Cows Fly

That is certainly what I feel like these days when traveling by plane. I’ll never understand how they can live with themselves making people travel with so little dignity, but I suppose the airline execs all travel First Class.

The seats are so small, I, a relatively small person, cannot get comfortable. Most people aren’t small, most Americans even less so. Yet here we sit, stuffed like sardines, patiently or not so patiently leaving aside decorum and personal space, sleeping (in the most unfortunate cases drooling) on the shoulders of the stranger with whom we are in more intimate contact than seen on most first dates.

Health authorities and Katie Couric tell us that we should get up regularly on long-haul flights to walk around. This is to prevent death by embolism or something. Someone who also flies coach will have to tell me how it is that one is supposed to get up regularly when in the middle of that loathsome bank of five seats, when the others stuffed in on either side of them are asleep. One gets little enough sleep on a plane – I have no desire to steal any of those restful moments from a fellow passenger just to walk around.

They have recently discontinued free meals and the little pillows and blankets from domestic flights. Airlines are going bankrupt, so they have to charge for a slice of cheese in stale bread ($5.00) and a mini Coke ($5.00). Airlines are going bankrupt, so they have to put more people in the plane, and therefore have to carry less extra weight, so there go the pillows and blankets. So, our stomachs rumble as we freeze to death. The experts tell us to drink plenty of water so as to not get dehydrated on the flight, but who is stupid enough to pay $5.00 for water?

Today, I was told by the woman checking me in that I was only allowed five pounds of weight as carry on. This, to me, is the height of indecency. My laptop alone weighs 4 pounds. Then what about all the other things one needs on the flight? Book: at least 1 pound. Toiletries (including feminine items): at least 1 pound. Oops! I’m over. Forget that really expensive digital camera – I’ll have to trust that an underpaid baggage handler in some backwater airport doesn’t need one today. Forget the pen and crossword book, the crochet project, the extra underwear and change of clothing.

So now, I will be a sleepless and slimy sardine on my arrival to Georgia via a very long layover in Munich, since I forewent the toiletries on this one. Maybe the day room in the hotel will have something I can at least bathe with, although since I also gave up my change of clothing, I’ll just have to climb back into dirty clothes.

And people tell me that all my traveling sounds so romantic. Let me tell you something: airports nearly stimulate tears for me now, as I imagine the indignities and insults I will face during my trip, layover after layover, in increasingly small planes with increasingly smelly fellow passengers. I don’t see how we can do anything to change the situation. We need to travel now, in our globlized world, and fuel prices and liability insurance are exorbitant on the airlines. They need more passengers and lower costs, and we need more flights. It is a match made in hell.

Tbilisi

I’ve been having some trouble getting started on this description of my time in Tbilisi; I didn’t really have a chance to get a good sense of the place, and don’t really see an obvious entry point to it. The thing that I liked the best about Tbilisi was the food, so I’ll try starting there, and see where we go.

Georgian food is really amazing. Historically, it isn’t surprising that it is so varied and creative. Georgia, over its history, was on the silk and spice roads from east to west. Just about anything can grow in its varied climates, and the country has been part of the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Soviet empires. Migrations and wars brought them into contact with many cultures of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Some of the signature tastes of Georgian food are walnuts, paprika, and pomegranate. Red bell peppers, mushrooms, and eggplants provide the vehicle for pureed spreads of walnut and spices. Some of my favorite things were the minted cheese wrapped with pastry and soaked in minted yogurt, lamb-stuffed ravioli stewed in broth and topped with a bread lid, and the walnut and pomegranate stuffed braised trout.

Tbilisi is a very interesting city, and I feel that it was a shame that I didn’t get more time to explore the museums and older parts of it. The architecture ranges from a fortress built in the 13th or 14th century and religious buildings almost as old to post-Soviet modern glass buildings. On my last day there, one of the drivers took me sightseeing around Tbilisi and Mtsket, the old capital. It became clear why, as people in the office told me, Georgia was considered the tourism capital of the Soviet Union. Along the river and in the hills, there are beautiful buildings, decorated with intricately carved wooden balconies, and there are restaurants everywhere.

I found three buildings particularly interesting: town hall, a church, and the ministry of transportation. Town hall in Tbilisi looks like it was built during the period of heavy French influence, in the mid-19th century. My driver, however, insists that it is only 50 years old, and was built to look like it was very old. This remains to be confirmed, but that seems like an interesting story – why someone would go to the trouble and expense of building a town hall in the Soviet period to look like it was very old. I wonder if it has something to do with the tourist reputation of the country – it may have needed a town hall that was in keeping with its romantic image.

The Church we went to was beautiful and very very old. The driver who was with me thinks that it was probably built in the 15th or 16th century, but I think from being inside that it was built over at least two churches built previously. Georgia is made up mainly of Georgian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Christians, and the church was set up like a Greek Orthodox church would be, with the altar behind a beautiful screen. The walls were painted with very intricate murals, but up to about six feet off the ground, all the faces were rubbed out of the saints, all the way around on every mural. I asked the driver why, but he just laughed at me and shook his head. Hmmm. The entire church was stunningly painted and carved and inlaid. Some of the interior walls had crumbled in places, revealing an earlier structure that was a bit smaller, and there were places in the floor covered with glass to reveal an even earlier site below.

Sarajevo 2

Today, I bought a rug from a friend of my colleague here. The rug shop owner is an energetic and fun Bosnian who speaks great English. He is a friend to many expats here, including the US ambassador, because he is honest and has a real talent in finding and restoring antique rugs. He told a similar story about the beginning of the war as the staff member who took me to the center. He lived in a building with Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats. They were friends and drank coffee together and their children played together. Then one day, he heard that people were killing each other, and mistrust set in instantly. They were at war, and his friends were his enemies. He couldn’t understand why so few Americans seem to understand how the war started; I explained that we hadn’t even heard the tip of the iceberg about it, and the few Americans could even tell you whose side we were on in the conflict. He shook his head, dragged on his cigarette, and went to tend a customer.

This city is a human and architectural and political textbook on war and its aftereffects. The conflict and horror and mistrust are only millimeters below the surface – where before the war, it was a diverse and relatively integrated place, it is now a place of careful friendship, suspicions, and identity politics. But amidst all that, it is a beautiful and fun and cosmopolitan place.

What would Jesus do? Not this.

Read this.

I'll have to write about it later. I just don't know where to start now.

One more thing to add to the list of ways Bush is undermining not only America and our American life so hard won, but basic human compassion and global community.

I will not be surprised when he postpones the next presidential election for some trumped up reason. Maybe that's when we'll go to war with Iran or N. Korea. You call me paranoid now, but mark my words -- the man is up to no good. So far, this story reads like any classic Latin American or African dictator, and all too much like The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. But I've been saying that for five years now.

Jablanica

Today we went out to visit a collective center in Jablanica (pronounced “yablahNEETZah”. Collective centers are the Bosnian version of refugee camps, and internally displaced people have been living in these places for ten to fourteen years. During the war, people being persecuted from all ethnic groups fled their hometowns to places where they were relatively safe. The towns they arrived at allowed them to occupy abandoned factories or schools or other types of buildings, temporarily. After the war ended, aid agencies provided more adequate temporary shelter and some services to the people who were in these places, and they became collective centers or refugee camps.

Supposedly, the people living in these places were eventually supposed to go home, and the governments of the two autonomous entities, the Serb Republic and the Federation of Herzegovina, tried to close them. The Serb Republic claims to have closed all of them, but really they just changed the name to Transition Centers. Until our organization began its project in these centers two years ago, very few people had gone home, in spite of having been offered reconstruction and other assistance through ours and other international development groups.

There are many reasons that people are reluctant to leave. First and foremost, they are scared. They have lived in these camps with these people for a very long time now. They have gotten jobs, maybe, or at least gotten accustomed to receiving assistance. Their children may be in schools near the centers. It is hard to get up the courage to make a change again at this point, even if they could count on their place of return being safe and secure for them, but many don’t.

It is nearly impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to face a return like this. Almost all of the people in the centers lost members of their families, many in their very homes, were the opposing army broke in and killed men, women, or children in front of other family members. Some women were raped in their own homes. Many were persecuted by the neighbors they had known and drank coffee with for years. Those homes must seem almost haunted now with the hellish memories; going there must violently tear any scars right open again. I can’t even believe that anyone would go back. Add that to the uncertainty that they will have any services in their old town or a job, and you can easily imagine why they would prefer to stay.

