The heart of Darkness

Bienvenue au Congo! Today marks the end of my first week here in Dubié. I am not sure where to start this entry, my mind is awhirl of tasks to accomplish and things I must learn (not to mention French and Swahili) that it is hard to put into words just what has happened and how much has been accomplished in just this first week. It is a thing, a rule, that when one descends into a role like this is to do nothing for a month or so to ensure proper absorption of information and proper sensitive integration to alleviate problematic results; I know this but for some reason it hasn’t happened, quelle surprise, but I can always blame our motivation on the impending rainy season.

So maybe I will start with a list and see where that goes:

-I cannot count how many Mzungu’s I have heard. It will become tiring very soon.
-I have seen one man with an AK47 marching down the trail quite casually.
-I have been mobbed by children begging for photos
-One man (an employee of the ‘other medical NGO’) has been disappeared and found today murdered and mutilated. Suspects are the police
-I got lost in a adhoc cemetery just outside of IDP Camp 3 and almost died
-We have 30 children in our Centre Nutritional Therapeutic (CNT) more than ever even though the IDPs are returning home and there is talk of ACF quitting Dubié.
-I met with a village chief who asked for free food and got none. Then he complained about the water calamity and asked for help – at the very moment a drill rig drove by, parked and in four hours drilled and cleared the first of several wells.
-I have bled considerably after each frappe de ma tete. Tout les portals sont court.
-I met with Concern, MSF, AASF, WFP, UMCOR, UNICEF for the first ever coordination meetings.


I arrived on the Thursday morning flight from Lumbumbashi- one of the two ACF scheduled Airserv flights per month. It took an hour and a half to traverse the distance by Twin Otter. We hit the dirt field and skidded to a halt just in time to spin around and be greeted by the ACF team – and the local police. It was a jolly affair with pictures all around. MSF was there to say goodbye to a few of their own, the plane revved and took off. A bit of dust and noise left a vacuum of quiet and heat. This is it, I am home and this is not what I expected. I am not sure what I expected but this was not it. I live in a traditional village: this is REAL Africa. No TV, no radio, no electricity, no roads, heat and dust. Wow.

The plane came with a load of logistic supplies I had invented and subsequently purchased in Lumbu. The base has been without an expat staff for more than three months and clearly things have been left hanging without the support of management in Kin. I tried to pull off some logistical magic and anticipate the needs in advance of arrival so that we could have some supplies in advance – there have been some serious problems in the past with the supply chain and there are items still on backorder since May for example. It was magical indeed as there has not been anyone from Kin or Lumbu EVER in Dubié to provide any input so I literally flew into the unknown – the Heart of Darkness with my bag of goodies.

At first meeting the team is good and everyone is truly friendly. The language is only a small barrier as people are just happy to have another body to help in the work. Congolese French is quite precise, if not historically true, and of a traditional Belgique dialect with little evolution. It will be interesting to see how my skills come along and how it works in the evolved ‘new world’.

I do speak English sometimes. Some folks have a smattering of English and it tickles them to no end to say ‘goodbye’ on first greeting and ‘I’m fine’ when departing. Concern is here with a pile of expats numbering 5 or 6 and of course MSF is here with their 7 or 8. These guys work in English inside the compounds. WE from ACF USA work and play in French. Using my food rations, I bought a tonne of chocolate and wine which has worked miracles in opening the door to good neighbourly relations. I should have reserved some room for franks and beans tho, the fou-fou and kidney beans are becoming monotonous.

I try not to work too hard, really, I figured it was a lost cause to come here. ACF requires donor funding and the funding contracts are almost completed with a term until mid-Dec. There is clearly a lack of initiative and direction from the country level leadership. Really with such talk of packing up why bother to make any effort beyond learning a bit of French?

But then what the hell – the budget is only 23 percent spent and there is only three months to go. I have promised my guys that if we give it our best we can build something worth keeping – or even better build something worth giving away. So forward we advance with the philosophy that until a decision is communicated to us it is business as usual; the sooner we pull it off, well the sooner we can nip in the bud any complaints about overspending. I have never been shy to shoulder a challenge or two.

I digress: I am a bit embarrassed to be here. The base is in a bit of a pickle I think, two all intents and purposes it feels like it is just opened. Concern has been here for three weeks against our 5 months and they have a very nice set-up; so what the hell?

There is no water – the guards pull shifts at bicycling water from the town pump to fill our fuel barrel cisterns. It took me three days to get a mosquito net attached to my bed. There is no furniture beyond a few hand fabricated hardwood chairs and I became disheartened. Then the reality is that this environment is so dusty that it is just as well there are no clothes hangars and I have liberated a steel trunk from the ACF stores and now store all my stuff inside for protection. The house is hot with its steel roof and needs a false ceiling. I have asked the cook to take the charcoal cooker outside to limit the smoke and heat in the house. The bathroom is as big as a bedroom; the toilet is real but it hardly functions as there is no water to make it flush no matter how much water you throw down its throat. It is easier to use the guard’s latrine out back. The shower remains a hole in the floor and it is still bucket bath situation.

