07.01.2009

View of BukavuHow can I describe the reality of life here? I go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, cook, eat, watch TV, call friends, sleep. I go out to parties, do my shopping, have two cell phones and go to the market. At first sight a normal and enjoyable routine. But at the same time everyday life here is as alien as possible. It is full of contradictions, strange conversations and all the time you feel the effects of a war that is so complicated it is not of this world.


Here, that is Bukavu, in the province of South Kivu in eastern Congo. And work, that is my job as reporting officer for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. I arrived here about two months ago, to take up this post as a UNV. Our office in Bukavu is UNHCR’s HQ for the province. As ‘chargée des rapports’ I am responsible for the reports of our office to the sub-offices, to the country office, to partner organisations. In addition, I work for the protection cluster: a group of organisations, lead by UNHCR, targeting to protect refugees and idp’s. This means a lot of information passes over my desk every day, and it is up to me to filter out the sensitive data, to summarize the stories into a concise, to the point discourse about protection work, the amounts of newly displaced in the provinces, and relevant security incidents.

The latter is a concept I am still getting used to. This is a country torn up by war, in which attacks, rape and violence are part of everyday life. And apparently, in such situations, some incidents become less relevant than others. The reports I read daily talk of the most horrendous things. Rape of an 8-year old girl in one village, in another village a 67-year old woman is abused. Houses in five villages collapse because passing troops brutally rip the wooden supports out so they can cook. A protesting elderly is beaten up. Children are recruited as child soldiers and when the contingent finally moves on, they take the villages’ goats and cows with them. Etcetera, etcetera. I could give you names and places, dates and times. The reports that reach me are very specific and they talk about real people, about things that happened yesterday or this morning. Normally, these are things one hears on the eight o’clock news, things that happen far away. But here, they are happening next door. The stories are horrendous. And yet, I read these reports and take out half of the incidents, turn the real stories about real people into nameless statistics. These then are discussed in several of the many meetings between UN agencies, NGOs, and peacekeeping forces, all dedicated to saving this strange, but wonderful country.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is incredibly vast, a former Belgian colony and has the potential of being one of the richest countries in Africa. It is as large as the whole of Western Europe and borders no less than nine countries: the Republic of Congo (also called Congo-Brazzaville), Central Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and Angola. The earth contains gold and minerals – but the people are amongst the poorest in Africa. The river Congo is wide, long, and fast, and it could provide power to the entire continent - yet it runs largely unexploited and only a few cities are more or less provided with an irregular, unstable current. The forests are immense, dense and full of life. Several unique species of animals could attract tourism – but now the trips to the gorillas can only be organised with permission from the UN security department. The country is being destroyed by illegal mine exploitation, corruption, lack of planning and strategy – and, unavoidably, by war. Not only does it suffer from its own wars, but the Congo has over time become host to many, many refugees from Angola, Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda.
As for the province of South Kivu, the Rwandan genocide of the 90s has had the most destructive impact. Many Rwandans fled into bordering South Kivu (a province as large as Rwanda and Burundi together). Their number is unknown; they went in hiding in the brousse, the jungle, which is where many of them still live. Then came the Rwandan liberation army, the FDLR, to liberate the Rwandan Hutus from oppression by the Congolese, but in fact are said to be holding many Rwandese hostage in the brousse as cannon fodder. The Congolese national army, the FARDC, is at this moment deploying its troops for a campaign called Kimia 2. Kimia 2 is going to chase the FDLR back into Rwanda and is supported by the UN peacekeeping operation MONUC. But formerly, FARDC and FDLR fought together in South Kivu against another armed group. In addition to this confusion, there are the many local armed Mai-Mai groups, ordinary people who organised themselves to defend their lives and villages against the pillage and plunder of the armies. Unfortunately they do not restrict themselves to defence against the armies, but often become the aggressors and pillagers themselves. The FARDC rarely receives wages, so they too take to plundering villages and asking illegal taxes.

As a result of all this mayhem, people are forced to flee from their homes. The total amount of internally displaced in Congo is at the moment over 1.8 million. Congolese in refuge in neighbouring countries: about 300.000. And then there is an unknown number of refugees from neighbouring countries residing in Congo. UNHCR in South Kivu monitors the situation, works on protection, runs shelter projects and repatriation programs. And in that whole, impossible to grasp world of ongoing violence and destruction, half-reliable data, clusters to coordinate efforts of multiple agencies and organisations, different interests and intentions of all the various parties, efforts of coordination with other agencies, proliferation of NGOs and UN peace operation MONUC, I suddenly found myself.

When I arrived in Kinshasa for the initial briefings before taking up my post, I had no idea what to expect. Not of the work, nor of the country, nor of daily life. So far it has been a mixture of joy and frustration. That is the expat life in conflict areas: life in extremes. You feel either good, or bad. There is no middle ground and both come along more strongly than in a normal life.

