I've been in the DRC for about 6 weeks now and it's been pretty much as expected- frustrating, exhausting, complicated, exciting, and strange. I spent the first month 'settling-in' to a barely established office with no phones and no clear operating procedures- we're just struggling to stay on top of our programs. I've been to a ridiculous number of UN meetings where lots of decisions with no practical application are made and written a large number of reports which I doubt are read by anyone, including my boss. There's a new emergency/disaster every day; the military commandeered one of our trains with assistance for 2500 families a few weeks ago, and we have no idea when they will feel like returning it. One of the more positive aspects- there does appear to be quite a bit of NGO (non-governmental organization- usually a humanitarian organization) cooperation here, and less of the competition that I've seen in some countries.
But that's the more penible part of the project; I finally got to spend a couple weeks in the field with the evaluation team. We flew out to the middle of the province-about two hours- and rented motorcycles to visit about 15 villages. They gave me the best driver with really long legs, which helped in the sand up to our knees- 'la route du diable' according to my driver. I was only thrown a few times, while most people could barely stay on the motos. Josephine was thrown off at one point and had her pants ripped right off her body. We crossed several rivers during the trip, either loading the motos onto little wood pirogues, or rolling them across log bridges- we only lost one moto on a rather slippery log (unfortunately mine, containing all my clothes and the $1000 satellite phone; that was a long, cold night).
We visited a village, evaluated, and then moved on, covering up to 100km in a day, and sleeping in whatever village we found ourselves in at 6pm. We mostly ate once a day, fufu and dried fish; sometimes we were able to buy oranges or bananas or peanuts or yams at midi. We had to take bottles of water, as there is no potable water anywhere (even in town), which of course ran out about half way through. The team is pretty funny, they treat each other like family and they spend more time together than apart- they only get one week of rest between each mission. Typically Congolese, they have screaming fights each night about every subject under the sun, and then 5 minutes later they're rolling on the ground laughing together. When I had to start fighting for meat, I knew they had accepted me as part of the team…They discovered watermelon on this trip, which grew everywhere, but apparently this is the only region. They were so excited; Our food security guy collected about 300 seeds so we might soon have it in Lubumbashi.
The team evaluates basic needs in shelter/non food items, education, health, water and sanitation, food security, livelihoods, and nutrition. They have a whole raft of silly questionnaires designed by someone at UNICEF who has clearly never been to the field. But they do manage to give you a basic idea of how extreme the situation is and what sectors are most critical. Everywhere we went it was clear that as bad as the Bantu population was doing, the pygmies are always worse off. These are all families that have recently returned (usually less than 3 months), mostly to find their houses burned down and some/most of their stuff stolen. It's incredible how people survive out here on literally nothing, and by nothing I mean zero.
The first photo is a typical river crossing. The second is some of the most precarious conditions we saw. That group of pygmies had been back about a month and had not yet build any standing structures…they're standing in what passes for this woman's little place on our earth.
I hope everyone is enjoying springtime. It's 'winter' here, which means it gets down to 50 at night!!
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