locked inside at night "belongs to the thief." Improved imported breeds are tame, passive and sweet, but need special feed . Some people have both local and imported chickens, and in this case, the local chickens are allowed to eat the imported chickens' feed, a sign of "African solidarity."

In Bukavu, people who were escaping from soldiers when the wars started in 1996 had to get rid of their chickens, because you can't hide while carrying a chicken. They're too noisy.

As I write, the war has started again in the east, after months of tense immobility on all military fronts, and intensive traveling, visits, conference calls and cable-writing on the diplomatic front. Let me know if there's any news coverage where you are.

Yesterday at the International Women's Club meeting we had two presentations: one by an Italian photographer, Angelo Turconi, who came to Kinshasa in 1968 as part of his wild-youth project of driving from Italy to Cape Town and back. In Kinshasa he was told he needed a special "mining permit" to travel to Lubumbashi, his next destination. The permit took three weeks to obtain and was good for four weeks... from the date of application! So he tried again, asking for a six-month permit this time. While he was waiting, he explored the hinterland of Kinshasa, taking exceptional photographs. Most expats living here at the time, he says, never left the city. They flitted from formal cocktail to formal ball, talking only about the next social event. He said it was something out of Kipling's India. In 1968. To make a long story short, he was captured by the beauty and friendliness of Congo (outside Kinshasa, he emphasized), for which his passion has evidently not lessened, though now he is retired and lives part of the year in Belgium (he met his wife, a Belgian, while waiting for the "mining" permit).

The second presentation was from a group of Dutch spouses of employees of the Bralima brewery, who got together last year and took a primary school in hand, raised funds at home in the Netherlands, fixed the building, bought school supplies, and realized that the children often came to school hungry, so they now also supply a breakfast for the teachers and children to share. This year they have added two more schools to their project.

Their website is at http://www.enclasse.org/. The photos you see here are pretty typical. In a city of 6 to 7 million inhabitants, half of whom are under age 20, schools should be an absolute priority. But they are in this state of decay and poverty, and many children don't get to go to school at all...

Tchako

Tchako talks. His favorite word is "Tchako", which he sometimes repeats endlessly and lovingly; sometimes he sings it. He always says "Bonjour" or "Bonjour ma soeur" when someone arrives, and "Ciao" when you leave. He imitates every bird call I've heard here. Tchako was fun to have. He went home today. He did not learn the first measures of Handel's Halleluja chorus, which I was trying to teach him. Part of the fun of having Tchako was hearing other people's parrot stories. One person said her uncle had a parrot in the hallway, near the phone (kids: homes used to have just one phone). The parrot could be heard saying: "Hello.... uh-huh... yeah, uh-huh... right... ok, bye!" They're among the most intelligent animals. Read about them on wikipedia. They have long lifespans, around 60 years, so they're best living in a community, because if you're 30 or over when you get one, he will probably outlive you. Here's a video of Tchako eating a piece of banana. He likes to eat peanuts, cheese, the seeds inside green peppers, bananas, and carrots. He liked the coconut water I offered him. He did not like ginger or onion. When he doesn't want something you offer him, he takes it from you with his beak and immediately drops it. If he likes it, he takes it in his beak, settles on his right foot, then grabs the food with his left foot and nibbles at it with his beak. This is a very short video of Tchako singing "wooHOO-hooooooo!" He is VERY cute. I took videos of Tchako to show you guys, since you're all so enthusiastic about Tchako, which isn't weird because he really is quite adorable, but my camera is having senior moments. And the one good video I have with Tchako chattering away is too long to upload. I let it upload all night, and in the morning the computer was frozen and the video was not uploaded. And everything I'd first written about Tchako was lost. I'm trying again, but the short (2 second) clips my camera now takes before shutting down with a "battery discharged" message, don't have much of the sounds and sayings of this cute bird. I'll try anyway. Typical. I figure out how to get stuff from my camera to this blog, and the camera dies. If anyone wants to try to upload it for me, I could try to email it to you.

And this is a verrrrry short video of Tchako saying "Tchako."

Flag

Here's a photo of our house with the Stars & Stripes unfurled.

Today it was taken down and put up at the Ambassador's residence, November 29. Sam has been Chargé d'affaires a.i. since August 13. We're very happy to welcome Ambassador Garvelink to post, as well as Linda, his wife, and Sidney, their Chocolate Lab.

The Sisters and the Well, Part 2

This is the back of the invitation to our fundraiser to rehabilitate the well at Menkao. We printed out 100, to sell for $20 each. The event is called a “Gouter-Partage” (name brazenly stolen from Denise, pardon! it’s like “Medecins Sans Frontieres, such a perfect name it spawns imitations). We’ll have cucumber, hummus&olive, pineapple&cream cheese and salmon sandwiches, mini-pizzas, mini-quiches, Tortilla española, Samosas, sushi, cakes and pastries, and to drink, fresh watermelon juice, pineapple juice, tea, coffee and the usual bottled stuff. Oh, and of course, Breadfruit Chips! Which reminds me, I want to work on a little self-published booklet of Breadfruits facts & recipes to give away at the Gouter-P.

Sam will provide the musical ambience. The children from the orphanage will give a concert (of simple songs 6 to 10-year-olds can learn), and then they’ll have their own gouter and watch a DVD provided by the Centre Culturel Français at the request of the French Ambassador’s wife, Genevieve. The sisters will project photos of the village and other missions and make an appeal for donations. In another room, vending tables will offer cloth bags, booboos, embroidered tablecloths, tie-dyed fabric, some donated flea market items, and wood sculptures. Two artists, one who works with watercolor and the other with sand painting, will display their paintings.


Our "Guest of Honor" is a very cute and adorable parrot named Tchako. He actually belongs to the sisters, but he's been our guest for almost a week now. The sisters thought he might not talk much unless he got used to the new surroundings at our house. Actually, he seemed very excited about the move and the new location of his cage in our beautiful garden by the pool. He's an "African Grey," one of the smartest birds and smartest animals in the world.

He looks exactly like his cousin in the Wikipedia photo here:




We've sold all the tickets! And quite a few people who couldn't come made donations anyway, so I think the village might get its water back pretty soon. At least by the next dry season, I hope. Right now water pours out of the sky on a regular basis, in tremendous quantities!

In the meantime, a good time will be had by all.