On the way drive to and from the center, the woman who took us, who manages the program for the returnees, told us her experience of the war. She is the daughter of a Muslim (Bosniak) and an Orthodox (Serb). Her father had spent much of his life as a career soldier in Yugoslavia, and ended up in Sarajevo. They grew up with friends from all of the religious groups, and such differences were barely worth mentioning. Then one day, they started to hear reports of Muslims murdering Serbs. It wasn’t easily believable for them, and they later found out that these first reports weren’t actually true. At some point, and I’m not sure where, because the story came out of chronological order, her Serbian extended family in Serbia called them to let them know that they had sent their sons to be soldiers with the Serbian army “to save them” from the Muslim atrocities. Her father tried to explain that that wasn’t what was happening, and that the Serb army was committing the atrocities and blaming them on the Muslims to create unrest. No one in Serbia believed him because they were getting fake information from the government.

Her father and brothers left to defend Bosnia as soldiers. She felt useless at home, so she ran away and also joined the army without telling them. She had no formal training, so they trained her as a nurse. She was seventeen (one year older than I). For several years during the conflict, I think that she said five years, she worked on the front lines in Sarajevo. She showed us the building where she lived, and the building where she worked. They were right across the street from the Serb army, and remain scarred with bullet holes today. To get from her apartment to the hospital (which they had set up in an abandoned grocery store), she had to run a gauntlet of five Serb snipers.

When the war was over, she made a decision to leave the army and the conflict behind. She says that she still hasn’t been able to really forgive her neighbors and other Serbs she knew for turning against Bosnia like that, for falling prey to paranoia and propaganda. She said that she tries not to hate, and recognizes that there are good and bad people in every group, but that she still has a hard time trusting. All of this is inside of her every day, when she helps both Serbs and Bosnians resettle. She helps them all equally, but says that the hardest thing about her job is going to Srebrenica, where Serbs massacred Bosnians during the war, and the grief remains fresh in the minds of the minority Bosnians she takes back to their homes there. She feels culpable for renewing their pain when they walk the haunted and reconstructed halls of their old homes or old land.

I nearly broke down in tears listening to her. There we were, two women, driving a car along a highway surrounded with some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen, talking about the sheer horror and inhumanity that she witnessed. The hardest thing I have ever dealt with was the death of one person in my life. I can’t even imagine watching death the way she did every day for five years. She seems old, and I seem naïve. She is married now, to a Macedonian, and has a four-year-old daughter.

Walking around Sarajevo, the leftovers from the war are everywhere. On the path along the river, you can see where people were shot to death. A line of bullet holes leads to a small, person-sized spot where all the shots converge. From the angle of the shots, you can look up and see which window in the building across the street they came from. The spots became like vacuums for me, spaces where a person should be.

Sarajevo 1

I arrived here in Sarajevo, Bosnia, after a long flight through Munich. Down the precarious steps out of the small plane, into the recently refurbished airport that already smelled like my Nana's apartment - stale cigarettes and dust. The airport gleamed in its newness, and even though it is small, it is pretty nice. The driver, who speaks nary a word of English, dropped me off at the cute little Hotel Gaj (pronounced "guy") tucked behind a cute pair of restaurants (Vinonteka and Pizzeria Gaj). The hotel reception is managed by these two young girls who are really nice behind their unbelievable makeup. I wonder how they can get their eyelids open with that much mascara.

The office is in many ways an allegory for the city as a whole. It is off a side street of a side street, in a huge building that at one time seems to have been covered with pink stucco, but now is stripped to bare brick. It looks like it is about to crumble, and you can see all over it the pock marks left by bullets and shrapnel. Inside, however, it is overwhelmingly modern. Brand new everything, metal and marble and gleaming clean glass. High speed internet, business people in suits, a coke machine. The difference is surreal, and does not go unnoticed by the staff here.

All over the city, you see buildings wrecked by the war. Beautiful old Austro-Hungarian period buildings with their wedding-cake flourishes and horrid Soviet-chic towers of concrete alike were bombed, bulleted, and burnt. Right beside them, however, are brand-new towers of glass and steel, or newly rehabilitated historic buildings. Art galleries and restaurants and offices function like nothing ever happened, but the scars are not even close to being healed. The whole place seems stretched between an Eastern history that is painful and frightening and a possible European future that holds promise and challenges. It can't be easy.

The city is situated in a valley, surrounded by many rolling green hills, dotted with square two- or three-story houses with sloped tile roofs. It is really beautiful, especially last night. As we walked to dinner at the cozy and good Italian restaurant Fellini, the sun set from behind us, casting a peachy glow down the main street of the city center and out onto the hill in the distance, emphasizing its greenness and the romance of the little houses.

It seems to me that few streets run straight here, and even fewer flat. It is a maze of twisting old lanes, barely one car wide, sometimes not even that. How people find their way around is beyond me. It seems almost as though the city is trying to keep its secrets hidden, a labyrinth challenging you to look a little deeper for the real thing.

They have electric busses that must be older than I am, running on their overhead wires. I love that. There are public gardens and parks that are cared for -- this, I tell you, is one of the key indicators of development. People stop at the traffic lights, and stay stopped until they turn green.

I could stay here for weeks and never tire of exploring and learning about this fascinating city and the amazing people in our office.

Death of a Revolutionary

This morning John Garang, the leader of Southern Sudan's rebel movement the SPLM, was killed in a helicopter crash.

Regardless of what you think about revolutions, rebel movements, or the Southern Sudanese, John Garang was a unique and powerful character. He managed, albeit by an iron hand, a successful war to gain increased autonomy for Southern Sudan. In the wake of that war, 2 million died, mostly of disease and starvation, and the jury is out as to whether it was worth it.

This conflict has always made me ask myself when do people finally say enough is enough and choose war to effect change? And how can war effect positive change when the human costs are so high?

For the sake of everyone in Sudan, let's hope that the new leader of the SPLM continues Dr. Garang's commitment to the peace accords, and manages to reign in the riots in response to his death.

Lima, Peru

I'm sitting in the VIP lounge in the airport in Lima, Peru. I'm not usually a VIP at the airport, and I am entirely grateful for the spread of juice and snacks and coffee, since my midnight flight to Atlanta has been postponed until 3 am, and by then I will have been here for six hours.

Lima is a good city, at least the parts of it that I saw. It charmed me and reminded me why I had fallen in love with South America almost ten years ago.

It is winter here now, and the skies have been uniformly overcast since I've been here, but there has been almost no rain, just a London-like mist once in a while. Not enough for an umbrella, just enough to be romantic for the first 15 minutes and to be annoying thereafter. The weather is cool, but the humidity makes it feel like the mist gets under your clothes to stay there and torment you all day. The weather makes the city feel comfortably melancholy.

I always love to look at the architecture when I ride in cars around a new city. A city's architecture and geography are like the lines and expressions of a face -- in them, you can see the story, illustrated. In Lima, most of the buildings are the same rebar-concrete-tile concotions that populate lower and middle class neighborhoods worldwide. Colorful paint and careful gardens do nothing to make these boxy things elegant. They cram together on the road almost fearfully, suspiciously. But then you get the pleasure of seeing the coy little post-colonial or 19th century house, peeking out from the phalanx with a wink of dramatic windows and doorframes. That is the reward for keeping one's face to the taxi window.

Our office is in the Miraflores municipality of Lima. This area is mostly a shopping district, with some cool stores and restaurants, some things for tourists, and some hotels. It isn't bad, but it isn't the place you'd want to live, necessarily, although it is a chic neighborhood. I stayed in the La Paz Aparthotel, and recommend it, except for the atrocious coffee. They were very friendly. I had a basic suite, with a kitchenette and stocked minifridge. Miraflores has a few nice antique shops, so if that is your thing, check out the places on La Paz, just in front of the hotel. It is safe to walk around, even to a reasonable hour at night, as long as you keep your city wits about you. A place I highly recommend for a drink and light Cuban food is the Club de Habana, on Manuel Bonilla. It is actually run by a young Cuban guy, and the clientele is friendly, the decor warm and comfy, and the food is great. Just next door, they have a gallery space where they show work from local artists.

