Missive from Paris

Originally posted on Wed, 25 Apr 2007 04:38:15 +0000

Well, it's all over but the partying. I am writing this missive from the posh confines of the business class lounge in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. We left the Congo last night and flew overnight to Paris. We arrive in Ottawa this afternoon.

A few final thoughts about the last six months. First, I don't know to what extent I personally made a contribution to the Mission or to the Congo in general. The problems are so large that no one person can deal with them. That being said, I do feel that I contributed in some small measure to improving the lives of the average Congolese. Even small changes can be significant at this stage. But there is still a long way to go.

Personally, the experience was everything I hoped for and more. The work was challenging and rewarding. The staff who worked for me were/are excellent (I got lucky in that respect). I met some fascinating people and made some good friends. It is an experience I will never forget. I am happy to have had this opportunity. I would do it again were I given the chance.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you for your support, and your support to Chantal and the boys. Your e-mails always livened up my mornings. I have a few weeks of leave before going back to work. That will give me the chance to organise the hundreds of pictures I have taken. I'll let you know when show and tell night is.

See you all soon.

John

Missive from the Congo 016

Originally posted on Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:06:59 +0200

For this week’s missive I will talk about trash collection. Another topic that will have you hanging on the edge of your seats I know. As you can well imagine, given the breakdown of most municipal services as a result of the years of war, there is no regular garbage pick-up. This, of course, is a problem. We generate a fair bit of garbage, as those of you who have to haul it to the curb on a weekly basis know full well. In addition, there is no formal recycling system either, which just compounds the problem of trash. So what do you do? Well, I can honestly say that I don’t know exactly what the average Congolese family does. However, given that they don’t buy much packaged food, or consumer goods in general, they probably don’t generate that much waste. At Canada house we have a trash pit/pile at the rear of the property. We have it emptied every six months or so at a cost of $50 USD. I’m not sure exactly where the trash goes, except away from our place.

Canada House garbage pit

As you can see, it’s time to empty the pit. Our property manager/go to guy contacted the trash haulers but was told that they didn’t have any fuel therefore they wouldn’t be doing any pick ups. Apparently it didn’t dawn on them that if they did the work they would get paid and hence have money for fuel. But anyway. So our trash will be taken away using oversized wheelbarrows that are used in the Congo move just about anything, up to and including the living room furniture.

The other thing that happens is that there is a very active re-use market. When you have nothing, even scraps for something are worthwhile keeping. For example, MONUC gives us drinking water in 1.5 litre bottles. MONUC doesn’t take the bottles back so there is a very brisk trade in used MONUC water bottles. My cleaning lady tells me that you can sell them in the market for about 40 Congolese Francs a piece. The further you go out of town, the greater the price. The same thing happens with the glass jars and many other items.

Garbage fire

Finally, what doesn’t get reused or hauled away in so form or other gets burned. At any given time of days there are dozens of little fires burning around town; in people’s yards, on the side of the road, in the back alley, or just about anywhere. Sometimes the smell is atrocious but I guess it’s better than letting things rot.

We get newspapers and magazines from Canada as a welfare support programme. Naturally we only keep so many on hand. A number of Congolese have asked me to give them used magazines. They claim to be avid readers. It may be true to an extent but I suspect they re-sell them. Or use them to wallpaper the mud huts. I don’t know. I just know we don’t put them in the trash.

In any event, I don’t have much of a moral for this story. Just, perhaps, to appreciate the garbage men a little more. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

John

Missive from the Congo 015

Originally posted on Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:39:58 +0200

Traffic police in Kisangani

A number of you have remarked on the fact that I haven’t send out a missive since the 12th of February. You have uniformly been generous in suggesting that it is no doubt because of the workload and other such factors. Well, the truth is I have gotten lazy… and I sort of ran out of ideas to write about. However, I’m all better now. So today I will write about traffic control measures. Doesn’t sound like much of a subject until you’re in a place where the rules a very different.

