Sunday, July 22, 2012

We are headed North…

(Here's a story from the trip that Toni Lyn took for work in June.)

Day 1:
4 am pick up, 8 am flight to Mbandaka, a rural city in northern central DRC, in-between time (after the sun rises) I catch up on The Week magazines (thanks Amie!). Last time I was in Mbandaka I got horrible food poisoning. I pass on the airline food.

Load on to a boat with 3 government ministers (Mr. Their Excellences) to speed down the Congo River back south and then up north again on the Ubangi River, a large tributary of the great Congo River, to the Nonprofit-Conservation-Group-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless research station just outside the newly established national park there.  Exhilarating.   
The trip on the river is over 4 hours and we arrive after dark.  Navigating an unfamiliar river in the new-moon dark…glad I’m not driving.   

Spent the night in one of the few rooms in the research station building (rest of the group out on the lawn in tents, except the Mr. Their Excellences who also get rooms).

Day 2:
Had the first of many many outdoor meetings where community members tell Conservation-Group-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless how they haven’t gotten as much as they think they deserve, and Conservation-Group-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless (CGTSHN) asks them whether they’ve actually used what they’ve been given already (e.g., community asks for a school, CGTSHN buys a brick press, community members don’t get around to making bricks to build their school).   
Community Meeting - Note the women sit outside of the main circle (except for me - that's my empty chair)

I make people laugh appreciatively by speaking two words of the local language (Lingala).  I laugh too because it’s two fewer words of French for me to have to speak.  A pet monkey attends the meeting as well.

Head back to Mbandaka but stop in villages along the river for similar meetings. One village has mosquito nets sewn together and hanging to dry and I am introduced to the great irony of the One Family One Net policy – mosquito nets make better fishing nets than they do health care tools apparently.  Unfortunately, they make for totally unsustainable fishing – more on that later.
Mosquito nets sewn together to make fishing nets

Stay in Mbandaka at a huge newly-renovated, old early 20th century hotel that has been (somewhat) refurbished.  My room has running water, which is a pleasant surprise.  The water runs out of the back of the toilet onto the floor, which isn’t.
Eat dinner at The Pirogue, one of the two restaurants in town, with CGTSHN colleagues, who are taking me around on this trip. Watch the EURO soccer tournament, drink too much whiskey and end up chasing the cats around.
Incredibly noisy rainstorm throughout the night. So much for the dry season.

Day 3: Lac Tumba
Rainstorm prevented my US government colleagues from joining the trip so it’s just little old me and the entourage. I wasn’t even supposed to be on this trip, I was originally just a tag along; now I represent the donors that are supposed to listen (and talk to) all of the villagers and government officials.  Makes for an awkward trip, lots of added pressure, no friendly Americans to keep me company, etc.


Pack back into the speed boat with the now familiar crew of CGTSHNrs and Mr. Their Excellences.  Back down the Congo River and this time continue south to Lac Tumba. Stop at villages along the way to ask about what they need and tell them to stop using mosquito nets to fish, which is catching fish that are too small for anyone but the protein-starved people of Kinshasa and is decimating the resource base of a people who essentially only eat, and have only ever eaten, fish.  Apparently there is not even any malaria in the area because the lake is too acidic.

In my introductory speeches to the villages, I show off the new words of Lingala I’ve picked up in the last few days.  It’s not even clear that people can tell I’m speaking Lingala but I try to say very inspiring things.  Sounds pretty inane to me.  Probably my translator can’t understand me anyway so for all I know he’s just making it up. 
Stop at a Nature Reserve that by some miracle, or more likely incredible dedication, has preserved trees, monkeys, and a scientific laboratory throughout all the political chaos of the last decades.  It feels a bit like we’re the first people to check in in forty years.  I make myself a promise to somehow somewhere find them support to renovate and continue.

 

Stay over at a research station on Lac Tumba.  Go for a swim despite warnings of crocodiles and it’s one of the best swimming experiences I’ve had in a long time (i.e., warm!).  Play a Congolese card game whose rules seem to change every 5 minutes, though I seem to be the only one that doesn’t understand them.  Drink too much whiskey and go to sleep a sore loser. This research station has only 3 bedrooms, so the Mr. Their Excellences sleep inside and I sleep in a one-person tent on the lawn like everyone else. The next morning I discover I slept with not one but two thumb-sized spiders in my suddenly coffin-sized tent.

Day 4: Mosquito Nets
Meet with the community that lives near the research station.  Give them the speech about the mosquito nets. They agree whole-heartedly.
 
As we’re wrapping up, a pirogue (dug-out tree canoe that the locals use as fishing boat) pulls up to the beach absolutely loaded with mosquito-net-turned-fishing-nets.  Mr. Their Excellences decide it’s time to set an example and order their guards to pull the nets from the pirogue. Then they set them on fire. Feels like a scene from a movie when the officials come in throw the poachers on their faces and confiscate their catch. 
 

In this case, their catch isn’t gorilla hands or shark fins or elephant tusks but hundreds and hundreds of very small fish. It brings ambivalent feelings – the government officials are actually enforching the law, but they’re doing it at the expense of poor villagers. Who in turn are ruining their resource base and the resource base for all of the villages in the area. I’m told that only a few people can afford all those mosquito nets and they sell their catch to Kinshasa so very few benefit (and many suffer) through these practices. And yet when another pirogue appears on the horizon, presumably also full of mosquito-net-turned-fishing-nets, villagers frantically wave them away (out of sight of the government officials) until they turn back and disappear around a bend.