A colleague took me to Barranco, a part of town with more historic buildings and a reputation for a bohemian culture. I could imagine the bohemians of Lima concocting their schemes for bringing down the dictatorship in cafes, smoking endless cigarettes. We walked all over the area, which is beautiful, especially in the early evening, and stopped finally for a drink at a cool place called Posada del Angel. It is full of strange antiques and painted riotous colors. The food is good, but the service is painfully slow. It is worth a trip, though. Also, all along the aqueduct, there are little restaurants where you can get a good meal, just like hundreds of tourists visiting the beach before you for decades past. We also went shopping, of course, to a lovely but expensive store called Dedalo. Local artists sell their craft work there -- not your typical artisan crafts, but more modern, high-quality, home decor stuff. It is expensive, but they have very nice things.

The next day, we went to a museum of Peru's history (I was ill, so I don't remember the name of the museum). It is in the San Isidro section of town, which is a flat stretch of little one- and two-story houses around plazas. The museum is in the home of Simon Bolivar in Lima, which is huge. It is very well curated for a museum of its type, and has all kinds of cool exhibits from the pre-Incan cultures to the present. I loved the textiles they had, and was fascinated by the most recent exhibit on the Fujumori years. I recommend a trip there if you get a chance -- but wear comfortable shoes, as it is big and you could easily spend a couple of hours there. After the museum, cross the street to the old tavern and get a Cusquena beer. We didn't because I felt horrible, but supposedly it is nice. This tavern is one of the oldest in Lima, continually operating.

So, on the whole, it was a good trip. The proposal went ok, everyone in the office was great, good hotel, interesting city. I recommend a trip to Lima.

Pennsylvania Road Trip Vacation

Since July 4th is all about the United States’ independence and being patriotic, the Professor and I planned a domestic vacation. His parents invited us to hang out with them in a cabin in Cook Forest for a couple days, during which time we could visit with some of their family. We decided to take the long way up and a longer way back, to see some more of the state.


On the way up, we took 83 to Shrewsbury, where we stopped at the Shrewsbury Antique Center. The Center is packed with really great vendors, selling everything from old farm tools to old books to old clothes. If you like antiques, you should make a side trip there on your way into PA.

We also stopped at Homan’s General Store. The Professor took advantage of their coffee, and I wandered around to see what they sold. Being in there, I could imagine what it would be like to live in a small town and go to the store, where you knew the kid who worked there and his family.


The next stop was the Penn State Creamery. Go there. They serve the best ice cream ever – and I’ve had a lot of ice cream in my life! Penn State’s Food Science program runs the Creamery, where they sell ice cream, milk, cheese, yogurt, and other milk products, as well as snacks and coffee. It is all very high quality, and I can’t say enough how much we enjoyed our Bittersweet Mint and Coffee with chocolate chips. My Mom would have loved the Mint, because it has the shaved chocolate instead of chips that she loved. We liked it so much, we returned on our way back for more ice cream, cheese, and iced tea. Yum.

We rolled out of the creamery in the direction of the Bellefonte KOA, where we pitched our tent. The campground was packed with RVs spewing noisy, excited kids. We followed the imps to the pool and took a swim. There was this one kid who kept doing cannonballs and other fancy jumps into the pool. Over and over, in, out, run jump, laugh. He was having a great time, and instead of being annoying, as those things sometimes can be, it was really fun to watch, and reminded us of how much fun we had doing the same thing as kids.

After cleaning up and relaxing for a bit, we went to The Tavern Restaurant in State College for dinner. It reminded me of the Townhouse in Media a little bit. The service and the food were good. I enjoyed my Cajun chicken, and the Professor had good pork loin. We highly recommend the spinach salad. In spite of the good food, though, I think that this place had the worst wine list I have ever seen. Most places that don’t have a good wine selection don’t bother to put it on a list, but this place unabashedly waved its horrid wine selection in one’s face. Get a Pilsner, instead.

Breakfast the next morning was fabulous. We went down to Bellefonte, a cute Victorian town, and ate at Jabco’s Mill Race Café. The Professor had fluffy pancakes and I had French toast, both of which were great. It was our waitress’s first day at work, and she did a great job. We ate outside on the porch overlooking the mill race, which was really pleasant. The café is next to the railroad, just across from the visitor’s center.

On our way up to Cook’s Forest, we stopped by Mount Nittany Vineyard and Winery. The drive to the vineyard was beautiful, following small roads through outrageous green fields and trees. We tried several wines, which were ok. We liked the bought a few bottles, including one bottle of their blueberry wine. Now, I’m not usually into fruit wines, but this one, made only of blueberries, no grapes, was actually really nice, and will make a great desert wine on a summer evening.

We arrived at the cabin in Cook’s Forest for dinner of barbeque and a fun evening of hanging out around the fire roasting marshmallows and playing games. We stayed in the cabin with the Professor’s parents and brother and sister-in-law and their baby. The little guy is so cute! He is almost walking, and crawls at turbo speed, giggling and chattering to everyone along the way.

While in Clarion County, PA, we visited with various members of the family of the Mother of the Professor. They were all very nice and welcoming people. I had been worried that I would feel like I was on display, but I actually felt very accepted and welcomed. Most of the family still lives in the area, some in the ancestral family homes, and some just meters away from their parents and siblings. One of the Professor’s Aunts is an expert quilter. When we went to visit her, she showed us some of the things she had done recently. They were really beautiful.

On the fourth of July, we all packed into the cars and drove to the Lucinda Church Picnic. The Church, St. Joseph, hosts a fair and dinner each year, and has done so now for over 60 years. In the Church parking lot, booths provided ample opportunity to “donate” money, with a chance to win everything from quilts to camp chairs to baked goods.

We bought some raffle tickets for the quilt raffle, put in a few bids on the Chinese auction for camp chairs and a big tent, and then the Professor, that intrepid gambler that he is, won us a loaf of lemon poppyseed bread at the baked goods stand! It is yummy.

The dinner was a true experience. Each person buys a numbered ticket for $6.50. if you want to sit with your friends or family, you need to make sure that your ticket numbers are close, because they seat by number, filling up the tables again as people finish eating. We waited until about 13 members of the family were around, and went in with the 500 group.

Inside, the hall is full of long tables, all set with homemade noodle soup, water, and bread. The noodle soup is a big hit in Lucinda, and there were signs everywhere outside, announcing that the soup was not available for separate sale this year. It lived up to its reputation! Perfectly salty and warm and delicious. The bread was good, too.

The menu for the dinner:
Wheat bread
Homemade noodle soup
Mashed potatoes
Ham
Roasted chicken
Coleslaw
Corn

And the pies. When you walk into the hall, before you sit down, you select your slice of pie. There are more types of homemade pie than you can imagine. I had my first-ever strawberry rhubarb pie, and the Professor had cherry. Oh, it was good. All of the food was wonderful, and we tottered out of the hall full to bursting and happy.

That evening, we went over to Wolfe's Corners fair with the family to watch a horse pull. This was a truly cultural experience; both the Professor and I felt as though we were in a different country. Work horses, which stand several feet taller than an average man, are harnessed to a sled that is piled with concrete blocks. They compete to see which team of two can pull the most weight for 27 feet of distance. I think that they topped off near 7,800 pounds or something. It was amazing. These horses were straining and sweating and beautiful, and they generally worked in tandem with three men controlling the reigns and the metal rigging that connected them to the sled.


It was interesting to watch the people. We were, as far as I could tell, the only people there taking photos. Most of the men wore jeans, some wore work shirts or t-shirts, a few were shirtless, and many had beards or other facial hair. The women were dressed in a variety of ways, from conservative to small and tight approximations of hiphop video dancers. It was fun, and we rooted for a horse team that we liked, and were satisfied that they did well, and another team that we liked won.

I highly recommend a trip to Cook’s Forest. The forst itself is beautiful, you can rent a nice cabin (from Vince, owner of Stone Crest cabins and the Briar Hill furniture place), and do all sorts of outdoor-type activities. Stone Crest has great cabins.

We took an even longer way back, down 80 to Lewisburg, where we took 15 south to Selinsgrove, and found our way to the Foxboro B&B. I had called a number of B&Bs on the way, and this one was the cheapest and the woman seemed nice. It looked convenient to our next-day activities, so we went with it.

The B&B is in a modular log cabin home, which was very nice. Too nice. The Professor even thought that it was spooky how nothing was out of place and everything was insanely clean. Then we figured out that the owners were evangelical Christians, and that most of the people who passed through the place shared that bent. Well, then it was freaky, but still really nice. The Weavers seem like perfectly nice people, and Mrs. Weaver’s breakfast was delicious. But that almost makes it worse, because even then, everything was “just so”. It was a nice place to stay, but I wish that we had known about the religious thing before we went. Plus, she doesn’t take credit cards, which was a little annoying.