First of all, in Kisangani, there are no traffic lights. Well, that’s not quite true. There are a few but they all look like the one in the attached picture. I can’t imagine that they have worked in the last ten years at least. So it’s “who dares, wins” when you get to an intersection. Might, or size, also makes right. Since there is much more bicycle traffic than anything else, and I drive a big SUV, I usually don’t have to yield much. There is progress though on this front. I was in Kinshasa a few weeks ago and they had one traffic light working.

One of the few traffic lights
in Kisangani. Obviously
it's not working

Another important difference from North American standards is when the right of way is in doubt, the Congolese will flash their lights. This is not an indication that you can go. In fact it is the reverse. If you intend to take the right of way you either honk your horn or flash your lights. Either way it means get out of my way.

Now the city is not completely without traffic control measures. At the exit to the UN installations, there are little huts within which sit local policemen. They will signal you whether or not it is safe to exit. They have green “pass” signs and red “stop” signs. Little human traffic lights. There is also a traffic police booth on the main intersection in town. If the police officer is placed sideways to you, you can go. If he is facing you (or has his back to you), you have to wait.

The traffic police at the exit to the HQ

Then there are the traffic circles. There are quite a few of them and they operate on the French principle instead of the English. That is to say that traffic entering the circle has priority over the traffic already in the circle. It’s a recipe for disaster if you ask me, or at least traffic headaches, since any amount of traffic can enter the traffic circle but you can’t leave it as easily. It’s not too bad in Kisangani as we don’t have that much traffic but you do have to be aware that the car approaching on the right won’t stop for you.

In any event, that is it for today. I have four more missives to write after this one. D-38 and counting.

John

Missive from the Congo 014

Originally posted on Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:25:50 +0200

Well I’m back in Kisangani after almost three weeks off so I guess I’d better get back to writing missives. As you know, Chantal and I were away on holidays. We spent our holiday in Africa but more importantly back in civilization; namely South Africa. Chantal met me in the capital of the Republic of South Africa, Johannesburg. From there we proceeded to the southern end of the country and continent, namely the Western Cape. We had a wonderful time. We split our time between Mossel Bay (on the Indian Ocean), Franschhoek (in the vineyards) and Cape Town (in the bistros).

The view from our room in Mossel Bay

In many ways South Africa, or at least the Western Cape, is like North America or southern Europe. For one thing, it is a civilized country. After three months in the Congo, it was nice to have reliable electricity, tap water you can drink and a multitude of good restaurants to choose from.

Nonetheless it was a very different experience. First of all, they drive on the left side of the road, like the British. I must admit that this issue was my greatest concern before going over. I was very concerned about getting into an accident because I was in the wrong lane. It turned out to be very easy to manage. Everything from the road signs, to the lines on the roads, to the placement of the steering wheel push you to the correct (left) side of the road. There were a few hesitations at intersections but on the whole it went well. I did hedge my bets by getting a car with an automatic transmission though. I didn’t think I would be able to concentrate on staying to the left and synchronize change gears with the wrong hand at the same time.

A wine tour on horse back

Language was another difference that we noticed, and I don’t mean Afrikaans (Afrikaans is their version of Dutch spoken in South Africa). I fully expected that. What was surprising was some of the English words being used. For example, I asked for directions to some place or other and was told to “go to the third robot and turn left”. I figured out from the context what they meant but it was very bizarre to my mind. It seems that traffic lights are called “robot”, don’t ask me why. Other words that were very different included “learners” or “scholars”. They are talking about students, of any age. I was told by some South Africans here is Kisangani, that “student” picked up some negative connotation at some point and so now they are “learners” or “scholars”.

Table Mountain

The currency was also a little bit of a challenge. Their currency is the Rand. It is, fortunately, a decimal based currency with the Rand being the dollar and smaller units being cents. So far so good. The issue, albeit a minor one, was that the Canadian dollar is worth six Rand. So you have to divide all prices by six. Prices were generally very reasonable (bordering on inexpensive) but just seemed high until you did the math. Three hundred and fifty Rand just seemed to be a lot of money for supper, even a very good one. Fifty-eight dollars, on the other hand, was much more reasonable.