Stay at the old-new hotel in Mbandaka again. Ask for a different room where the toilet doesn’t flush onto the floor.  Gave me a room without running water.  Should have been more specific…
Have dinner at the only other restaurant in town, have too little to drink this time and go home bored.


Day 5: Dinner, eventually
Dinner with the usual NCGTSRNrs. Wait from 7:45 til 10:30 to get my pizza that I didn’t want in the first place. Power goes out for 45 minutes in the middle.  I originally asked for vegetables and potatoes but they told me they didn’t have any.  When the food comes, they bring my lackluster pizza and they bring my colleague a plate of beef, potatoes, and assorted very-tasting looking vegetables.  I am sad, though my colleague’s offer of bites of potato makes it a bit better.  Later try to give a slice of the uneaten pizza to the two hungry-looking guards at the hotel.  Except shoot, there are three.  The first guard solves the dilemma by telling me that pizza is fine for people like me but he wants me to give him some of the local cassava dish. I take the slice back and give it to the third guard.  When I look at the second one, he quickly holds the pizza slice away from me.
Day 6:
Fly to Mabelo, a research station south of the lake, where you can visit bonobos, the great ape species that is only found in the DRC.

Day 7:
Wake at 2:30 (yes, 2:30 am) to have coffee (well, the others do) and go see the bonobos.  It’s my first experience seeing great apes in the wild.  Incredible.  
Day 8:
Home Sweet Home


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Seriously?!

Almost daily there is a moment when you find yourself saying "Seriously?!"  Here are a few of the most recent moments:

1. We needed to get visas to go to Brazzaville, the capital of the neighboring country of Republic of Congo (ROC). We can see it across the Congo River from Kinshasa. This is the place where a military munitions depot exploded due to faulty electrical wiring in spring, killing hundreds of people and flattening a significant area of the city. We went to the ROC embassy, a dilapidated building along the main boulevard in Kinshasa, to fill out the paperwork. However, Matt was stopped by the security guard at the door and told that he could not enter because he was wearing shorts. Seriously?! No shorts allowed - in a country where it is consistently 85+ degrees, to get a visa to enter a country that stores it weapons catastrophically close to densely populated urban areas in electrically unsafe buildings. Seriously?! If they are going to enforce such ludicrous rules they could at least find a decent uniform for the guard that isn't 3 sizes too big and boots without holes in them. He can barely keep his pants up but Matt can't come in because he's wearing shorts? In the end, we got our visas (they let Toni Lyn in), but the $80 visa fee was wasted because Matt couldn't get into Brazzaville because he didn't have a letter from someone in ROC inviting him into their country. WTF.

2. During the same day that Toni Lyn (who went ahead to Brazzaville for a conference) informed Matt that we would have to cancel our weekend plans to vacation in beautiful Brazzaville (some sarcasm intended) because they apparently don't let tourists into their country, Matt went for a run.  Afterwards, he took his sweat-soaked shirt off before getting in the car and driving home. He didn't want to get the seats wet. He got about halfway home when a "police officer" on a motorcycle pulled in front of him and forced him to the side of the road. The officer demanded $150 for driving without a shirt. After about 20 minutes they settled on $32. $32 for not wearing a shirt while driving. Don't bother with the guy driving a bus with 20 people in it who just ran a red light while driving on the wrong side of the road with people hanging out the window and no door on one side of the car during rush hour- get the white guy with no shirt.

3. We went to dinner with some friends the other night to watch the Euro Cup 2012 championship game. There were about 10 people in our group. One couple was with their 2-year-old so they ordered food and drinks separately and left (and paid) early. We watched them pay (this will become relevant later). There was a buffet there, but nobody ordered it. It was crappy food and cost $24 per plate. After watching Spain slaughter Italy (worst loss in EuroCup Final history), a crabby Toni Lyn started asking for the bill.  When the bill finally came, they had charged us for one buffet and the drinks and food our early departing friends already paid for. A total of $39 in mistakes out of a total of ~$220. We asked for the buffet to be taken off the bill (they obliged), but when we confronted the servers about the drinks and food of our friends they insisted we were mistaken. In the end, we paid for what we actually ate and drank, and not what we were charged, and left quickly. The manager followed us out to the parking lot as we left. A heated argument ensued (fortunately we had French researchers staying with us so they did the arguing for the group) and ended with the bill being thrown into the window of our car as we started to drive away. I wish this was just a one-time thing but it really isn't. Something like this happens at nearly every restaurant or bar. Service sucks here, and no matter how bad it is, the customer is never right.

4. Matt's visa expires on July 5th. When he got here in November he had a 6-month visa. Then in April he worked with a "protocol" (we'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that it was an exhausting, frustrating, lengthy, and opaque process) to extend this visa by three months. No one explained that this was the one and only allowable visa extension. So, after holding onto his passport and visa renewal application for many days, DRC immigration service declined his visa application with only a week until his current one expires. The only option on the table is a $900 one year work visa. This option requires the school to provide a letter stating that he will be employed by them. The school refused to provide the letter. The other option is to get the 1-year work visa but pay an additional $700 (total $1600) if a letter cannot be provided. Sweet. Now what? Well, I guess all it really takes is a call from a friend of a friend of the same guy who declined his application. Apparently the same guy who declined it is now going to let us pay $900 for the one year work visa and we don't have to provide any documentation. Huh? Not sure if this is going to work. We will find out on July 4. Possibly July 5.  Matt's visa expires on July 5. Thus, Matt may have to leave the country on the same day that he finds out that he has to leave the country. There is no way of understanding how things work here.