That night we had dinner at BJ’s Barbeque. We don’t recommend the BJ’s Ale, but the food was good. The plates are loaded, so share a meal – no healthy person should be able to eat that much in one sitting. Try the Frickles.

After breakfast, we circled back north on 15, across 45 to Mifflinburg, hitting some farmers’ markets and whatnot on the way.

Before we reached Miffilnburg, we went to the Joseph Priestly House. Dr. Priestly was a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson and was known for the discovery of oxygen. Also he was the founder of the Unitarianism in the United States. We got a tour with the director of the site, Andrea, who is very knowledgable, not only about Dr. Priestly, but also about women's history. She has done a great job learning about the family and the daily workings of life in the house, and gives an interesting tour.

In Mifflinburg, we had an unsuccessful trip to the Buggy Museum, which only has hours on days inconvenient to us (Thursday through Sunday). We stopped by Mary Koons Quilts (see more on that in the knitting blog) and D&L Soft Pretzels (a must on 45).

Heading south on 104, we stopped at Penns Creek Pottery. Bill Lynch and his wife, and other artisans, make and sell beautiful pottery and other craft work in this carefully converted historic barn. All of their work is beautiful and creative, with colorful and unique glazes. If you like pottery, you must go there. They are talented and friendly people. The barn is located just over Penns Creek, north of the village of Penns Creek on 104, and it is open Tuesday through Saturday.

We stopped quickly at two wineries, Shade Mountain on 104, and Hunters Valley on 11 & 15, and got a few more bottles of wine, including a novelty mint wine from Shade Mountain called Six Dwarves. As you can imagine, there is nothing really special about these wines, but they aren’t bad, either.


We had lunch at a cool hamburger place called Cruisers Café. The owners converted an old Texaco station into a 50’s style burger place, replete with Coke memorabilia and cheerful waitresses. We had bison burgers and fries, which were both tasty. It was a really neat place.

We arrived home in the evening, exhausted but satisfied with our Pennsylvania road trip vacation.

Going to Peru

I will be headed to Peru for work on the 10th of July. Our office there needs me to help with a proposal, which is due on the 21st of July.

I'm very excited about going to Peru, but not excited to stay in another hotel and never really see anything interesting of the country. I hope that the country rep or someone there can plan a site visit to a project while I'm there, so that I'll actually get to see what we are doing there.

I'm hoping that while I'm there I'll be able to take advantage of the long history of fiber arts in Peru and purchase some handspun alpaca! I would like to get enough yarn to make Joe, myself, and maybe some other lucky soul, a sweater, and a bit more to swap.

I think that I prefer to travel for fun. If I look into my secret mind, I will probably find that I got into this line of work for the adventurous travel opportunities more than for the philanthropic element.

I will post from Peru.

The Professor and I are going on a road trip for vacation to see his clan in NW PA for the fourth. We will be camping and running around, so I'll blog that, too.

Trip to LA

The Professor and I had a great time visiting our friends in LA. Their little daughter is so cute! She is a really cool baby. Here is a photo of the Professor and I at Tokyo Delve's, a weird sushi place:

In Between Times

I'm writing on the recommendation of the Professor, my lovely fiancé, who, when I told him that I was bored at work, suggested I write about being bored in one of my blogs. So here you go. I did ask him who would really want to read about my being bored, and he didn't think that it mattered. So, if this is irritating to you, you really have him to blame.

I just started a new blog that I'm pretty excited about. It is all about my knitting, crochet, and other craft projects. I think that if you told me ten years ago that I'd be doing a blog on knitting, I would have told you you were nuts. But, it really is therapeutic and addictive (yes, something can be both!); and it is rewarding to give gifts to people that you make with your own hands.

So, we just finished a huge global proposal here at work, and now we're in this weird limbo state. Most of us have little to do except deal with that way-back-burner stuff that we avoid religiously when we are doing more interesting things. I took care of that stuff, and now have absolutely nothing to do. Really. So, why am I still here you ask? Because the boss of the boss told me that he had something for me to do 1 hour ago. I have something that I would rather be doing -- knitting. Or crocheting. Or the Washington Post Crossword.

In fact, I will do the crossword now. Yesterday, I did the whole thing with no hints. I'm getting better. I can't wait until I actually achieve that elusive goal of being able to go for a whole week with no hints. I am particularly fond of the crosswords that have a theme. I love figuring out the theme. It makes me feel smart. Today's is pretty easy, but I needed two hints. Oh well. Still no word from the boss of the boss as to what the mystery task is.

Maybe I'll read Slate now...

1/23/2005
Colombo, Sri Lanka

One of the saddest sights (certainly not the saddest) around Batticaloa is the plethora of thinning, wounded, sad-looking dogs and cats. Some of these animals, especially the dogs, patiently, futilely mope around the ruined foundations of destroyed houses, sniffing at the half-buried saris and shoes. Others wait outside restaurants and snack shops for discarded scraps of food. Some of these were clearly well-loved pets, and others little more than strays, but their presence around the town emphasizes the sadness and death. There was a little cat at the hotel I was staying in. She was an adorable calico, starved and begging. She looked like a little fallen princess, bright collar and all, once loved and comfortable, now begging for her dinner. There was also a rather unlikely pair that wandered the streets together, a cute tan dog with a limp and a marmalade cat. They went everywhere together, and sometimes you would even find them sleeping all curled up with one another. It made me really sad.

Sadness is really under the surface everywhere in this country right now. I know that I keep saying that it isn’t as bad as it seemed, but that’s not to say that this still isn’t a horrible, historic tragedy from which it will take a long time to recover. I left Batticaloa yesterday morning, and along the road to Colombo, white and black mourning flags flew quietly. White flags are a symbol of mourning for Buddhists, and black flags for Christians. Even far from the coasts, the flags were stuck in rice paddies, affixed to street lamp poles, hanging from windows. In such a small country, everyone was touched with grief from this disaster.

1/17/2005
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

We went to yet another coordination meeting this morning, this one for non-food item household kits at the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) office. This one was better than the last one, because people were talking about how they are already doing things, and what they were going to do this week. Most organizations had done assessments to find out what items were needed, and apparently the local government is gathering the names and information on all the beneficiaries. That is a bit of a different set up than what we had in the Congo. In the Congo, you would never have been able to rely on the local leadership to give you an accurate list of beneficiaries, because there are all kinds of personal relationships that come into play. They would leave off the list their political adversaries and people they didn’t like, and make up fake people so that people they do like could get multiple kits. Here, the government for the most part is working well with the relief effort, which is great.

One of the best things about working here is that it is safe, so you can move around freely. I found a great place for taking walks that starts right in front of the hotel. It takes you up by the estuary, next to a pretty neighborhood (that wasn’t affected), across a causeway, down one of the main roads of town, and then back across the bridge to the hotel. There are fishermen out in the estuary in the traditional style of boat that is like a canoe with a rectangular piece of wood on one side (not sure why, but I think it has something to do with hanging the nets). They look so peaceful out there. Supposedly, singing fish live in the estuary, and they are loudest from April to September. They say that the fishermen know they are there because when it is quiet, you can hear the humming. I haven’t heard the humming, since it isn’t very quiet along the road, but I like to believe that they are in there singing. In the air along the road, there is the pleasant salty-windy smell of the sea. It is nice, even when there is traffic.

So, as I said, it is safe here. Crime is a rare occurrence. That’s why we were all surprised when a freelance photojournalist told us that all her gear, except the cameras she had with her at the time, was stolen from her hotel room, most likely by someone who works there. She lost her laptop, external hard drive, and camera chargers, as well as all the photos she had taken here and in Indonesia for two assignments. None of it was insured, and the police were no help at all. It is easy to say, “well, the person who stole it is probably poor and desperate, and while this is a set back for her, it isn’t the end of her life.” However, anyone who has a job at a hotel, especially here and now, is not hurting, and meanwhile they may have ruined her reputation with the two magazines, because they aren’t going to get the best quality photos from her. We were all shocked. Thankfully, it wasn’t at the hotel I’m staying at, but you never know I guess.

One of the random responsibilities that has just been assigned to me is “staff care”. Not sure yet how serious this is, but I think that I’d like to do that kind of thing. Today I went out and bought stuff for the house, and I will be spending the rest of the week shopping! Not so bad, really, but admittedly I’m a bit annoyed. I didn’t get a master’s degree to go shopping.