The bureau is too small and I have had to command the construction of another outbuilding to house the in office logistic stores – turns out that this action contravenes our rent agreement. So during this construction we are sharing space – afterwards the logstock inside the office will become the new office for our nutrition program and I will take the nice corner office (which in the mean time is also being refitted with a new brick and mortar money safe). The power is supplied with a tiny and overused generator and I am very concerned with its longevity and its fuel consumption as we move into the rainy season – meaning when the roads degenerate sufficiently to prevent truck transport we will be without fuel supplies. I have ordered (crossing my fingers that the logistic supply chain is better functioning) a battery back-up system with a charger/inverter system to allow us 24 hour electricity on half time use of the generator. This weekend I will install the supplied but still in crates solar panels to provide safe and separate power to the radio systems.

Speaking of radios, our ancient and broken truck has no radio system at all – no VHF (short range) or HF (CODAN or long range) radio. ‘They’ robbed the radios when they moved the truck from a project in the north of Congo to move it here to Dubié. These radios are still on backorder since the base was opened in April. I had to call the HOM and declare that all travel beyond a 10 km radius of the base (handset contact) has been cancelled. This is a very big deal to be sure – the numbers of admissions to out TFC have gone up because we travel the countryside collecting starving children and thus justify our existence: so while the IDPs are declining and our usefulness in that ‘emergency’ is unquestionably minimal, there clearly is a need sur terrain in our presence as evident in our increasing admissions. This is a tough stance I have taken and it could clearly backfire to an early closure should HQ decide it is not worth the effort in the short term to bring the base to a minimum functioning standard. Beyond all that we have only 4 aged and out of date handsets when we need 10 –ergo I have no handset to maintain security and nobody knows where I am. There are NO security protocols in place as I wander around after dark with marauding militias while MSF have darkness curfews.

Add that to the fact it has no brakes on the hardtop Toyota. Then add also it is our only vehicle for four programs – Nutrition (a CNT, a CNS, 2 mobile CNS in outlying villages), VAD or home visits in outlying villages up to 50 km radius to follow-up on our beneficiaries and to identify and transport new admissions, Food Security (distributions of seeds and tools with education), and WATSAN some small water projects in and around Dubié. Broken and alone, it struggles to move tonnes of food and the people over the sandy trails and log bridges (yikes) – what will happen in the wet season when the véhicule tombé panne? We have no backup and no radios to call for help to pull us out of the mud.

My logistician has his head spinning. He has never been good at prioritising work, I understand, so not much has been accomplished to date. I arrived on a Thursday and together we went for a walk around the house parcel, the office parcel including the Centre Nutritional Supplementary CNS; the food store parcel and the Centre Nutritional Therapeutic CNT parcel and made a list of jobs and things to order. On Saturday we telexed the order of over one hundred items along with a budget forecast for the work. That should keep him busy for the next month or so. I did promise him that we could chill out during the rainy season but for the next two or three weeks we need to drive hard at accomplishing tasks before the rain falls; and that he has grasped and taken up the challenge.

I need to deal with my admin guy – he used to run the office for the last three months and has done a fine job. But like all Africans he searches for respect and likes to yak a storm and now has to step aside; it is a double-edged sword for him. On one hand he likes the power but on the other hand he lacks the confidence to pull it off. So I think he is happy to have me there to take the pressure off him. But to establish myself as the alpha dog I have had to invade his office and take over his space as I wait to take over the proper Chef de Base office. Really what I have done is (with the appearance of consultation) caused everyone to shift offices in one massive musical chairs movement resulting in clarification of status. Not bad if I do say so. Already I have had to reign him in during our first ONG Coordination meeting but he took it well and he served me very well the very next day translating my weak French into intelligible ramblings during a meeting with a nearby local village chief begging for free stuff that we cannot give.

I am not a nutritionist. I learned of a devastating statistic in a coincidental meeting with the head of base for MSF while I was in Lumbu the weekend before my departure to Dubié – four children in the past week were transferred from ACF CNT to the MSF hospital too late and died. This is unacceptable and I set out to figure out what is going on. On arrival here at Dubié I had a weekend to chill with my new MSF buds and over cold beer (of course THEY have kerosene fridges and electricity) we yakked about some of their perspectives. Then I called our HOM and gave him the second ultimatum – get us our nutritionist up here right away. Our national staff program nutritionist from Lumbu arrived the next day unannounced. This is a big surprise and maybe my ploy worked? So he is out doing his tours and talking to folks and meeting with the MSF docs and hopefully things can improve. On a purely political stance, MSF can see that we are working on something (I get kudos for quick action too) and now can put aside any misgivings and build relationships.

Funny how things happen: this poor nutritionist arrived at the same time as a huge thunderstorm. The frequency of storms is increasing as we move towards the season and they are ominous and huge in their presence. The plane made an emergency dive landing, kicked out our guy and a few log items, shut the door and flew away taking his suitcase too. He is stuck here until Monday with nothing but the cloths on his back. I am laughing now, but give me a few months…