The Sisters and the Well

Saturday, October 13, we went for a ride in the countryside with three Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. We had met them at their chapel on the previous Sunday – we’d been told the mass there always lasted just one hour!
I had met another nun who lives there, Sr. Marie-Bernard, when she applied for a Democracy and Human Rights Fund for a civic participation project involving the youth of this country, who have never experienced the least bit of democracy in their lives (she will receive the funding next Tuesday). Soeur Marie-Bernard introduced us to Srs. Georgette and Anita, who showed us around their vegetable garden and orchard. We spotted a dwarf coconut tree bearing cute little golden coconuts. They gave us a bunch to try, which were the best we’ve had in a long time! Even André, our cook, was excited: “Can you ask them for one for me to plant?”

Soeur Georgette is Congolese from the Kasai Oriental province, and spent three years in Colombia, and Soeur Anita is from Peru. So we got to practice our Spanish!

We visited the convent and, over coffee, they told us about all the works they are responsible for here, which were amazing for a few dozen people. They have convents in several cities, from which they run clinics, orphanages, schools, training centers, etc. They own several plots of land which they want to put to better use, and said, why don’t we go see the Menkao mission on Saturday?

We picked up Soeurs Georgette, Anita, and another Congolese sister, Sr. Jacinthe, and then another Spanish speaker, Maruja, wife of a USAID employee, who hangs out with the sisters. Poor Sr. Jacinthe was the only non-Spanish speaker apart from Hokins, our driver. We talked, prayed, and sang songs in Spanish. The sisters were amazed that I knew all the words, but after years of going to Mass at the Agrupacion, something has to stick! The sisters always have interesting stories, and they laugh a lot - it was a great ride.

It was a three-hour ride – the first hour is spent getting out of Kinshasa, the next hour is on the road to Kikwit, not a bad one by Congolese standards, and the third on a dirt track, which crosses the savanna. The savanna is covered with short brushy or grassy green plants (pls note how I refrain from showing off my knowledge of botany), dotted with occasional yellow, lavender and very bright red flowers. A few trees here and there, except where there’s a village, with its customary fruit trees (didn’t see a lot of breadfruit): mango, “safoutiller”, avocado, papaya, banana, etc. Near the villages there are usually fields of manioc (cassava), and then it’s back to the brushy plants and wildflowers. The road is two tracks divided by shorter plants. The tracks often turn into deep trenches and ruts, and dip into ponds, some surprisingly deep - the rainy season had just dumped its first skyfull of rain that night.

Picture: Safoutiller fruit. They're cooked and eaten as a vegetable. Haven't tried it yet.

Our very able chauffeur handled it all perfectly, but I did hang on to the armrest quite a few times!

After having been shaken, twisted and rolled for about an hour, we crossed Menkao-Ville and then after 15 minutes more, finally arrived at the village (Swalempo) where the sisters have their mission and their plot of land. We saw the small building they’ve built there, basically out of mud bricks, but with a concrete floor and corrugated tin roof. The picture shows this building and the makeshift rainwater collection system.

The toilet is a palms-woven-on-sticks hut several yards away, with a metal Turkish thing-hole covering the ground, and the shower is a slightly wider and taller palms-on-sticks enclosure, not connected to water. You take your own bucket. Somehow neither was smelly or fly-ridden. The contrast with the place I'd seen two days before was striking. Something about being in open countryside instead of a crowded slum…?

Around the building, the sisters years ago planted avocado trees, mango trees, and they even have a breadfruit tree! Score one more point, Sisters! They also had papaya and banana trees, and a field of beautiful pineapples…

Picture: the Breadfruit tree on the Sisters' land.

They have a water tank, elevated about one story high, but no water. This is the problem: they paid for a company to dig a well in the marshy area about 1 km away, across the village. Near the well they installed a pretty little windmill, which turns gaily at the least pretense of a breeze. The nuns also paid for another water tank for the villagers. Everything was connected by pipes and worked ok for about a year, and then the pipes clogged up with mud. They run underground so it’s hard to clean them up. The windmill turns but nothing comes up. :( There's no river. So the villagers now send buckets down the well. Bucket water is not as clean as water that's piped up from a covered well. The cover is a yard-diameter concrete slab, so of course it's been left uncovered since the pipes choked up; so insects fly in, frogs fall in and die, etc.

We walked to the well, declining the driver’s offer to take us there ("bottom line": sore) though the sun was high, bright and hot - don't worry, we wore our hats!

On our way, we passed the pineapple field.

Picture: Sr. Georgette and yours truly in the pineapple field.

We crossed the village – all the kids ran to us and wanted their picture taken, of course, and we practiced our few Lingala phrases. One older boy spoke excellent French.

Picture: Sam, Sr. Georgette and the village kids.

Taking a look, we thought those pipes looked really narrow, no larger than a garden hose. Seems to me the pump should be right above the well, it should pump the water into some kind of decanting tank where the mud can accumulate on the bottom, water should be piped out above the mud line, and some kind of system should exist to let the sludge out, which is probably good for enriching the garden soil. Non? Will a real water engineer please stand up?

Another thing I couldn’t quite understand is why the company placed the village water tank at the very end of the village opposite the well. More pipe length = more $$ for the job, I suppose. And cheap, narrow pipe = more $$ in their pockets, too. Grrr…

That’s when we decided to look for someone who knows what they’re doing and Sam thought of Paul Mateta, whose farm I described to my dear readers a few blogs back (“Madame Brock goes out of town”). Paul is obviously a guy who not only has great ideas, but gets them done. If he doesn’t know much about wells and pumps, he’ll know someone who does.

So that’s why today, we had the Sisters over for lunch, with Paul and his brother Emile. Three guesses on what we ate! Yes, breadfruit chips for appetizers and breadfruit purée with the Colombo de poulet. We also had acras de crevettes and féroce as a first course. Emile, who as you may recall is a pastry chef and caterer in Brussels, just loved the chips. He kept coming up with ideas of ways to serve them. And he’s right: they don’t break easily like potato chips, so you can use them instead of mini-toasts for little bouchées: a little slice of avocado, a bit of fresh ginger and a small crevette… I’ll remember that for our next reception! Score one for Emile!

Sr. Georgette couldn’t make it, so another sister, Sr. Zofia, from Poland, came to lunch.