1/20/2005
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Three days have gone by, and, needless to say, much has changed. The Jesuits and I have finally finished their proposal for their project that we are funding, which was hard won. They do exciting work, and are very good at it, but it was hard to wring this proposal out of them because they are very fluid, and kept changing their ideas. Finally we banged it out, but not after a short moment of tension, when it looked like they were about to start some activities that would have short-circuited the coordination that was going on in the shelter group.

I’ll be headed back to Colombo this weekend, which I’m glad about. I’m very homesick, and could use more frequent access to the Internet. Don’t get me wrong, Batticaloa is a nice town and the people are great. It is just that I’m tired of the work, and am ready to go home. I’m not really needed here that badly (as one can tell by my recent shopping assignment). Colombo isn’t bad, so I’ll enjoy some time there, maybe take a day trip to Kandy to see the Temple of the Tooth, and then I’m out of here on the 8th of February, or earlier if I can make that happen. The boss told me that I’d be doing some writing and orienting two new staff members (frankly, I’m not sure why the need any more staff here), but I can’t imagine that taking up too much of my time, certainly not two whole weeks. Besides, he is likely to change his mind yet again.

The little daughters of my fiancé’s boss gave me three of their dolls to give to children here. It was so sweet that they were so concerned about other kids so far away. Those dolls were with me in my backpack for days. I had the hardest time figuring out what to do with them. If I went over to the camp across the street and picked three children out at random, I would have been the pied piper, with kids following me forever asking for dolls. I didn’t find an opportunity to give them to kids who were on their own anywhere, since that is rare here. Nevertheless, I really wanted to give the dolls away, to help the girls make the connection they wanted to make. Yesterday, I gave them to the Jesuit in charge of the relief programs here, so he could take them to the orphanage and give them to the kids there. Then the dolls were in his bag. We went together to a coordination meeting for the education sector, and the whole time I was hard pressed not to laugh, since all three of the dolls had their heads poking out of his bag next to the table, as if they, too, were attending the meeting.

I just finished some shopping. I know I complained about being assigned so low a task, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it. I love talking to the shopkeepers, and seeing all the interesting things they have. Here, the relationship between the storeowner and the client is very friendly, even when they are trying to make you pay more than the normal price! Instead of being able to browse through everything, you just tell them what you want, and the employees run around showing you everything that they have that might suit you. In some places, you can even sit down and have tea while this happens! I wish that I could shop, or be shopped for, like this in the US.

In addition to the things I got for the Caritas house here, such as towels and sheets and pillows, I also bought some beautiful ribbon and a sarong. The 1.5” wide silk sari border ribbon with embroidery all along it that I bought cost me only $2.00 for 10 meters. A roll of ½” satin ribbon was only 50 cents! Traditional Sri Lankan men, especially outside of Colombo and the cities, wear sarongs. These are pieces of fabric sewn into a tube and hemmed that they gather and tuck around their waists. A lot of men in Batticaloa wear them. I guess it must be more comfortable for them, and cooler. Most are in relatively understated patterns, like simple solids, stripes, and plaids in blue, white, dark green, and black. Some of the fancier ones have border ribbon sewn onto the bottom. I bought a plain green one in a nice fabric for my fiancé – I figured he could wear it around the house, since a man in a skirt would look a bit funny in the States.

The stores sell all kinds of things. The fabric store, for example, sells not only fabric, but also some clothing, pillows, sheets, towels, beading, ribbon, etc. The place where I got the knives and silverware sells yarn, ribbon, toys, Hindu idols, Buddha statuettes, knickknacks galore, pots and pans, and big brass stands that you put candles and flowers on for the prayer room in your house. It can be a little confusing at first, but when you realize that you don’t have to look through it all to find what you want because someone else will do that for you, it becomes a surprisingly pleasant experience. Unlike most shopping experiences, the price is also a pleasure, because things are so cheap here.

I’m wondering if any of you who read this are disappointed because I’m not talking more about the disaster and the people. I’m sorry that I can’t give you more about that, but it just isn’t what I’m seeing. I think that is one of the parts of humanitarian work that many people don’t understand. As outsiders, we don’t really get all the way out to the beneficiaries that often. Usually, the local organizations we support do that end of the work. Sometimes we get to go to see building sites for the shelter, oversee emergency distributions, or talk to the local leaders, but those visits are shallow and short. This is especially true in a country like Sri Lanka, which has a lot of local capacity to carry out projects. Plus, my time here is short and focused on administrative issues. Those who are here longer get a better picture of things, and also have more time to work in the beneficiary communities. So, I apologize if all this isn’t terribly interesting, but it is what it is.

1/13/2005
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

I finally arrived in Colombo too early Monday morning after a horrid series of flights from Baltimore. In addition to the innumerable delays, I had a long layover in Bangkok. I had expected this layover to be a chance to get a shower and some rest, and maybe do some shopping, but that was not to be. There were no day rooms to be had, so I ended up in a rather dim guesthouse taking a shower in a shared bathroom and trying to keep myself awake all day by eating, doing email, and getting a rather nice Thai massage. I had forgotten how bad Bangkok smells, or maybe it had just gotten worse since the last time I was there.

So, exhausted and jet lagged and dirty, I dropped into Colombo, Sri Lanka at 1 something in the morning on Monday, and got to the hotel and a bed at about 3:30am. Some of the staff, including myself, were put up at the Taj Samudra hotel, which is nice and, if one were there on vacation, very well located. I spent most of Monday in our makeshift office in the library of our local partner, Caritas Sri Lanka/SEDEC.

One of the odd things about the non-profit industry is that it is competitive, with agencies competing not only for the money of private donors, but also for the recognition from public donors. To this end, representation in the media is rather important, and CRS doesn’t do too much of it. The CRS philosophy in the field is that the partners should get the credit for the work, since they do most of it, and we only give them the resources and the support to do it. However, CRS also should bet some of the credit, and to that end, headquarters sent me over with a load of navy-blue T-shirts with CRS in white on front and back. When I got them to the office, no one really wanted to wear them, and we decided that we would don them dutifully for the CBS news guys who were going to film us bustling about the “office” that day, but not in the field. That way, CRS would get some airtime, but when it really counted, the partner would be front and center. I’m not sure which side of the fence I stand on regarding this issue. CRS does do a lot of the work to make a project happen, and I see no reason that we shouldn’t get credit for that. More than one agency can share the applause at a job well done, no? So why can’t the partner and CRS both get the credit? But then on the other hand, people may assume that CRS really did all the work and just let the partner do some symbolic parts, when really there was hard work on both sides. CRS can pay for publicity, but local partners need to get theirs, well deserved, as cheaply as possible without being overshadowed by a bigger sister.

Anyway, Colombo seems to be a nice enough and livable city. There are many historic sites, and it is open and on the sea and has some pretty spots, despite the oversized confetti of colorful signs posted everywhere and anywhere. The shopping appears to be great here – you can get authentic brand name clothing for very cheap in stores in Colombo because the clothes are made in factories on the island. Not to mention that the national arts and crafts are interesting and well developed.

I didn’t get to stay in Colombo long, though. CRS originally sent me out here to write proposals to get more money from the US government for our programs. However, it turns out that the effort here is flush with cash, and is having a hard time programming what it already has. One of my coworkers here said it well, “none of the important things are expensive”. Psychosocial trauma counseling doesn’t cost a lot to implement. Nor do many of the other things that CRS is doing here and is good at. So, I was “repurposed”, and sent to the field with a mandate to help set up the office in Kalamunai in Ampara district.

1/16/2005
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka
The drive across the country was an absolute pleasure. Sri Lanka is beautiful and interesting, with some really nice historic places and good hotels. I highly recommend a trip here – it would not only help with the national recovery from the disaster, but would also be fun and interesting. We spend the night in Habarana, in huge hotel called the Village. It was great, but empty. We were some of the five or so people there, and the bored staff hovered around us, waiting on us hand and foot. The rooms were clean and comfortable, and the place is really well kept.

After arriving at Batticaloa, I was again redeployed, this time to stay in the town and work with one of the partners, Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), which was going to implement some trauma counseling and other types of activities with CRS funds. Batticaloa is a town of some size, with stores and churches and mosques and temples all over the place. I like it. Sri Lankans are very friendly people, even the police and the military, and so it is easy to get along with everyone.

