Camp Luka

That's the name of a very poor, densely populated part of town. It's not very far from Gombe, the downtown and residential section of Kinshasa where I live - by the way, Kinshasa is a both a city and a province; Kinshasa-the-city is divided into "communes", and each one has its own Burgermeister (mayor). Kinshasa-the-province is the smallest of all Congolese provinces and includes a sparsely populated rural area around this sprawling city of 8 million. To the east it is the Plateau des Batekes, which was a desert in geological ages past, which explains why it the subsoil is sand for hundreds of meters down.

But back to Camp Luka. One of my last posts was about the "Black & White" Dinner-Dance organized by the International Women's Club to raise funds for two charities: the "Padre Guido" homes for street children, and the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary nutrition center at Camp Luka. Both of the donations were earmarked for food. I don't know about you, but I, personally, LOVE food, can't go without it for a day, and I think everyone should have plenty of healthy and delicious food every day. Food has suddenly become hard to buy for many Kinshasa organizations because the World Food Program is dealing with even greater needs in eastern DRC, the Sudan, Chad, etc.

So today, a group of the Women went to deliver the $$$ to the Sisters.

Here's a few pictures of the neighborhood. Off the paved road, onto a narrow, mucky mockery of a road - more like a river of mud. I took this shot by sticking my arm out the window and straight up (this technique requires repeated shooting before an acceptable photo is obtained - never would have done it using film).

I also took a video of this brain-churning, gut-chucking ride in the wet clay (same camera). But all efforts at uploading it have failed.

In the neighborhood of the nutrition center, like most of Kinshasa, poverty is the norm.

Here's an old man carrying a 25 kilo (55 lbs) bag of flour on his head. This is the most common method for the transportation of goods (the second most common is the "pousse-pousse", a 2-wheeled cart that is pushed by manpower. I'll try to get photos for another post).

Here's a child sitting by a small retail stand. Does she go to school? Probably not. More than half the children her age don't. And many of those who do still can't read and write when they graduate. Teachers are seldom paid their paltry salaries ($30/month) and must work without materials, not even chalk, not a single book. See the website http://www.enclasse.org/ about a project done by my friend Sylvia and other Dutch women to rehabilitate primary schools (including a video narrated in the French and English versions by yours truly).

Finally, we arrive at the center.

Once a trimester, all the retirees in the neighborhood assemble to receive their Social Security pensions. Those are the people sitting on the blue plastic chairs under the tree. This is the preferred method for distributing the money, which is so little it isn't worth going to pick it up at the Social Security Office downtown. In the foreground, children who are collecting water for their families. They'll carry the 20- or 30-liter containers home on their heads (44 to 66 lbs!).

IWC members meet the Sisters. Effie, a speech therapist who doesn't speak French, finds that she and Sister Monique, who teaches deaf children and doesn't speak English, do have a language in common: sign language!

Here is the "outpatient" part of the nutrition center. Fifty to seventy children come in from the neighborhood to get a meal every day. Some of the mothers are fed too, especially if they're pregnant. When you realize the importance of nutrition for brain development, you understand this priority status.

This is one of the outpatients.

In the inpatient section, the children are fed a liquid diet and kept for several weeks until their health is restored. No photos of those, but they're etched indelibly in my inner eye. Just look at this blow-up of this little outpatient and you'll understand. The inpatients don't have the strength to sit up, and their arms are even skinnier.

The FMM center at Camp Luka also has a clinic and a maternity ward. This is the ward for the new mothers and their babies.

On the way back, we pass children coming home from school, as can be seen by the uniforms they wear. This girl even owns a pencil! (Note: Every part of Kinshasa is littered with plastic grocery bags and other non-biodegradable stuff. There is no trash pickup, so it doesn't do people much good to put their trash aside. They just toss it anywhere. )