Toni Lyn's 33rd Birthday

My favorite Birthday Present!

Birthday Picnic on the Congo River

Birthday Dinner at Local Italian Restaurant

Matt made a cake!

The flat tire at 1 am on the way out dancing...

Just another day in Kinshasa!

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 20^th 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

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.

Let's Build a School

On June 8th, after 4 months of planning, ground was broken on the new "Prototype" classroom at TASOK. The whole school showed up for the ceremony (it was mandatory). We are currently in the middle of week 3 and construction is in full swing. Materials are starting to arrive at the port of Matadi. One of our biggest concerns was the logistics of shipping in materials from outside the DRC, so this is really good news.

Matt is the tall one with the hard hat under the sign on the wall

Day 1- demolition begins

Smash! Wooden trusses have been used to support the roof for over 50 years. The wood was still in great condition so we are actually reclaiming a lot of this lumber to be reused for interior finishes and other construction material. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Middle of week 2. That was fast. Demolition is nearly complete. Hope it doesn't rain too much. Good thing its the dry season . . .

Those are some big window openings, and they are just the start.  There will be another set of windows above each of those openings. Nearly the whole wall will be operable louvered glass for maximum light and ventilation. The goal is to use less power for lights and cooling. The contractor is checking the floor for level.  Unexpected bonus.

Start of week 3. Demolition is complete. Formwork starts for new reinforced concrete beams. There will be a 20,000 liter rainwater collection and storage system where the scaffolding is. That's roughly 5,000 gallons - a lot of water. The water will be used for irrigation or toilet flushing. The long-term campus goal is to be independent of the water company.

From the top of the wall. For being 50 years old, the foundation, walls, and slabs are in great shape.

 

Levels, tape measures, masonry saws and more. I didn't expect this level of quality. I'm impressed.

After sitting in a conference room for several months extracting and organizing the ideas of the building committee, then getting them to agree on the appearance, function, and acceptable cost of the building, producing and reviewing drawings, selecting and reviewing materials, establishing a schedule, and everything else that goes into project management before construciton, it is good to be on site again seeing the tangible product our labor.

Puppy Naming Contest!!!

We would like to introduce the newest member of our family. He is 5 weeks old, full of mites and fleas, and is a little shaky when he walks, but we are very excited to welcome him into our home (after a few more weeks with his mama). We need a little help though. He needs a name. We would like to collect names from anyone following this blog. So please provide name by commenting on this post. We prefer names that are Africa themed, do not end with a "y", and are less than 6 letters long. Here are a few we are considering:

Brai - Name for South African Barbeque (rhymes with why and tie)
Beau - Handsome in french (rhymes with toe)
Kivu - Area in eastern DRC where Gorillas live and arguably the most diverse area in the country (keevoo)
Tik - This Is Kinshasa (a phrase we use very often here), as well as something he's probably covered in!
Bongo  - just cause
Chio - rhymes with "cleo", from the french word for "puppy"

Just to put things in perspective

Although we often use this forum to express the strange and difficult, and sometimes wonderful, details of our lives here, we are occasionally reminded of the bigger picture, and why we're here, and what the price is.
On that note, Toni Lyn's colleague who helps manage a national park in DRC sent this photo and message as a response to her flippant "Hope all is well":
"All is not well here; a lot of Sudanese elephant poachers have showed up and they are quite brazen.  It's a struggle to control this park and this is a protected area with few people on its boundaries."

Note the piece of trunk in the center of the picture

When I asked him if I could post this, he responded "Sure you can use the picture.  We finished our aerial survey of big mammals (survey also notes camps, poachers and other things) a few weeks ago but not before we were shot at.  We fly at 350 feet above ground.  Fiston behind me saw some people crouched; I circled back and as we came over we heard the shots despite having headsets and a loud engine.  They did not hit us.  On the way back I went to 1400 feet , out of range of a AK47, and they shot at us again.  LRA or Sudanes, don't know."

June 7 Update: Lord’s Resistance Army attack threatens headquarters at Garamba National Park, north-eastern DRC

http://www.africanconservation.org/201206072628/conservation-news-section/lords-resistance-army-attack-threatens-headquarters-at-garamba-national-park-north-eastern-drc#.T9bwsoYjzYs.email 

Just to put things in perspective...

America - Oh Yeah!

Well, we’re back, and it’s definitely bittersweet. We’re doing a lot of reflecting back on our time with our friends and family, and the incredible efficiency and cornucopia that is the United States.  However, instead of going on and on about what is better about the US, we want to tell you what’s good about the Congo.  There are a lot of people working really hard here despite incredibly strong odds against them.  We have an incredible apartment/townhouse.  Matt really likes his job and has the flexibility in his schedule to do the kinds of things that, well, he wasn’t able to do much in the past.  Toni Lyn is truly “saving the rainforest”, or at least that’s part of her job description, and that’s something she’s been talking about doing since she was in 7^th grade.  Foreigners here appreciate each other in a very real and close way, knowing what they’re sharing and experiencing together.  Now that we are back, we’re looking for a puppy, reuniting with friends, planning vacations to Republic of (the other) Congo in the near-term and Kenya/Tanzania with family in the long-term, and enjoying the loads of candy, Cliff bars, movies, video games, car parts, and assorted presents that we bought ourselves during a stay in the US.