On Thursday, Cardinal McCarrick from Washington, DC and Ken Hackett, the president of CRS visited Batti. We drove out en masse, a junket of priests and nuns and aid workers, to one of the areas that was hit by the wave. It was stunningly awful. Whole blocks of what were once middle-class (for Sri Lanka) homes were decimated. Chunks of painted brick, broken tiles, and piles of debris wound up with saris and other clothing are everywhere. There are still some houses standing or half-standing, and you can see that the neighborhood, called Dutch Bar, was once almost prosperous. We drove past St. Ignatius School – or at least where the school once was. It is now a blank sand flat.

While the dignitaries were show the barely-damaged church by the slightly over-zealous parish priest, I wandered off to look at the real damage. I have to admit that I was struck at first by the thought that these people weren’t really poor, so they weren’t that badly off, but then I felt guilty for feeling that way, because it doesn’t really matter who you are, if you lose your house and family, you are poor and alone and sad. Looking at a half-destroyed house, the exposed interior walls bright yellow and still decorated with a small painting of a Hindu god, I saw a shoe in the debris. Shoes show up in photos of all disasters, probably because they are so evocative and so symbolic; in a way, this makes the shoe image a bit trite. However, at that moment, I was overwhelmed with an involuntary imagining of a family in the yellow room doing what families do and suddenly the water hits the house and screams in the windows and rushes down on them. They shout and drop everything and run to the door but even the traitorous house comes crashing down on them as the malicious furniture blocks their escape. It was too much, and I lost it. I cried and cried, a lame, useless, too-little-too-late crying.

Yes, the situation here is terrible. Worse than anything I’ve ever seen. Yet it is true that there is too much money, too many aid agencies, and too little work. What needs to be done is construction and reconstruction, but Tower-of-Babel meetings of logo-wearing foreigners from all over the world discuss with local bureaucrats the fate of the people currently languishing in the “welfare” camps. These stupid meetings go on and on, discussing semantics, specifics, methodologies, and sensitivities. Meanwhile, those who lost their homes live in tents or on the floors of schools; they live with relatives in crowded houses and wait for someone to tell them where to go. Some people want to go back to their old places, but most don’t want to be anywhere they can even hear the sea. Some go down each day to clean their home sites, spending their whole day there but returning to the camps at night, even if their homes are standing. I don’t think anyone but the journalists has asked them what they want – we are all talking about theories: keeping neighbors together, 150 square meters for a family of five, the finer points of tin roofs. How noble and how completely useless. I know that these things take time, but we really should be coordinating with the actual survivors. It only makes sense.

Perhaps I am a bit too jaded. It does take a long time to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that agencies aren’t duplicating effort and that everyone is being served by someone. It is necessary to get the buy in from local bureaucrats. But more than anything else, we need to consider the people we are doing this for, and what their needs and hopes are.

JRS, the partner I’m working with, is a pretty good organization that works with refugees in many countries around the world, particularly in education. They have been working here with people displaced by the civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers in the north and east of the country. With this emergency, JRS is working with their previous beneficiaries in the displaced camps as well as the people who have taken refuge from the tsunami in the schools and churches of the Jesuits. The priest in charge in Batticaloa for JRS is the regional director of the agency from Dehli, Fr. Amal. Fr. Amal is definitely a dedicated, humble, energetic visionary, but the man cannot think rationally or practically to save his soul. He has us so confused we literally have no idea what he wants to do at any given moment. Working with him to get a formal agreement on what we are going to pay for so his organization can do their activities is maddening.

Free photo iPod.

I hope to hell this isn't some kind of rip off, but they say that all you have to do is go to this site, complete and online offer, and refer ten people.

Try it, it was on CNN supposedly.

http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=11474952

Haiti
June 11, 2004

From the start, it was clear that I wasn’t in Africa this time around. While the other passengers on the plane, almost all Haitian (well, who else is crazy enough to go there now?), were loaded up with all kinds of insane carry on items (shopping bags, radios, armfuls of whoknowswhat, food in coolers and bags, etc.), which made it look very much like a trip to Africa, the typical body odor of an African flight was absent, replaced with cloyingly sweet perfume. Upon landing, we were herded into the customs area. My experience of such places has been of major pushing and shoving, requests for bribes, unbearable heat, filth, and so on. Not in Haiti. The air conditioning seemed to be working quite well, everyone stood in neat lines without pushing to get their papers checked, and not one single person gave anyone else a hard time about anything. It was amazing. Now, that’s not to say that this airport is somehow a miracle of technology – it looks like there is some sort of rehabilitation going on in the baggage claim area, where the walls are patched and the ceiling is open, and it would be as easy as pie to import all kinds of illegal things, due to the completely lack of a customs search or bag check. But, all in all, it was so easy I kept expecting someone to come running after me with some story about why he needed $5 or for someone to try to mug me. Instead, I was picked up by a cheerful driver and taken to the air conditioned office to meet with the friendly staff. 

From all reports, this place is in complete anarchy, chaos reigning over political and natural disaster. As yet, I haven’t seen any sign of either. It is very poor, much poorer than almost any place I’ve ever been, probably on par with Kinshasa (Congo). Port-au-Prince and the neighboring city of Petionville are stacks of dubious concrete-block buildings; they are bright blue, yellow, pink, and green boxes settled among sandy streets and walls, shaded with fantastically green trees. The hotel I’m staying at is lovely, especially the patio and pool areas. It has a panoramic view of Port-au-Prince and Petionville. In spite of all this seeming calm, however, thousands of people have died here over the past 3-4 months, due to political instability and disastrous floods. The latest situation report on the flooding, which hit the hardest in the southern portion of the country, states that at least 1,800 people are dead, and some 25,000 displaced. Haiti is a small country – these are astronomical figures here. 

Yesterday, when I arrived, my friend from grad school, Karl, who is working with CRS, took me to lunch at a restaurant/hotel owned by a friend of his father-in-law. We ate good food with the owner, Karl’s father-in-law, and their friend in the upstairs dining room of “El Cubano”, a hybrid Haitian-Cuban place with the most comfortable atmosphere. The three older men reminded me of characters in a Cuban film. They sat talking politics over whisky and cigarettes, grinning and joking with one another, their tight friendship obvious in their communicative glances and gestures. I can imagine them doing the same twenty years ago or twenty years from now, with little change but the color of their hair. They are old-style socialists, they are café revolutionaries. 

One other thing that sets Haiti apart from the Congo is that during this crisis, Haitians have been helping out other Haitians. Such would be nearly unheard of in the Congo, where people regularly steal from one another and step on one another to get ahead. Haitian banks have donated money to the flood victims. Where else in the world would banks donate money? Haitian doctors have volunteered their time to work with the injured and sick in affected areas. The Haitian Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce have raised and donated money for rehabilitation and food relief. There is no way that these things would ever happen in the Congo. Anyone there with money keeps it to himself. The Haitians abroad are giving, too. Money is coming in. It isn’t much, but eventually it will be enough to get things back to normal (not that normal is good, but it certainly is better). If people in the Congo took a lesson from the Haitians, things there would turn around in a day. 

Sunday, June 13, 2004

So, on Friday afternoon, I went to the south coast to see a distribution of non-food item kits (similar to the ones we did in the Congo, but in this case made up by CRS, not UNICEF), as well as some Title II food aid, consisting of beans, rice, and wheat-soy blend (like flour, but protein-enriched), and also cooking oil and purified water. 

I was with the Logistics and Finance Manager (Dutch) and the Garage Manager (Haitian-American). They are both nice enough guys, and both speak fluent Creole, which helps. We ate dinner at a hotel in down-town Jacmel, an adorable beach city with French colonial architecture, rife with double balconies and gingerbreading and pastel paint. Then, we went to the wonderful above-mentioned Cyvadier. Saturday, we hit the road at about 7:30 for an adventurous and extremely bumpy ride to the distribution site. The distribution was held in the village closest to the place where the people hit by the flood in that area had fled. The site itself was really isolated, so I can only imagine what the place hit by the flood was like. We had four big tractor-trailers and about 30 staff. Compared to the Congo, it was slightly disorganized and it seemed like there were too many staff members around. They had few control systems, and I’m still not convinced as they are that there isn’t any fraud. 

