Water Water Everywhere

10 Nov

I am exhausted today. I slept well last night for the first time in a while, but the rain started at 02h preceded by an amazing light and sound show. I am finally over my bout of intestinal problems – congrats for surviving 2 months in the DRC before falling ill. In the beginning my sickness was bad enough that I thought I was suffering from malaria again…phew it turned out just to be a fever and the trots. My MSF nurse saviour says I am a little anaemic. Wonder what that means..?

The kids are screaming and the moms are singing ‘the hygiene song’ behind me, the Friday CNS is under full swing. My crew has put in a couple of hard fighting days and so we are almost caught up in all the tasks I had previewed on my first arrival. Yesterday, just at nightfall, we were able to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done – we finally installed the water taps in the CNS and at the house. We have water! There are still the multitude of tiny tasks to complete this undertaking – we have some leaking joints and one broken pvc pipe was installed and ultimately we need to fill in the channels. Still, the felicitations flow like the water now and our Animateurs (so too mama Adolphine at the house) dance for joy and pleasure of an arrival long overdue.

Je suis content.

Meanwhile we have upgraded 8 of the planned 14 water points around town, installing a proper apron and drainage system to evacuate the spillage to a more sanitary location. This is proceeding faster than expected with four teams attacking four points at a time – and taking only four days per water point. Next on the watsan schedule will be to upgrade the ‘captage’ the source in the mountains just out of town to make sure that it will supply good quantity and quality of water for the long run. Of course my watsan guy is also tasked to get water from the brand new water point in the house parcel into the plumbing of the bathroom –oooo to have a proper shower! It may be too cold, but it will come from up above.

We finally received a 20 tonne delivery from LBB last Monday – it took the truck over a week to come…and when it arrived it came with only a half load as it got stuck in the mud some 18 km out of town and had to off-load some weight to unstick itself. This delivery caused us no end of bad business – we had log guys flying and our Food Security team had to jump into the fray. We received our quota of tools (machetes and hoes) as well as our allotment of corn seed (still waiting! on the herricot et patate duce) from the FAO. Luckly we were able to capitalize on the truck returning for the other half of its load on Tuesday and thus we were able to move a proportion of the tools and seeds back out to our planned warehouses along the same route. This killed two birds with one stone – we got our stuff delivered without having to occupy our little broken Toyota and we got to start the distribution immediately. We are one-third completed our distribution. Next week will see the end of the distribution of the seeds and tools – none too late as the season for planting has started and we are a little behind.

On Monday (while everyone was occupied with unloading the delivery truck) I personally moved the little old generator into its new shack in the maison parcelle and wired it into the house circuit. Now I have a generator at the house but I still use candles…what is up with that? The truth is that there too many bugs attracted to the lights when the generator is going.

Sadly my efforts to enforce a side-by-side distribution of food – called a ‘protection ration’- to accompany the seed distribution to ensure that the seeds are not eaten has failed. It is a normal protocol to do a dual distribution, but for some reason it was not included in our funding proposal. Our neighbours here, Concern, coincidently had some food from the WFP but we were not able to capitalize on this availability. Bummer. Do what you can is a common mantra these days…

On Wednesday this past week I was the one jumping for joy. I had hired an electrician – well he is one of our guards who did electrical work before the wars – to wire up our CNT. The CNT is where we feed starving children, and during this nursing effort, the kids eat on a three-hour rotation around the clock and so lights are a good thing. In the truck delivery from LBB, there were rolls of wire and sockets and switches (still waiting on the 12 V light bulbs and the freekin’ solar panels Kinshasa!) so we went to town. Might as well prepare in advance the things we can and so we did. It is a fab job done well and it has caught the eye of all. Eventually folks will get inured to such amazing gifts? Still, without our bulbs and power source it is a monument to nothing.

It was such a great job that I got the guy to wire up the kitchen in the little house at the back of my chalet with a light bulb. Today he is wiring a light bulb into the guard shack and over the front door of the office compound. So many little successes.

The word came down from on high yesterday; there will be NO evacuation during the election period. As far as I am concerned, that is fine with me. Things here in Dubié are quiet and I feel relatively comfortable. On the other hand, we have been having a few problems with the local police force and the local military unit.

For example last Friday, after touchdown from my whirlwind tour of LBB, I had to stop an armed soldier from stealing food from one of our beneficiaries (at our front gate mind you!!!) – poor terrorized woman and her three babies. I was on my way to visit the chief of police so I would get one of my ‘liberated’ (by force mind you) bicycles. The police decided by themselves it was ok to take our bicycle to go and carry the ballot box from a village some 35 km from here. I had to remind him that we needed some respect as an independent NGO working for the community and that such respect would recognize our independence and neutrality. The bastards didn’t even return it- I had to go and get it. Then just the day before yesterday a guard for AASF (local ngo) tried to steal cooking oil from Concern who share a common warehouse. The police got involved somehow (never a good thing) and then a guard from Concern got shaken down for 4000 FC. How this turn of events happens is surprising – and then not so much.

Then it also seems that the army has been mounting patrols through the center of town. Why have they lifted their visibility this last week? And why this time are they carrying their weapons?

I am getting ready to go on vacation. Being along here has some advantages, but vacation time is not one of them. So I am on train to accompanying my Concern neighbours to Mozambique to do a little diving. This should be fun. I’ll try not to be too cheap.