Our trip to the U.S.A was such a fast swirling chain of events that we need to write about it before it is erased from all memory. As with most of our stories lately, this one started in Kinshasa. The Kinshasa airport is only 27 kilometers (~17 miles) from our apartment but to make sure we had enough time to make our 9:00 PM flight we left our apartment at 4:30 PM. After being stopped by the police for eating potato chips in the car (not that eating chips in the car is illegal, but not sharing them apparently is), we arrived at the airport at almost 6:00 PM. Two and a half hours and four bag inspections, all done by hand, later we cleared security. Now, you might ask yourself, why 4 bag inspections? I know we did. But when, during the third bag check, we witnessed a sketchy foreigner hand a bag to a Congolese man, who then passed through security without being checked because he apparently works at the airport, and even when several of us who actually had to wait in line told the authorities and they began to open the bag (of cash, diamonds, heat-seeking missiles?) causing the foreigner and his Congolese friend to quickly swooped in, grab the bag  and passed through security with the bag unchecked (we never saw his bag or him again, thankfully), we decided we were very grateful for the 4th and final Air France check (done by presumably more reliable people by flashlight, by hand, just next to the plane). We boarded the plane at 9:00 and were airborne at 10:30. We thought it all went very smoothly.

(Insert imagination's picture of airport here, since we are not allowed to take pictures.)

During a 7-hour layover in Paris we took the train downtown with two friends who were also traveling to Paris (and joined us in the failed attempt to stop the security situation) and stopped in a cafe within sight of Notre Dame Cathedral for a cup of coffee and a croissant and to try out our newly attained french. 

 

Afterwards the two of us took a quick though rainy walk around downtown Paris, including through the incredible interior of Notre Dame and past the Louvre and within sight of the Eiffel Tower, before heading back to the airport.

 

Hours later, as the carousel spun in baggage claim at Detroit Metro Airport, a sinking feeling settled in. No Luggage. Four duffel bags with all of our clothes and gifts were nowhere to be seen. We started to get nervous, recalling the confusing conversation when checking bags in Kinshasa where it took 5 minutes to understand and then convince the Air France woman that Detroit Metro was an airport, not a subway that we would take to an airport ("metro" is the name for subway in french).  The carousel attendant was only discouraging when she looked at our hand-written baggage claim receipts (printed in Kinshasa) and stated the obvious: "These are hand-written". This was followed by an incredibly rude customs guy who couldn't understand who we were, alone or to each other, and why we should be living in such a strange place. However, a little investigative work from a more helpful attendant revealed that the bags were still in Paris and would arrive the following day - phew! We would however have to make due with the clothes we had on our backs, even for Toni Lyn's nephew's First Communion the next day. Luckily, here in America, it is possible to clean and dry your clothes in an hour!!

To zoom ahead, Toni Lyn had a whirlwind tour to the 4 corners (well, nearly) of the US (Detroit-area, Bay-area, Omaha, and Washington DC), and is still glowing from the warm and kind attention, while Matt was able to have a slightly more sane but still chock-ful trip in MI and Omaha.  We checked out our friends' engagement rings, rubbed baby bellies, celebrated birthdays, a First Communion, mourned and laughed and just generally caught up. 

Thanks especially to Amie & Krin, Corey & Patrick, Paul & Jenny, Jacob & Kara, Luke & Jackie, and Pete & Becky for putting us up, but there were also countless (really, we tried, and lost count) friends and family that made time for break-of-dawn dog walks, early morning coffee, tofu scramble breakfast, dim sum brunch, Indian lunch, Farmer’s Market grazing, afternoon tea-tasting, Cuban appetizers, Burmese dinner, Buddy’s pizza, Mexican feasts, cocktails, late night cocktails, late night lavash (not all eaten on the same day, but nearly so – we ate a LOT), and on and on.  Esme both made a picnic lunch and threw Toni Lyn a party, and Teresa and Toni Lyn’s dad got the whole family together for a bonfire that ended in a 2 am singalong (not to mention keeping us full of Mike & Ikes and homemade rice krispie treats and Sierra Nevada and and).  Matt’s sisters came up with a whole itinerary for his trip and took time off work to make it happen.  Cousin Eric helped to gather 16 people for a raucous Tigers event. It rained for 40 hours and 40 minutes and the game was ultimately called a rain-out. We had fun hanging out with the dedicated friends and family that stayed out late on a Monday night. 

Paul drove an hour, and Doug and Jessica drove several, just to hang out with us.  Cousin Becca took 2 hours out of her day-time job/night-time law school life (and during finals week!) to pick Toni Lyn up from the airport (and found a fabulous vegan-friendly Ethiopian restaurant to boot).  Jacob & Kara threw a Cinco de Mayo party. We obviously could go on and on, the glow is getting stronger as we think back about all the wonderful people we have in our life.  We had so much fun we even forgot to take pictures. We can’t wait to see you all in December, if not sooner.

PS – A special shout out to Kathy, Zach, J. Black and others for being such fabulous followers of (and even commenting on!) the blog.