Overall, the distribution went without incident. I interviewed 5 people about what they experienced for a report that I have to write. Standard story, you could probably make it up yourself, but sad nonetheless. They were farmers, they lost animals and all their crops mid-season, so they won’t have anything to eat (they grow what they eat) until the end of the next growing season, which doesn’t start for quite some time. Most lost their houses, too, and the village is completely submerged. While I think that the disaster has been exaggerated, there’s no doubt that these people needed the distribution and that what they lived through was horrible. They next step would be to get them cash to restart petty commerce and to provide for any other immediate needs with microfinance.

The road was really bad, but the ride was fun. Haiti is very mountainous, with insanely steep hillsides. The road winds up and down them, hairpin turn after hairpin turn, all rocky and narrow and rutted. There are no guard rails. The views are stupendous. Haiti really is a beautiful country. Tourists are missing out on these beaches and views and (except for at the Hotel Montana) legendary hospitality. Haitians are nice and friendly and down-to-earth. 

Saturday, April 24, 2004

We did the distribution in Lokando yesterday. It went really well, and the team worked like clockwork. We’re all exhausted and proud and relieved. Far from being any hindrance at all yesterday, the military unit in the town provided security for the guys who were bringing the kits from the boats up to the distribution site, and guarded the kits at the distribution site. Now, that was yesterday, and who knows what happened last night when everyone went home with their stuff. At least they didn’t cause problems.

Long before doing each distribution, a team of “animateurs” or field agents visit the target community and do an initial evaluation. This evaluation includes focus groups and individual interviews, with community leaders and with randomly chosen individuals. The field agents also make a map of the village and surrounding smaller villages, including sites of their fields and other community assets or challenges.

After doing the initial evaluation, and determining that we need to work in that community, we plan the survey. The survey lasts for about five days. During this time, the field agents go from door to door interviewing people in the area based on a standard interview format. Nearly everyone in the target communities will be interviewed, and the field agents have even been known to go look for people at their fields. Based on the interview results, we target the neediest people in a community for immediate assistance. Since nearly everyone in these places is destitute, it isn’t easy, so we are planning a second round of assistance for people who weren’t included in the targeting the first time.

After the survey and targeting, the field agents return to the village where the distribution will take place. The first thing they do is finish up any surveys they might not have been able to be to. Then, they distribute vouchers to all those who meet the targeting criteria. Each voucher has the person’s name and a unique number. The people need to bring this voucher with them to the distribution. This helps us to make sure that we are getting the right people. We keep the surveys and they keep the vouchers, and then the two have to match the day of the distribution or they don’t get anything. There have been a few cases of people selling vouchers, stealing vouchers, or claiming that they were targeted but lost their voucher, but not too many. The kits that we are giving out include items such as cooking pots, cooking utensils, a tarp for shelter, blankets, soap, a jerry can for water, rope, a hatchet and a machete.

Under normal circumstances, no development agency in its right mind would just give things out like this. I’m sure that you can imagine the problems that would be (and were when that was the approach in the past) associated with this kind of an approach: breakdown of local markets, removal of the motivation to produce, humiliation for being beholden to charity, etc. In the case of an emergency, however, people literally have nothing, and in order for them to even have a chance to get back on their feet, they need at least some basic items. Ideally, this will be the last time anyone gives them these basics.

Eventually, each village where we’ve done a distribution will host a seed fair sponsored by my agency and our local partner.

At one point, when I was reading some book about some crazy white guy adventuring for no good reason in the forest of the Congo basin, I wondered how people were able to live in the jungle before, but now they can’t. Ok, I don’t normally wonder that, because when you’re out here, it just doesn’t matter, but since it occurred to me, and might occur to someone else, I gave myself an answer. It has been generations since these people have lived full-time in the forest. They probably still have some local knowledge about what is edible, how to hunt, how to protect themselves from animals and the elements, but basically for at least two generations, they have been living in villages, wearing clothes, cooking in metal pots over a fire, etc. Living full-time in the forest is no more natural or normal for them than it would be for most of us. Furthermore, it is a humiliation, culturally, since it is believed that people who do live in the forest are more like animals.

The Kindu Menu

Breakfast:
-Bread, staled to perfection, covered with cheese of the most mediocre quality, or margarine and overly-sweet preserves;
-A half-coffee, and half-chickory mix, with your choice of powdered milk or sugar
-Boiled eggs
-Cold boiled sardines

Lunch:
-Something very like spinach but not quite
-Rice
-Bananas or plantains fried to perfection
-Bean dish of the day
-Your choice of fish (capitane), goat, or chicken

Dinner:
-Goat kabob, roasted chicken, or fish
-Side of fries, fried plantains, or fried manioc, depending on what we felt like buying for you at the market today
-Local beer, coke, or imported beer, if you are lucky

This is my first post to this blog. Basically, I'm just throwing up some things that I've written about the places I've seen, in a rather raw form. I'm looking forward to questions and discussions about anything here, but take it all with a grain of salt. I'm not editing as I go, so a lot of things may have been written "in the heat of the moment" so to speak!

Monday, April 05, 2004

Joe asked me if I thought that I was the only person in BWI airport that was going to the Congo. I answered yes, and we laughed. The problem was that it wasn’t really funny at all – it was terrifying.

Getting there

Overall, the series of flights from Baltimore to Atlanta to Brussels to Yaoundé to Kinshasa went well. The layover in Brussels was so short as to allow no time at all for exploration. After practically running from the arrival gate to the international departures terminal, getting there with little time to spare, I was faced with a traffic jam of historic proportions. True to the stubborn European need to avoid efficiency at all cost, the security line stretched into the main hall of the terminal and moved at an almost imperceptible pace. This, just as the flight to Kinshasa was announced. My only hope was that just as typically, the flight to Africa would depart later than scheduled. I finally made it through security, and upon arriving at the gate, saw that there was still a mad press of humanity desperately trying to get on the plane as if it were the last flight out on the eve of the Apocalypse.

While I understand the cultural genesis of this strange need to push and shove to get on planes/busses/trains etc., it always fascinates me. I mean, there are assigned seats, you’re already at the gate, they announce all the sections to board in an orderly and predictable fashion, and they do their best not to leave anyone behind. You don’t get a better seat if you push your way to the front – you still only get the seat you’re assigned. You aren’t more likely to be left behind if you are at the back of the mob, in fact, you STILL get the seat you were assigned. But, the mad shoving and pushing goes on.

We flew over the insanely blue Mediterranean, and passed the exquisite line where the azure silk of the sea meets the worn leather of North Africa. Hours later, the plan descended again below the clouds over Cameroon. The landscape changed dramatically from ochre desert to spotty bushland to dense forest to commercial agriculture. After taking off again from Yaoundé, we were soon in Kinshasa. That’s when things got a little more interesting.

We got off the plane in lacksidaisical order and filed into the airport. In the entry hall, there were four windows for passport control. Two were for officials, one for nationals, and one for other internationals. Predictably, the longest lines were for nationals and internationals. The officials went through quickly and without problems. Two windows for them, mind you, and there were far fewer officials than anyone else. The Nationals line was, like the scene at the airport, a mad press of humanity trying desperately to get in as if they would somehow be left behind in the airport if they didn’t get through first. The Internationals lines was an orderly but irritated, sweating and grumbling queue. I was last in the line. After all the officials (all ten of them) had their passports stamped, I asked the guy in the airport shirt if some of us in the long line could pass through that window.

“Oh no Madame. That line is only for officials.”

“Yes, but all the officials have gone through, and this line is very long. Things would go faster if some of us went through that line. I’ve seen this done before elsewhere.”

“Oh no Madame. That line is only for officials. He only has the stamp for officials and cannot use the stamp for non-officials.”

“Ah so it is a problem of the stamp.”

“Yes Madame. The problem is the stamp.”

So, after a long humid wait in line, I arrived at the window, handed over my passport, gave the guy some “money for a Coke” and looked for my expediter. Expediters are very important individuals to the traveler in a place like Congo. The bureaucracy, corruption, chaos, and confusion are overwhelming to most people, and if you don’t know your way around, you can be ripped off or worse. Expediters understand the system, speak the language, pay the bribes, and basically grease the cranky wheels of the baggage claim/customs system. They are wonderful. This one did his job in the airport, and then turned me over to a driver who was not the one I was expecting, but rather a friend of the one I was expecting.

