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.