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.

Shouldn't Christians be against war and the death penalty?

"Christian" means Follower of Christ, right? Believer in his words? "He who lives by the sword will die by the sword"... "Love your enemy, do good to those who would harm you"... Believe him? Follow him? Bet most "Christians" don't even believe him, let alone want to follow him. Yet it's pretty clear Christ really meant it. Look at how he died. And lived! Think that's insane? Think, instead, about what we could have done/could be doing with the Trillion dollars the Iraq war will eventually cost (source: MSNBC, others; some say TWO trillion). Universal (basic) Health Care for every man, woman and child on Earth, for example! Or, schooling for every child: If every 7-year old alive on Earth in 2002 had been given a grant to go to school (for many children on Earth, only a pair of shoes or the cost of textbooks stands between ignorance and literacy), there would now be a generation of 12-year olds all over the globe of whom we would not ask the question: "Why do they hate us?" By the time the trillion dollars will have been spent, these kids would be young adults - prime recruiting material for terrorists when they don't have a job. Like teaching. Or immunizing. Somehow we never had the money to save lives. But the money comes (from nowhere) to destroy lives? "If you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind..." Nuff said, I'm depressing myself. What a waste, what a waste...

Congo: what, where, who?

Well, here I am blogging. It's not that I got tired of emailing the same stuff to different people: I'm desperately trying to learn everything I can about this place before I make a big boo-boo, cause a diplomatic incident or just look like an idiot - thus confirming the image of Americans as ignorant of everything outside their borders. My mission for these first few days is to cram for the big life-in-the-foreign-service exam. Well, sure, coulda-shoulda-woulda done that before leaving, but there was just too much going on. So, in the course of learning, my only tool being the Internet (none of our stuff has arrived yet), I've come across one website after another which I know I want to return to later, but I'm not allowed to save Favorites on this government-issued, taxpayer-owned computer (thanks, y'all!). Sure, I can list url's on a Word document. But then I might as well just create a BLOG. So I spent most of yesterday learning about blogs and blog hosts (the free ones, anyway) and decided that the Google version would probably be my best choice. I do all my searching on Google anyway. Too bad, Yahoo!! (no, I'm not using double exclamation points!!). So, first thing I'm looking for: a good map of the DRC. Here's the one most commonly used. For instance, on Wikipedia. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia07/congo_demrep_sm_2007.gif Good physical one with major cities and national parks: http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/congodem.htm This one has a lot of the rivers and... roads? sure, they're marked as "minor" roads, but the truth is they just don't exist anymore: http://geology.com/world/democratic-republic-of-the-congo-satellite-image.shtml The same page has a satellite image, a bit marred by the border-line with other countries. Kinshasa is just below the big island in the river. Downstream of Kinshasa are terrific rapids, which one website, http://www.world-waterfalls.com/, lists as the largest (in volume of water) waterfalls in the world. In fact, the three top waterfalls on their list are in this country! (but they admit they are really rapids, stretching the definition of waterfall). It's the curse and the blessing of this river that its thousands of miles of navigable waters don't connect with the ocean. Curse for trade, blessing, perhaps, for the environment? Here's a map of the proposed provinces: http://www.insidejustice.com/law/images/articles/drc_provinces_2006_big.gif JACKPOT!!! This site has 12 maps! http://maps.nationmaster.com/country/cg/1 OK! Now I'm content. Ooo! and you can expand these! Hm. the maps are from 1997 and Congo was still Zaire. Still. Hm. Still don't see the towns where these people were born. Ok, knowing where their home province is will be enough for now. The people I'm researching are members of parliament (elected in 2006, first representative govt, ever) who will be my guests tomorrow. Cocktails i.h.o. Senator Russ Feingold, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, visiting Kinshasa and the towns of Goma and Bunia in the war-torn east of the country. Spent most of today helping my household staff get ready for a 12-person lunch and a reception, both tomorrow. So, what happened here, why are the roads so bad, the east so war-torn, the people so poor? Time to google for some history! This page has names, dates, events in table format: http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Congo-Kinshasa.html Just googling, before you even open any links, you get the idea: "history congo kinshasa": This period of conflict has been the bloodiest in history since World War II. ... "history war east congo kinshasa": Troops from Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Chad, and Sudan intervened to support the new regime in Kinshasa...The rebels take control of much of the east of DR Congo. ... 2002 April - Peace talks in South Africa: Kinshasa signs a power-sharing deal with ... The Impact of War and Atrocity on Civilian Populations: Basic ... Kinshasa. The project failed, giving rise to a new period of instability. ... The First African World War. The last conflict in Congo started in 1996. ...Congo-Kinshasa: New Democracy Must Build on Local Leaders .... Traditional authorities and even local war lords offered some order in the vacuum after ... Wikipedia has a good basic history for those who are interested. Okay, gotta get back to my representational preparations. That's all for now!