We scored a few points on this lunch, because it turns out the sisters have another plot of land very close to Paul’s farm which has been a big problem to them, as the local chief, the “chef coutumier”, keeps selling pieces of their land to various people. They have all the titles and legal docs needed, have brought surveyors to mark out the land, have even built fences or put posts around it, only to have them torn out by the chief’s minions. Now their lives have even been threatened, so they’ve decided to sell. It’s a mess. But Paul knows the chief – one of the chief’s wives is one of the people Paul gives electricity to! So maybe something good will come out of this, even if it’s just the sisters getting a fair deal on the sale…

More points: The sisters have an orphanage which has capacity for 70 children but only has a dozen, because they can’t pay enough personnel to care for more. Hmm… are you thinking what I’m thinking? Perhaps some La Grace de Dieu kids can be transferred there, if a little funding can be found. First I have to do some homework on La Grace de Dieu to see what’s really going on there, with the local authorities. Meaning the parish priest. I’ve got his name already.

The sisters also run a home for young single mothers, who are usually thrown out on the street by their families when they get pregnant, dooming them to a short life with more kids, AIDS, etc. (And finally, more orphans.) The sisters have a day care for the babies and a school for the girls. They teach them crafts. I’ve agreed to host a December craft sale + tea & pastries – Soeur Zofia is a consummate pastry chef – for all the ladies I can muster.

Of course, these few kids and few young mothers are a drop in the ocean. But what these sisters do is the yeast that makes the whole loaf rise. Anyway that's how I see it. They can't save them all. But for the ones that are saved, or at least helped, the difference is tremendous.

So, there you are. My plate is certainly filling up. What do you think? Do I have time for a job, too? I interviewed for a 20-hour job on Wednesday. Maybe that's just the right number of hours. Plus money for the sisters. Hmmm...

Oh, and Paul M. also wants one (actually he'd like thirty) of the dwarf coconuts from the sisters' garden. The sisters think that tree was planted by a sister who came from Mauritius! So it is quite unique around here. I don't think we'll be drinking much more of that delicious water. All the nuts must be planted!

La Grace de Dieu

Today Becky and I went to check out a Special Self-Help Fund applicant. Their application said they wanted $1,123 to start a wine-making and fish-salting microbusiness to help finance an orphanage. The Self-Help committee had been impressed by the modest sum. Stapled on the application, there was a photo of thirtysome children in front of a clean white wall, with the name of the orphanage, "La Grace de Dieu," brightly painted in blue. Ok, let's see if these people are for real. Sometimes people send in fake projects using fake orphans' photos, to get easy money from their favorite uncle ("Sam"). On our way there we called the number on the application, and found out that the applicant, Victorine, was out trying to buy some roofing material, but we were passing close by the store, and could pick her up and take her back to the orphanage. So that's what we did. In the thirty minute, four-mile trip on the potholed roads, avoiding man-drawn carriages and swerving, overloaded minibus taxis, she told us someone had sold her the application! Fifteen dollars! This confirmed a nagging feeling about some of the applications we've been getting, that look like photocopies of photocopies. People sure know how to make a dishonest buck here... We left the "paved" road and got on car-width-plus-five-inches sand roads through a maze of shacks, some made of cement blocks, some of sundry materials. After a while we arrived at the brightly painted wall and entered. Picture a wall-enclosed yard about 20' x 20', half of it strewn with large blocks of rubble, and what looked at first like a lean-to building against the back wall. No white and blue paint inside. The corrugated tin roof extends to shade part of the yard. Children wearing dirty clothes greeted us with great curiosity: it’s not every day they get to see two “mundele” (white) women! Victorine took us inside to see the boys’ “dorm.” Now picture three consecutive 6’x6’ rooms. The first had no beds, just some blankets on the floor, on which a woman was sitting against the wall feeding a baby. Next to her under a mosquito net in a tiny crib was what I first mistook for a doll, because it was too small to be a baby, until it stretched its tiny arm! We were told the infant had been found in a rubbish heap just a few days ago, part of the placenta still sticking to it... The next room was furnished only with three very basic bunk beds, some leaning precariously, some without mattresses, if you can call the dirty sponge foam full of gashes and holes a mattress. No linens, no pillows. No paint on the walls, bright or otherwise. The walls are very dark and patchy. At the back end of the room a doorway led into another room, presumably similarly furnished, but I could not see anything because it was totally dark. We reversed our steps and went into the second set of rooms, the girls’ dorm, which was similar to the boys’, except the ceiling of the back room had one translucent yellow corrugated sheet that let in some light. Victorine explained that she had gone to the roofing tile store to try to buy one more like that, to put in the roof of the boys’ back room, but she hadn’t enough money to buy it (it probably costs about $5). Becky said, good idea, and also you should put some air holes for ventilation… the urine stench was very bad, and burned my eyes. Next she took us to see the toilets and shower. Everything was dirty and smelly. These outhouses are four feet away from the rooms. When we had finished this short tour, we found the children lined up in three rows under the tin roof, and bright blue plastic chairs had appeared out of nowhere so we could sit and listen to their concert. Everywhere I’ve been in Congo, it’s the tradition: children give you a welcoming concert, always accompanied by a bongo drum. They sang in French, in unison, with occasional impromptu harmonies, and you could tell they had been well taught. “Bienvenue!” intoned the leader, immediately answered by the group, “bienvenue!” They sang, Welcome, our friends, our mothers, we love you, you will bring us a bright day, we will be good children, etc. Three children took turns to step forward, say a poem, and bow. Some of the children just stared at us, some clapped, and one banged rhythmically on the bongo. The older girls in the back held babies. Their own? They didn’t sing or smile. One incredibly small boy sat perched on a bench and clapped. He looked like a ten-month baby but acted like a three-year-old. Unfortunately, whatever was stinging my eyes began to do it with a vengeance and I had to swipe away at tears. There would, of course, have been plenty of cause for real tears here, but I had resolved to be cheerful with these children and actually was doing quite well (I did have a cry later). Nothing in that wretched place looked like it could be the site of a functional wine-making or fish-salting project. There was no room for anything like that. Becky asked a few questions about how much profit could be made per month on the fish. Victorine said $50. Our driver raised his eyebrows. More like fifteen, he said. If any. We probably won’t fund this project. Not that they can’t use money! It’s just not a viable “Self-Help” project. What they need is pure and simple charity. As we were leaving, I asked Victorine about her order (she’s actually “Soeur Victorine”), where was their convent, etc. She told me it’s an Italian order, but she’s the only one left here. All the Italian nuns went back to Italy after the "pillages." She gets help from the "Sainte Famille" Catholic parish, she said. Or used to. It's hard to understand their use of verb tenses here. I don’t want to doubt this person’s good intentions, but I do doubt her capacity to pull off such a huge task, raising twenty to thirty children by herself in these conditions. I don’t think one person without funds can run an orphanage. These kids were fed, and maybe loved, but they didn’t look happy. The strength of religious orders is in having a community pull their efforts together and offer mutual advice and comfort. Victorine seems to be working alone. I’m going to have to find out more.