Cape of Good Hope

There were numerous other little things; like the maid at every B&B we stayed at, the children and adults walking bare foot in the grocery store or mall, the huge number of security guards, among others. South Africa was just different enough to be exotic but similar enough to be comfortable. I won't bother saying how we had a wonderful doing X or seeing Y. It is enough to say we had a terrific time. So good, we may go back to do and see some of the things we missed this time. Now all I have to do is live on the memories of a good vacation for the next ten weeks...

Have a good week.

John

Missive from the Congo 013

Originally posted on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 08:36:54 +0200

Now you see it.

This week I though I would talk about water. It is not a subject we give much thought to in Canada but it is always a subject of discussion here in Kisangani.

Let’s start with the weather. In the Congo, as in much of Africa, there are two seasons; dry and rainy. We are currently in the dry season which started in mid-December and lasts through to the end of March or so. Then comes the rainy season. Then the next dry spell. Then the next rainy season. When I arrived in late October, the rainy season was in full swing. It rained a lot. Two of the pictures attached are the view of the river from the HQ. They are from the same vantage point, taken minutes apart. Notice the river. Now you see it, now you don’t. That’s how much it can rain.

Now you don't.

It rained so much that we were very concerned that some of our installations were going to get flooded. As an indicator of the rise and fall of the mighty Congo, I have included two other pictures taken by others. They were taken from different angles about one month apart. Take a good look at the pier in front of the old factory.

Now let’s talk about city water. Kisangani, unlike most other places in the Congo has a water filtration plant and does provide water to most residents. Now we, the international community, do not drink the water but we use it for washing and such. It is not dangerous per se, but like many places in the world, it takes quite a while to get used to the local bacteria. The provision of water, as with electricity, can be patchy. Naturally the water plant needs electricity to run so when the power goes out so does the water. Also, like most other government employees, the waterworks employees have just started getting paid again but they have years of back wages owed to them. Last week they went on strike to demand their arrears. The flow of water in the town stopped for two days. There are a handful of natural springs in Kisangani, but with well over half a million people in town, you can imagine they got very busy very quickly. There were reports of fights with injuries at one of the springs. People also die when the water stops, but not from what you think. There have been numerous cases in the past of people, mostly kids drowning. Yes drowning. The people go down to the river to wash but most Congolese can’t swim. So they walk out into the river to wash, or they lather up their young children, and then they slip in, or drop the soapy child, and they get swept away by the strong current and drown. As far as I know, there were no reported cases of drowning this time.

Water level during the rainy season

Finally drinking water. As I mentioned above, we do not drink the local tap water. The UN provides bottled water produced by its own military water filtration plant. So we drink that though we were recently admonished not to take the UN water home as it is provided for consumption in the office only. We receive a daily subsistence allowance with which we should buy our water for home use. Yeah right. There is no way the local economy could supply the necessary volume of bottled water given the number of internationals here.

There is apparently a black market for UN water. A number of the local staff have been caught selling the UN bottled later. The chief administrator told me of going to a restaurant and asking for a bottle of water. Lo and behold what does appear on the table but a bottle of UN water, label and all. He drank the water but refused to pay for it.

Water level during the dry season

This will be last missive for a few weeks. I am going on leave to South Africa. I will resume my missives on or about the 12th of February. Thanks and keep the comments coming.

John

Missive from the Congo 012

Originally posted on Tue, 09 Jan 2007 07:41:21 +0200

This week's topic is electricity. It is something we generally take for granted. Usually there's plenty to go around. Occasionally there is a blackout but it is usually short-lived. Electricity here is another story. There is a power generating facility on the Tschopo River but the generators are over forty years old. Needless to say they require a great deal of TLC to keep them running. That is not always enough. There have been numerous instances of blackouts though it has pretty steady lately.

Canada House electical panel

The real trick is in managing the power. Power here is three-phase power. I’m not sure exactly what it means but for more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power. Apparently power in North America is transmitted this way but transformers convert the power to a single phase at 110 volts. Domestic power here is 220 volts and all three phases come to the main panel. We then manually select the phase that provides the best power.

