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