After the formalities in the capital I moved on to my duty station, Bukavu. The journey took all day and three flights, passing through Uganda. Finally, when I arrived at Bukavu MONUC airport, hot, hungry, tired, and angry that I had had to leave one suitcase behind, a UNHCR driver was there to pick me up and during the ride to town I felt myself relax. Kinshasa is big, busy, dirty. Here there are banana trees, lush mountains, a cool climate and a lake so beautifully situated it is breathtaking. I started at the UNHCR office the next day. I met all my colleagues, got briefings and more briefings, went to meetings as other agencies, met people there, got yet again more briefings. I only understood half of what was going on. I stayed at the house of a colleague who was on mission; her domestic help did my laundry (by hand) and cooked, two guards were always there to watch the premises and fire up the generator at night, and a driver picked me up every day to go to the office. A strange life. A lot of it passed by in a haze – it was all rather overwhelming. New, new, new, all day long, everyone and everything. I didn’t know the way in town, didn’t know any people, had trouble understanding the language. For this is a francophone country and thus a francophone mission. Yes, I speak French, and reasonably well; but to live, work, write in French – that is, as we say in Holland, a different biscuit. I would go to these meetings and would understand 50% tops of what was being said – on a good day. Because of the French, because of the many different French accents (there are people from every corner of the world here), because of place names I did not know, because of jargon I did not master (who would have guessed that PAM is French for WFP, AGR for IGA, and PVI for FYI?). In the beginning, I was knackered at the end of each day. My predecessor, who is still in the country, encouraged me by saying: ‘it will take at least two months before you begin to understand. After six months you will be halfway.’ And unfortunately, that seems to be the truth.

By now, after two months, I do feel a little more grounded here. But life remains odd in all aspects. I drive to work in a Toyota Landcruiser 4×4 over non-existents roads, trying not to run over the goats, and keeping the doors locked at all times. I give the guards some extras from time to time, to keep them from selling information about me to potential thieves. I check every day if the maid didn’t steal anything. I try to get to know people by immersing myself in the expat scene, get invited to bingo night at the Pakistani battalion’s headquarters and go dancing at the MONUC club on Fridays. At the same time, I am trying to discover what UNHCR is, does, how, with whom, which are the main interests, and what are the dynamics that move the organisation. Contact with Congolese turn out to be hard. There is a Great Divide between expats and local staff. Most often the local people an expat encounters, are working under him, are the beggars in front of the shops, or are the ladies in the market trying to sell bananas and tomatoes at elevated, ‘white’ prices. And then there are the many armed robbers and gangs. All in all, it is quite rare to find expats and locals in a friendship based on equality. Despite that, in general, I find the Congolese a good-humoured, cheerful people. And they have no hesitation whatsoever to bring up the most bizarre topics of conversation.

One of the guards at the hostel in Kinshasa had a real talent for that. One day, I came home after another day of briefings, when he stopped me on the way to my room.
- Good morning madam. I want to ask you a question.
- Sure, Abraham, go ahead.
- Well, I heard that in New Zealand 60% of the people are paedophiles. Is that true?
- 60%? Where did you hear that? No, I am sure that is not correct. Perhaps there are a few paedophiles in New Zealand, but certainly not 60%.
- Oh. (Moment of silence.) Perhaps it wasn’t paedophiles, but homosexuals?
- No, for that as well, I am sure the number isn’t that high. No doubt there are some, but not that many.
- Oh. (Silence again.) Actually, what is the difference between homosexuals and paedophiles?
And then the conversation turned to homosexuality, next to how homosexual people have sex, and then he wanted to know if they used sex toys and what material those were made from. At that point I decided I had an urgent phone call to make and left the question hanging in the air.

Having a good laugh about things like that conversation, and time, have helped. The tiredness and utter frustration I experienced every single day in the beginning has lessened, but the feeling that this is an alien land remains. Earth is within reach, it’s visible, it is a fellow planet – but here, life is stripped to its bare essentials. Everything, all day, is just a little bit harder and a little more difficult than back home. To get food, to be safe, to make friends. Talking to locals, doing business, finding a place to live. To do your work, to feel secure. Nothing is easy and conversations are strange. Colleagues are dedicated, but humanitarian considerations are often not the only reason they are here; for many, career planning and good earnings are part of the motivation to choose for the Congo. The lake is beautiful, but harbours a dangerous gas bubble. Earthquakes are a dormant threat to the town.

The mountains surrounding Bukavu, so beautiful and yet potentially sheltering armed groups, are sometimes called ‘the mountains of the moon’. A good name. For that is what living in this place feels like: a life on the moon.

Welmoet Wels

Books on the Congo

Filed Under Congo 2009 

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