Madame Brock goes out of town

This week I took three trips! finally! We've been here six weeks and I hadn't left Gombé, our sector of Kinshasa, where are located the embassy offices and our house (nearly an hour's walk apart - neighborhoods are rather large in this city of six million plus). Sam has already traveled twice to the east of the country with MONUC, the UN peace-keeping force, and to various places in other parts of town, but I wasn't invited to tag along...

Trip 1: Rebecca Ward, the Special Self-Help Fund and Democracy and Human Rights Fund Coordinator, needed to see a site where they want to install a pump to get the water up from a valley bottom.

The women and children who live on the hillside walk down and back up several times a day with 20-liter containers (44 lbs of weight) (I didn't see any men doing it). The water comes from a natural spring which has been captured into a concrete water tank at the bottom of which it continuously gushes out of the wall from several pipes onto a concrete floor, making it easy to fill up the containers. The water then makes it merry way down the valley, irrigating dozens of horticulture rectangles. We probably will not choose to fund this project for several reasons: the system they have (which was built last year by FAO) gives plenty of clean water; the hill is high and steep, so a relatively powerful pump would be needed, meaning one that runs on fuel; and who would pay for the fuel? And the houses are precariously built on ledges dug into the hillside; last year a family was buried in a landslide during the rainy season; bringing water up would only encourage more people to settle there; and finally, it looks like city water is about to reach that neighborhood from the plateau.

Still, the visit was extremely interesting; the valley is very green and beautiful - a nice change from Kinshasa - with its patchwork quilt of garden plots broken by the occasional palm tree or banana grove, and the silvery stream running in the bottom or resting in little pools; and all the little kids were thrilled to see white people. "Mundele, mundele!" they shouted as we passed by.

Trip 2: The next day Becky and I visited a school (3 rooms) that was rebuilt with Self-Help Fund financing, and we took some pictures of the old school and the new school, and of the teachers, who were all there, sitting under a tree (there's a strike throughout the country). The old school's corrugated tin roof was full of holes and the walls had deep cracks. The concrete floor was cracking and sinking. Part of the reason the old school is falling apart is that someone cleared out a parcel just downhill from it, and erosion is undermining the foundation. People do n'importe quoi here and destroy each other's properties that way, without knowing it or even realizing it afterward.

Both of these sites were to the east of Kinshasa, on a hilly plateau where small rivers or springs run in steep valleys with a wide flat bottom. The ground is a mixture of clay and sand with some very sandy areas that erode very fast if the vegetation is removed. People like clean empty spaces around their houses, sometimes putting a hedge around their parcel, but they get around to planting the hedge after the house is built, which sometimes takes years. Most of the houses we saw were not finished, just half-built walls around two or three rooms; few of the houses had roofs. Most were not yet inhabited; it looks like everyone ran out of money. I took some pictures (no police around) which I'll post as soon as my computer gets here - could be early next week.

Trip 3: Today we went to a farm in the other direction - downriver. The road was parallel to the river and we finally saw the rapids we had heard from the Gombé River Walk. They're not very steep or strong, but the river is such a huge volume of water that it's very impressive, though we could only see it from afar. The river is still nearly horizontal but runs against rocks, and definitely seems to pick up speed compared to the lake-like expanse we see from Kinshasa. Nothing like the waterfall photo in the last post, which may be a photo of the Zongo falls.

The farm is the creation of an embassy employee, who works in the Public Diplomacy section (old USIS) but is actually an electronics engineer. A little creek runs through it, on which he has built a small dam, enough to divert water to a wheel which will furnish electricity as soon as he finds a generator that can use the 400 rpm that the waterwheel produces. He also has solar panels that recharge a bunch of batteries (looked like automobile batteries), and a fuel generator that he only turns on in the evening to give his children light to do their homework. He also gives light to a bunch of neighbors. He has hens and pigs, and nine fish ponds also watered by the little dam, where he raises Tilapia and Congo river fish. After showing us around, he took us to a little patch of green grass between the fish ponds where he had set up umbrellas and chairs and a table, and we were served cold beers and then a huge lunch. Finally we got to taste Congolese food. There was a hors-d'oeuvre of boiled eggs (from the hens), tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, with lemon from the tree, grilled fish from the Congo river, bitekuteku (green leafy stuff) with peanut sauce, cassava "bread"(more like raw dough), and yellow rice. And of course, pili-pili, the hot sauce made with the peppers that have exactly the same flavor as the Martinique "piment."

Our host and his brother, who lives in Belgium, ate with us but none of the women or children. We talked about their wonderful farm, its history, our host's life in Charlotte, NC, Brussels, and South Africa, and his brother's life in Brussels. Emile, the brother, is a nutritionist and baker, and wants to "retire" here, that is, embark on a new adventure setting up a bakery and catering business, specializing in nutritious and organic foods (a guy after my own heart). Paul, our host, told us about how he finally came back to Congo, got a job with Mobil Oil and bought a farm, after studying in Belgium and getting an engineering B.A. from UNC - Charlotte, thanks to an American who helped him obtain a scholarship. By 1997 he had quite a setup, run mostly by his wife, with hundreds of laying hens, dozens of pigs, and he was doing well. Then the "pillages" happened (looting). The military, who were no longer paid (under the last years of the Mobutu regime), stole and destroyed everything. Paul and his family took off for South Africa, though they had family in the United States who wanted him to join them there. He got a Master's degree, then came back, and has restarted farming on a larger plot. He has taken in all the orphans in his extended family, and gives work to an entire community.

He and thousands of other good people here have great hopes that their country can finally live in peace and overcome the lawlessness and corruption that have done so much harm here.

Congo River

Gorgeous, isn't it?


I thought I heard a faint roar last time we took the "river walk". So did Sam. And Sam said he could see white foam at the horizon. So did I.




I've been asking people if you can go see the rapids, and the answers vary. There's a road, but you'll be bothered by people. It's not far, but the drive is long and the roads are bad, then the path is bad and the views disappointing. And people will bother you.