This usually means the most power but not always. We frequently have brownouts where the voltage is very low; sometimes 112 volts instead of 220 volts. Needless to say not much works with only half of the necessary voltage. However the real problems happen when we get too much voltage. We have burned out circuits and appliances because of too much voltage. We use voltage regulators which display the input and output voltages, which is how I know what quality power we are getting. But sometimes there is too much power for the regulators and we have burned one of those.

The other major issue we have with power here is people tampering with the central electrical junction boxes. Most of the electrical cables here are buried. The lines to the various houses go to central boxes that receive power from the city grid. People here routinely open these boxes and make changes to "solve" their electrical problems. They also routinely take the wires from one house to connect another, and so on. It's got to be damn dangerous but as far as I know, no one had died because of it since I arrived. There is just such a box in front of our property and I am convinced that at least some of our electrical problems are related to this tampering. For this reason, aerial power lines are the "modern" solution. Since the wires are out of reach, people don't mess with them.

Utility junction box in front of Canada House

To deal with these issues we have a generator, which we use when there is no or too little power. We use it sparingly both because of the noise but also because gas is quite expensive.

The other thing that is happening relatively frequently around here is the theft of electrical cabling. I'm not talking a few yards here or there but kilometres of it. And I don't mean spools of it stored in a warehouse somewhere. No, thieves have been digging it out of the ground for kilometres. How they manage without someone noticing and telling the authorities is beyond me. I assume it's a combination of fear and corruption but who knows. I gather the copper is quite valuable these days.

Just one more part of the experience.

Have a good week.

John

Missive from the Congo 011

Originally posted on Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:25:10 +0200

Well, it is now 2007 and I would like to wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. I hope that you had a pleasant holiday seasons.


For my part, I had a very interesting weekend. It actually started on Friday the 29th of December. Friday was a holiday for the UN. It was Eid El Adha, a Muslim holiday of sacrifice.

New Year's supper at Canada House

So Friday being a holiday I only went in to the office for two hours and spent a good part of the afternoon at the pool, relaxing and drinking beer. Not a bad job if you can get it. Saturday was a normal work day, which means 7 AM to 1 PM. We cut out early on Saturday. I spent the afternoon tidying up the house and preparing for Sunday. As with the Christmas weekend, we continued taking turns receiving and being received by different houses. Canada House had the honour of hosting the New Year’s Eve supper. On the menu we had a fairly typical French Canadian meal. It consisted of:

Appetizer
Onion soup

Main course
Sheppard’s pie
Carrots
Bread

Dessert
Shortbread cookies
Tim Horton’s coffee

I did all of the cooking, hence the very simple fare. It was well received though I suspect they would be too polite to complain even if it was awful.

There were seven of us for supper. The same five as the previous weekend plus two additions who had returned from leave in the meantime (one South African and one Dutch).

After supper we went to the all-ranks mess to ring in the New Year. It was a little underwhelming as parties go. For whatever reason the crowd, such as it was, was subdued. Perhaps the truly lousy music had something to do with it. It certainly didn’t inspire me to get up off my chair. We ended up on the upper deck playing Pigs, as game which involves rolling little rubber pigs like dice. We toasted the New Year with some South African bubbly and by 1AM were back at our pads.

Clearly Christina sets a much better table than I

On Monday we went to the second South African house. They have a small pool so we went early. Again to sit by the pool, relax and drink beer. At this point I think it is important to note that this is not my typical routine. It just worked out nicely that way.

The supper on Monday was much more elaborate owing, no doubt, to the much greater culinary skills of our host Christina. She offered us:

Appetizer
Home made vegetable soup (not like the packaged stuff I made)

Main course
Salad

Beef stew

Rice

Green beans
Eggplant in a tomato sauce with grated cheese

Dessert
Crepes with maple syrup

"Sabrering" bubbly Congo style

For the record, I ate my entire meal including the eggplant even though it is clearly food for food.

We finished the meal off with a second bottle of bubbly. I didn’t bring my sabre to the Congo but I did manage to find a local expedient for the task of opening the bottle. Which just goes to show that even in the middle of the jungle, it is possible to inject a little bit of class.

Once again I want to wish you all a very happy and fruitful 2007. Happy New Year.

John