So the mythical Congo River does not yield its charms easily. Think I'll try to obtain the documentary this picture came from, appropriately called "Congo River." See Le Monde article at http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-757841,0.html


There are miles of rapids and falls between Kinshasa and the huge estuary. Like at the mouth of the Amazon, the Atlantic Ocean is not salty for miles around.

Fisherman, part 2:

Just a few hours after I spoke to the fisherman (see post below), we went to a reception (Brazil national day?) where we met a Frenchman who has lived here forty years. He loves this country and speaks about it with excitement. He said the river is teeming with fish. "Les poissons meurent de vieillesse!" (The fish die of old age), because there is no fishing. He said not to miss Stanley Pool. There, just a few miles upstream from Kinshasa, the river goes over a wide, flat rock. It spreads out in shallows, with sand bars, and the water is clear. "On peut la boire! Elle est meilleure que l'eau du robinet." (You can drink it! It's better than tap water.) There's a yatch club, you can water ski, fish, picnic on a sand bar. The bottom is "du sable fin" (fine sand).

So, downstream from us: waterfalls and rapids for two hundred miles, then the estuary for another two hundred miles. Upstream: Stanley Pool, with the twin capitals (the closest capitals on our planet) of Brazzaville and Kinshasa at the western end and a large island in the middle.






In this picture I've put a tiny red dot where our house is, and a tiny pink line to mark the "river walk." But they got a little blurred; anyway you get the idea. We're downstream from the pool; from the walk we can indeed probably "see" the top of the rapids; but it's like "seeing" the horizon.





Here's a little more about Stanley himself. He was born in Wales of an unwed mother, raised until age 5 by his grandfather and then in an orphanage. He went to America, where he fought on both sides of the Civil War.

(The rest of this post is shamelessly copied from http://www.africdotes.blogspot.com/ and
http://www.wayfarersbookshop.com/Biographies/Stanley_Biography/Stanley_-_The_Great_Congo_Expe/stanley_-_the_great_congo_expe.html)

Stanley proposed an expedition, and in November 1874, in command of a large expedition jointly sponsored by the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London, he set out from Zanzibar for Lake Victoria, planning to confirm whether Lake Victoria was the principal source of the Nile by sailing around it, and to establish the exact geographic location of East Africa's other great lakes. Moreover, he planned to find the source of the Congo River and, if possible, follow it to the Atlantic. Arriving at Lake Victoria in late February 1875, Stanley undertook a circumnavigation of the lake in the Lady Alice, a portable steamboat that had been carried in pieces into the interior. He then visited a native kingdom to the north in what is now Uganda, coming upon an uncharted lake, which he named Lake Edward.

Stanley headed southward along Africa's Great Rift Valley and in spring 1876 he arrived at Lake Tanganyika, which he also circumnavigated in the Lady Alice. He then found the lake's principal outlet to be the Lukuga river, which he followed to its confluence with the Lualaba. Descending the Lualaba northward, he came to Nyangwe, the farthest inland point known to both Arab traders and Europeans. There, he recruited an armed force of 700 men under the famous African-Arab slaver named Tippoo Tib, who guided his expedition to a series of cataracts, later known as Stanley Falls, which they portaged around with considerable difficulty. The small army was required as, in Stanley's opinion, "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision". Hardly a day went by without an altercation with "murderous" Africans, although frequently it was Stanley's men who were the aggressors and killed the natives.

Upon reaching the site of present-day Kisangani (once called Stanleyville) in what is now west-central DRC, Stanley determined that the river could not flow into the Nile, since at that point it was 14 feet lower in elevation than the larger river. In fact, Stanley's surmise that Lualaba was the upper course of the Congo River was correct. But yet again travel was plagued by jungle, rocks and cliffs (the Lady Alice had to be completely disassembled and carried), After this, however, Stanley found that the river turned sharply west and south and widened to allow relatively easy travel by boat for more than 1,000 miles.

After a few more months of downriver travel, he discovered a large lake-like expanse.

“While taking an observation at noon of the position, Frank, with my glass in his hand, ascended the highest part of the large sandy dune that had been deposited by the mighty river, and took a survey of its strange and sudden expansion, and after, he came back and said,
“Why, I declare, sir, this place is just like a pool; as broad as it is long. There are mountains all round it, and it appears to me almost circular.”
“Well, if it is a pool, we must distinguish it by some name. Give me a suitable name for it, Frank.”
“Why not call it Stanley Pool?”

Africdotes comments: "It must have come as quite a disappointment to reach the foot of the Pool and the head of the torrential rapids they called Livingstone Falls. Four hundred miles to go, and Stanley’s own measurements determined that they were still more than 1100 feet above sea level. Stanley’s young companion, the only surviving European besides Stanley, Frank Pocock, did not survive the trip. He went over one of the rapids in a pirogue, and the troop found his body a few days later." Stanley wrote, "I am weary, oh so weary, of this constant tale of woes and death".

On August 9, 1877, Stanley and his party finally reached the Atlantic at Boma. In his 999-day journey, he had crossed Africa from east to west and had determined that the Congo flowed from the Lualaba River. With this finding, he dispelled Livingstone's theory that the Lualaba was a source of the Nile. Of the original 356 men in the expedition, only 114 remained with him when he reached Boma, the rest having died or deserted. Stanley related his 1874-1877 journey across Africa in his book "Through the Dark Continent" (1878). Yet back in England he was condemned in both the newspapers and in Parliament for the ruthless way in which he had conducted the expedition.

More about Breadfruit

The breadfruit we bought from the vendor (the woman who said people in convents ate it) was delicious! Off the web I pulled a recipe for MIGAN DE FRUIT A PAIN and gave it to my cook, André. He seemed a bit skeptical, but went along cheerfully, as always. We ate it several times over the weekend and still have a lot leftover... one breadfruit is a lot for two people. On Monday, André told me he's never eaten it this way, but he will now. He likes migan. He doesn't have a tree, but a neighbor of his does. And he, also, said that "on mange ça dans les couvents" and added that it prevents diabetes, that's why religious people eat it. I'm not sure whether the link is that religious people are more prone to diabetes, or that they are more likely to choose healthy foods, but that's a property of breadfruit I wasn't aware of. So, googling a bit, I find that natives of French Polynesia, who once lived almost exclusively on breadfruit (which they fermented, in which state it could keep for years), but now rarely eat it, now have very high rates of diabetes. That breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis moraceae) contains anti-inflammatory ingredients and lots of magnesium and potassium. That breadfruit does not grow from a seed but has to be planted from a cutting - prehistoric hybrid? I really don't get why people here don't eat it, with 70% malnutrition. The National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii has a Breadfruit Institute, see http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/ for more information than you ever wanted to know.

Fisherman

Today my cook brought in a man from whom he says we can buy the freshest fish at the lowest price. I asked the man if the fish was from the Congo river. "Oui madame!" The pride in his face was authentic. "De notre fleuve!" Does he catch it himself? Oui again. They go out on pirogues, with nets they make themselves. Can I go with him one day? Certainly! I'll have to row hard, though. He vigorously rows the air to make sure I understand (in fact his French is good). I tell him I don't see a lot of fishing going on on the river. No, there are few of us, he says. You have to have a license, a boat, equipment, and then you still have to pay off the police even though you have a license. It's a fact that the fish is rather expensive, 8000 FC's a kilo. That's about $8.00/lb. Pretty high considering the average income here. I ask him if there's a lot of fish. "Non, madame!" Sometimes he's out for two, three days, looking for a good spot to throw his nets (I mentally reconsider his invitation). "And there's rheumatism, malaria, too." Right. I'm not ready to step into the shoes of this brave fisherman. He hasn't even mentioned the crocodiles.

Plowshares in South Kivu

I promised you in a past post that I'd give you details about the work done by a small NGO in Congo, so I'll give you the write-up that is going in our embassy newsletter, the Congo Bongo. This is part of my work helping the Democracy and Human Rights Fund coordinator.

"S.O.S. SIDA" was founded in 2002 by a group of teachers, health professionals, and development officers responding to the lack of services available to victims of AIDS and sexual violence in rural parts of South Kivu. In addition to directing three AIDS prevention programs with 28 instructors, S.O.S. SIDA now runs a center in Bukavu offering lodging and counseling to rural HIV-positive patients seeking medical care in town, and gives psychological and social aid to victims of sexual violence, who are often ostracized, to help reintegrate them into their families and communities.

The 2006 project financed by the embassy’s Democracy and Human Rights Fund, “Training in Human Rights and Self-Reliance for Women Victims of Sexual Violence in Kabare,” proceeded in two phases. First, attract participants and jumpstart their socio-economic reintegration by giving them a livelihood in agriculture. Then, make these women leaders themselves in helping victims of sexual violence.
Phase I was carried out with the distribution of hoes, spades, and corn and bean seeds to 246 women in the towns of Bugobe, Katana, and Bushwira, in November, 2006, and to 45 women in Nyantende in March 2007.

These were high visibility events, with a large banner announcing the name of the project, of the NGO, and of the donor, “Ambassade des USA.” – linking this effort with the “made in USA” cooking oil familiar to the women from humanitarian assistance distributions.

Left: A woman feeds her baby after receiving her grain and spade.

In Phase II, human rights workshops were held in the three towns of Kabare, Katana, and Bugobe in January and March, 2007. In all, 87 women and 17 men participated. The women were chosen among the Phase I recipients to maximize the impact of the training: they had to be literate and healthy enough to return to their villages and share their new knowledge and skills with their communities. The men were local chiefs and civic leaders, who during the course of the workshops committed to fight against sexual violence and promote women’s rights.

Right:A woman holding her new spade offers a prayer of thanksgiving for the donors (recipients will have to attach their own makeshift handle).

Right: Spades in hand, women pose behind their sacks of grain next to the truck. Note banana trees in the left background and thatched roof on the right.

The workshops were held over two days. Topics covered included a general overview of human rights, the benefits to the community of respecting women’s rights, the harmful repercussions of sexual violence, the new (2006) laws enabling prosecution of perpetrators of sexual violence. The session were lively, using presentations, question-and-answer debates, brainstorming, and/or splitting up into workgroups to work out how to best respond to victims and bring perpetrators to justice.

SOS SIDA had prepared and published a booklet, with drawings, about women's rights under the new laws, especially the ones against sexual violence. They used this booklet in the workshops. Above is the scan of the front cover. The inset shows a woman being thrown down on the ground by soldiers.

More about S.O.S SIDA at http://www.cesbc.org/solidays/sossida/sossida.htm

Ex-CIA Residence?

Well, well. I'm told the house I live in was the abode of Larry Devlin, the ex-CIA Chief of Station at the time of independence. You may have heard of his memoirs, just published, titled "Chief of Station, Congo," where he says he did NOT kill the charismatic independence leader, Patrice Lumumba, or have him killed, for being too close to the Soviets. He did tell the nice Army Colonel, Joseph Mobutu, that the U.S. would support him should he take over in a coup. But that's really quite different from having someone killed. Right? So, I live in his house. I had assumed it was of much more recent construction, but I'm told a lot of work has been done on it recently. I hope they got rid of the ghosts... I haven't had as much time to write, because I've been helping out at the embassy, working on Special Self-Help (SSH) projects, and those of the Democracy and Human Rights Fund (DHRF). These are 2 to 3 dozen small grassroots projects that the embassy funds directly, in amounts between $500 and $25,000. The SSH/DHRF coordinator is a tale unto herself, a third-generation missionary who speaks local languages as well as English, and prefers local rural life to the big city life of Kinshasa. She's the ideal person for the job, because she can really weed out the people who submit made up projects to get free money. It's a slow learning curve for me: today I spent ALL DAY writing one page! Well, I also had to read, re-read, and re-re-read at least a hundred pages of proposals and reports to extract the material for my one page. I was doing the write-up on one of the DHRF projects, and what I wrote was so great that I know you're just dying to read it, so I'll copy it below (also, the project is really interesting). But, you know what? I think I'll wait until the guy sends me the pictures. I'll finally have some pictures on my blog! Plus, I just realized the text still needs tweaking (aarrgh! That means I'll have spent more than all day writing one measly page. Well, no matter. I'll pick up speed as I learn the trade. I don't get paid anyway). Still, I can't wait to post this story, because this is the kind of good news you never read about in the media. Hm, that reminds me, I promised you the end of the coconut story. Well, on Tuesday (yesterday) I went to see that vendor, and she had coconuts. Green coconuts. Young coconuts. Really, really young coconuts. In fact, they were tiny, about the size of a large avocado. And the water in them was bitter. So that was disappointing. But she said that she was going to try again. And she did have a rather nice-looking breadfruit! But neither she nor the driver, nor my cook when I brought the thing home, know what they call it here. And the cook, André, is waiting for me to show him how to fix it. Meanwhile, André had also found some green coconuts, but his turned out to be very ripe. So HE's going to try again! Feels good to give people goals! But seriously, there is severe malnutrition in this country, and breadfruit is dropping from the trees? What's wrong with this picture?

Breadfruit, water coconuts - not for sale

You may already know that Sam and I are frequent consumers of fresh coconut water. Especially since, in the Washington area, they have become available in neat, trimmed and wrapped form, most of the husk cut off, ready to be opened with one well-directed cut of a butcher knife. The water is delicious, amazingly soothing, just sweet enough, and it's good for you! A natural sports drink, and more: "It's a natural isotonic beverage, with the same level of electrolytic balance as we have in our blood. It's the fluid of life, so to speak." In fact, during the Pacific War of 1941-45, both sides in the conflict regularly used coconut water - siphoned directly from the nut - to give emergency plasma transfusions to wounded soldiers. http://www.fao.org/AG/magazine/9810/spot3.htm There are coconut trees growing all over Kinshasa, so we figured we'd be able to find young coconuts in the markets. No deal. Zilch. Nada. We've toured every inch of the humongous and nightmarish "Grand Marché" with no result. Even explaining what we were looking for was difficult, and after an hour's search, someone triumphantly brought us dried coconuts. Apparently, even the mature coconuts are not a staple here. Same story with the breadfruit: I've located at least three lovely trees in my neighborhood, all laden with fruit in different stages of maturity. Nothing in the markets. Our cook didn't understand what we were talking about, either. Finally, we asked the lady who sells rather nice produce in a stand near the French embassy, who seemed to understand our French rather better than the average fruit stand owner, about the coconuts and the breadfruit. On the coconuts, she said she'd get some, and we should return Tuesday. I'll let you know what happened tomorrow. It took a while to describe the breadfruit, apparently not known as "Fruit à pain" here. A few days ago I pointed out a tree to one of the drivers, and he said, oh yes, we eat that sometimes; but he couldn't remember what it was called. When you don't know the name of a food, I think it means you hardly ever eat it. So it took a while for the produce lady near the French embassy to understand what we were talking about. When she did, she said, "Ah, ce qu'on mange chez les Pères, dans les couvents!" (What they eat where the priests live, in the convents). Yes, breadfruit is one of those strange foods eaten only by foreigners, a European import! The tropical equivalent of Benedictine...? She said she'd try to find some of that, too.

Googling Congo Line

Wanting to see if my family and friends could easily find my blog on line, I googled "odile congo" which yielded nothing, then "odile congo line" which showed my blog - in first place! then "congo line" which gave: a few sites about the Congo (on "line"), a video I can't see on this computer, presumably of people forming a giant misspelled "Conga line," a board game called Congo Line, "where goods move from city to city across the Congo", and various articles titled "Congo Line" in the Washington Times, Slate, etc. So much for originality! Anyway this was supposed to record my heroic or hilarious happenings here in the DRC. Nothing heroic so far, I'm sure you're all disappointed. I managed to forget to do the one single most important thing a hostess is in charge of, that is, the seating arrangement for the working lunch with Senator Feingold who was here last week. It didn't occur to me until the guests were actually entering the dining room. Luckily, since it was all Americans, and a working, not social, lunch, things fell into place rather naturally (I like to think). The next mini-crisis was that there seemed to be too many seats, or one of the guests was absent, so in the end I had to fill in as the 12th person, which wasn't planned, this being a working lunch, and work and me haven't been buddies for a while. j.k. But the "conversation" was very interesting, since each head of section or agency at the mission gave the senator a summary of his/her role and challenges here. I'm still trying to learn all this. After lunch we figured out who was the missing 12th guest: I'd counted the senator's military escort as a member of his team. He was happily snoozing at the hotel after the long flight. The second function i.h.o the senator was held mere hours after the lunch, a reception for four of the newly elected parliament members, two from the lower house, two from the senate. Since the DRC's 2006 elections were the first in 45 years, it was interesting to hear what the elected had to say about the election process, how they accepted the results, and their opinions on the main issues here. Two were old enough to have been active in politics at the last elections, and the other two had been born since. Two were from the party of the president, and the others from the opposition. One was a woman. What was the color of the bear? j.k. That's about as exciting as it's been around here, except for one or two blitzkrieg rainstorms, violent but over in a few minutes. Yesterday we took a 2-hour walk from our house to the stretch of road along the river where "everybody" (except Congolese ppl) takes a stroll in the evening. The view is beautiful as the sun sets across the river and shoots out rays from behind the cloud cover. The exotic trees turn into silhouettes against the bright river and sky, while around us parrots, bulbuls and cuckoo-shrikes screech, pip, and coo: "Kwaaw! Doctor-quick! Doctor-quick! Doctor-Quick! Hooooo, hoo hoo hoo hoo!" The camera in my bag was a strong temptation, especially with the video/sound recording, so maybe next time I won't take it with me: Taking pictures is forbidden. The riverbank stroll turned out to be really short, maybe half a mile, so after walking it from armed-guarded end to armed-guarded end, we wandered around in the neighborhood, which seems to be where all the embassies' residences, and some offices, are located. At one end, at the point where the Congo bends, is the presidential palace, and just like in DC around the White House, the streets are blocked. The whole area, called Gombé, is shaped like a fan, with the riverbend forming the arc, the presidential palace occupying the top of the arc, the Palais de Justice, at the other end of a wide boulevard, at the bottom hinge; all the embassies inside the left part of the fan, with the riverbank walk between them and the river. Our house is somewhere in the middle of the right side of the fan, on a street called Cadeco. The street blocked by the presidential palace is called Roi Baudouin, which seems like a name somebody forgot to change 47 years ago at independence, but the road signs are new, so there is some reason; I'll probably never know. For the most part no one bothered us. A guard at one of the residences (they ALL have guards, sitting under trees conversing with each other) who was alone playing cards, asked us for money to buy food, and another, of a handful in uniform patrolling the streets, asked us for a cigarette. Since we weren't carrying any of either, we politely said so. Our own house has a couple of guards inside the gate, from a private security firm, and a police guard outside, in uniform and cradling a kalishnikov (or something). There's also a gardener, a cook, and 2 women who clean, launder and keep each other company. I feel like a guest, especially until our effects arrive, and then I can feel like a guest who's invaded and taken over. ha ha. All the household staff are very educated compared to those I've seen in other countries. They speak, read, write, English and French, and two or three African languages. That they have to take these jobs is the result of almost total unemployment in the country; and even the employed, like schoolteachers, don't get paid. One of the drivers told me he has the Bac, loved chemistry and would have wanted to study, but there is no opportunity for anyone but the very few (very) rich people who rule this country. There is plenty of work to be done: schools need to be built and staffed, hospitals idem, roads and bridges built, etc. so there's room for employment and development. But it's an iterative process that keeps stalling before it gets into first gear, and needs constant reinvesting instead of siphoning off by corruption. Well, that's enough for now.

Africa's World War: Stealth Conflict

I guess my last post establishes my foreign policy position: Anything But War. I justified it on religious grounds, but I think it stands on purely Earthly logic as well. War is simply too destructive to have a net positive effect. The Iraq war strengthened my conviction: If war is to be avoided, pre-emptive war is the worst kind of folly and injustice: folly because of the precedent it sets for other nations, injustice because the grounds for the pre-emptive action are always speculative. But here I am in Congo, learning as much as a reluctant student of history can; and I'm confronted with the realization that the deadliest war since WWII has been going on for nine years and I barely knew about it: Four million conflict-relateed deaths since August, 1998. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and eight foreign countries are directly involved, thus "Africa's World War", the first part of my title, not my coin, but a name you can find on Wikipedia. The other part of my title, "Stealth Conflict," is not my term, either. I think I would have said "Ignored Conflict", or "Neglected Conflict," because the leaders of the violence did not deliberately try to conceal their actions; on the contrary, the media, academics and leaders of Western powers knew of them but did not choose to project the information onto the public consciousness. "Stealth" is Virgil Hawkins' term, writing in the Journal of Humanitarian Assistance: "Stealth Conflicts: Africa’s World War in the DRC and International Consciousness." Read it at http://www.jha.ac/articles/a126.htm. I found it very readable. But if you don't want to read the whole thing (20 pages), here are some key ideas: "Africa has produced more than 90% of the conflict-related deaths since the end of the Cold War [for you young'uns, that's around 1991] . Despite the scale of the human suffering, it seems that Western-centric consciousness (and outrage) ends at the Suez Canal. Nowhere is this more painfully clear than in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which, from the perspective of media, public, policy and academic agendas outside the region, almost does not exist. In reality, it is a humanitarian catastrophe of virtually unfathomable proportions, caused by a war that has raged across more than half of a country almost the size of Western Europe, and has seen the direct military involvement of eight foreign countries." Is this a "forgotten" or "orphan" conflict? No, says Hawkins, these words imply that someone would once have paid attention to it. He continues: "Like the stealth bomber, the conflict in the DRC has caused a huge amount of death and destruction, while somehow remaining undetected on the international community’s radar screens. Those waging the war have not necessarily been deliberately secretive: the conflict simply hasn’t been noticed by the outside world. The term can also be considered appropriate in the sense that the majority of those who have died in the war have been killed by stealth. They were not killed by noisy gunshots or explosions, but by starvation and/or preventable and treatable diseases directly resulting from people fleeing their homes and farms, the destruction of infrastructure, and the breakdown of agriculture, public services and supply lines." Hawkins notes that "more than 60 of the world’s countries have populations less than 3.3 million," the estimated number of deaths at the time he wrote (Jan 2004). "What makes the DRC unique, however, is the scale (absolutely unparalleled in recent history) of death and suffering." I recommend clicking on the link to his article just to see the stunning bar graph comparing the death toll in the DRC with the conflicts that do make it to our TV screens. So, what's going on? Why the deafening silence? "In terms of conflict, the media, policymakers, the public, and even academics have shown that collectively, they are only able to consciously process one or two conflicts at a time." That is, one or two per year, with other "peripheral" conflicts mentioned from time to time. But there are two to three dozen conflicts per year! Here are the most recent ones that "made it" to our consciousness, according to Hawkins: 1999 - Kosovo, then East Timor 2000 - Israel-Palestine 2001 - the 9/11 attacks, then Afghanistan 2002, 2003 - Iraq The DRC wasn't even among the "peripherals." Just a few more tidbits from this article, before this post gets too long (apologies to the author for savagely pruning and emphasizing) :

• A 2002 study shows that CNN allotted 32 times more air time to the small-scale clashes in Israel and Palestine than to the catastrophe in the DRC.
• The 180 million raised in humanitarian assistance for tiny East Timor in less than one year was more than the amount raised for the DRC in any year – it was fifteen times that raised for the DRC in 2000.
• In a simple questionnaire survey, 37 Australian university students taking a course on war and peace were asked to name the three deadliest conflicts in the world: only one person could name the DRC; and an astonishing 21 (more than half) thought that, in terms of humanitarian suffering, [the Israel-Palestine] conflict was the most in need of a solution.
• With very few exceptions, Western periodicals that deal with international affairs have failed to devote even a single article to analysis of the DRC.
• A considerable amount of credit must go to organisations such as the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), for being some of the very few organisations attempting to draw attention to the conflict, by providing analysis, a record of history, and a record of the number of deaths.

Hawkins sums up:

"Most African conflicts are geographically and economically removed from Western strategic interests, are not easily accessible, are highly complex, do not involve white people, and are not followed by powerful diasporas in the West [Sam adds: and have no constituency in Western countries]. These are the key factors that leave almost all African conflicts in the unfortunate status of stealth conflicts... the DRC should not be one of them"

P.S. I have a special connection to the International Rescue Committee: it was founded during WWII as the Emergency Rescue Committee, the group of New York artists and intellectuals who sent Varian Fry to Marseille with a stack of cash and a secret list of artists and intellectuals fleeing the Nazi invasion of Paris. Varian Fry ended up staying a lot longer than planned, and rescuing many more than planned including non-artists and non-intellectuals (he failed to rescue a few on his list who believed they were safe in Marseille). When we were posted in Marseille, one of these, now near 80, came to see the Consul General (Sam) to ask him to support the Varian Fry Foundation, an educational foundation that distributes educational materials to schools in the U.S. and now France. Varian Fry has been called the American Schindler, the Artists' Schindler. I translated the American website into French, but now I google in vain, it's not there. Wonder what my friends at the Association Varian Fry did with it?

So, this is Life in the Foreign Service: there are connections, weak and strong, between one post and the next.