Kinshasa

Having been assured repeatedly that the building where my friend lived (also the building where USAID, the US’s international development agency, had its offices) was remarkably easy to find and well-known, I was confident that when I told the driver where I was going he would just know and take me there and I would be on my way to a shower soon enough. Not so fast! How could I possibly expect a taxi driver, sent by CRS, previously informed of where I would be going, to actually know where I was going? Silly American girl! Why would he know? Moreover, why would he bother telling you that he didn’t know? So, instead we drove around Kinshasa, perhaps the biggest dump of a city I’ve ever seen, periodically asking directions of other people who also didn’t know where this famous building was. Finally, I get my friend on the phone and she finds someone who explained to the driver to take me somewhere else to meet her. After a very long drive, I was deposited at a club with my friend, who then graciously took me to her apartment where I got my much-needed shower.

I didn’t get to see much of Kinshasa, so my opinion on it is of limited validity. It seemed like a more or less livable city, with at least one very nice neighborhood, some grocery stores, some bars and some restaurants. The apartments I was in were nice, as were the people I met while there, even the Marines! However, at the same time, the city is a pit, full of ridiculously dilapidated infrastructure, crumbling Soviet-style buildings, overgrown brush, and garbage.

From my friend’s apartment window, you could see the olive-green expanse of the Congo river just below the Stanley Pool. Looking out the kitchen window, I felt a strange sensation of being at the edge of reality. The Congo had settled into my mind’s eye as a near-mythical place characterized by terrifying history, fascinating culture, stunning art, and burning fever. Like a child filling in the rough forms of a coloring-book, I was filling in the blanks of my understanding of this place, and by proxy, of one of the most fascinating and intense parts of Africa. Walking along the bank of the Congo the next day with three friends, I had the feeling again when I heard through the silence the subtle roar of the rapids downriver. This river has caused and witnessed so much death in its history – the sound of the boiling rapids was its perfect anthem.

“It can’t be done”

Everywhere I’ve traveled in the developing world I’ve experienced the “It can’t be done” phenomenon in various cultural manifestations. However, nowhere is it so amusingly and frustratingly prominent as here. I’ll give two more examples of “it can’t be done”, Kinshasa style.

1. On Saturday night, my friend ordered pizza. I asked that whatever she got for me not have mushrooms on it. So, she ordered, they told her it would be there in ten minutes. One hour and two phone calls later, the pizza came. With mushrooms. Another phone call – why didn’t you make the pizza without mushrooms? Because it can’t be done. Ah. I see. Upon pain of death, mushrooms apparently must appear on all pizzas. How silly of us to think otherwise!

2. On Sunday, this same friend and I went to the recreation club to which she belongs to get lunch. Non-members have to pay for use of the rec facilities, but should be able to eat in the restaurant without paying extra. After she signed in, we went to the restaurant, and all the tables on the veranda were full. So, we found a table next to the pool, and asked for an umbrella. The guy was more than happy to oblige with the umbrella, but he asked if we were both members. My friend said that she was and I was her guest. So, he asked me to pay to use the pool. We explained that we were just eating from the restaurant. He told us that it was not possible for me to eat from the restaurant without paying for use of the facilities. My friend pointed out that she has had guests there before, and knows that they can eat without paying for the facilities. He insisted that it was not possible. He said maybe if we were sitting on the veranda instead of on the grass it would be different. My friend asked if there were different menus for the veranda and for the grass. No, of course not. Well, being as there are no tables on the veranda, why can’t we just sit and eat at this table on the grass? It is not possible. So, we asked the manager. He said there was no problem. Then the original guy comes down to the office and says that My friend the member wasn’t the problem, but I was because I wasn’t a member (yes, me being a problem as usual). The manager said again that there was no problem. We were so tired of the other guy by then though that we just left. So, for any of you who may want to eat there, remember that if you aren’t a member, you can only eat on the veranda, not on the grass.

Issues

Things with my organization have also been a bit chaotic since I arrived. Kinshasa is very expensive. I was told that it is recommended that you bring $500 with you in cash to tide you over until you can get per diem. However, it was too late for me to get an advance from HQ, so I could only bring $100 of my own money. Even though the Congo office knew this was the case, I didn’t get any advance from them or per diem to cover my weekend. Not too much of a big deal, but $100 is just about enough to cover one day’s expenses in Kinshasa. I was also given information telling me not to bother bringing sheets or towels, as they were to be provided to me. However, the supervisor told me that I should have brought towels, since those at the place we would be staying were not good. Thanks. So, we had to find a supermarket that was both open on Sunday and sold towels. We did, and two crappy bath towels cost me $26. Some food that I thought it might be nice to take with me set me back another $30 (two packs of instant soup, a can of Coke, macaroni, and some granola bars).


To Kindu
This morning, I was supposed to be waiting in front of my friend’s building at 5:30 am. Now, those of you who know me know that I hate being awake before 10am, let alone 5:30 am in a household with no coffee. So I waited. And waited. Forty-five minutes later, the guy comes up in the minivan to take me to the UN airport. I was about to give up on him. He just got confused and thought that I was someone else, and instead of listening to his instructions, he just did what he felt like doing. I’m sure that he woke up some poor other woman who was just trying to get some sleep. If she ever reads this, I’m very sorry!

All flights for humanitarian agencies, the UN, and diplomats are managed through the Mission Observatoire des Nations Unies au Congo (MONUC), the UN mission here. They have an airport that is nicer than the national airport, even though it is “temporary”, and the flight to Kisangani was in a normal-sized passenger plane. They don’t cater on the flight, but in the waiting area, they have decent espresso and some light food. I met a very nice Italian guy who works for another organization, and is familiar with my organization. We chatted, smoked a cigarette, and had some espresso. The flight was uneventful, and left us off at the Kisangani airport. I gather from the architecture that this was originally a regular national airport at some time. Whenever things were closer to normal here. Now, although the area used by the UN are clean and well-organized, the walls of the building are covered in mold, the lights don’t work, and the waiting area is made up of four rows of plastic chairs. Flight information is written on a dry-erase board next to the only gate for check-in. The baggage claim area is just a space on the floor by the door. The flight to Kindu will check in at 3 pm, and leave at 4 will check in at 3 pm, and leave at 4 or 4:30. It is now 12:02 pm. I could be flying on a puddle-jumper plane (which could really mean anything smaller than a commuter jet) or on a helicopter. My fingers are crossed for the helicopter!

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

It wasn’t a helicopter, but I was the only one on the plane! I flew on a plane called an Antonov. They are made in Russia or the Ukraine, and are mostly used to carry commodities and a few passengers. The inside is big enough to carry two cars. You would probably recognize them as the type of plane that has a ramp in the back that you can drive up on. There aren’t regular seats inside some of them, just benches with seatbelts, and needless to say there aren’t any flight attendants. The flight was smooth, though, and I got to wear ear protectors which made me feel very technical. I sat on one of the benches, and the rest of the plane was packed with food commodities, like potatoes, onions, wheat, and corn.

The Congo and the Forest

There is no way to explain the beauty of the view from the plane window. For as far as the eye could see, there was unbroken forest: deep green and shadowy, a clear inspiration for belief in magic and for fear. Through this beautiful and mysterious canopy winds the great Congo River, like a gleaming bronze ribbon. The section of river over which we flew was mostly calm and appeared navigable, but there were no boats on it that I could see. It is fed by smaller rivers that quilt the forest, noticeable only because of the slight indentation that they make in the green canopy. I was almost disappointed when we touched down into the reality of Kindu.

Kindu

I was met by the regional emergency coordinator, the base manager and the head of Caritas Kindu at the airport, and they took me to the office to introduce me to everyone. The office is in a decent building on the second floor. We share it with Caritas Kindu. Everyone seemed nice, I found my desk and mailbox, and then we left for dinner at the Procure. The food was typically African, and not bad at all. We ate and relaxed with the Bishop, the Vicar, and a couple of others.

After dinner, three colleagues and myself went to the MONUC headquarters for a beer, since I had just arrived and the regional emergency coordinator was going to leave the next day. Any of you who have been to Loki or another UN humanitarian camp know what these places are like. We sat at a long table full of other development and humanitarian workers, apparently from all over the world. The lingua franca was French, but some of us spoke English, too. The beer felt great, and everyone seemed nice enough. I’ll get into this scene more as I get to know it better.

Last night, I slept at the Procure of the diocese. The Procure is like a hostel for traveling priests, other religious, and people, like me, who work with the Church. It was clean and the food was edible at dinner. The room was fine, except perhaps the most important part, the bed. It was a military cot more or less. I barely slept all night, and today I’m a bit hazy.

One project we are going to do is to rebuild two bridges between Kindu, where I am, and Kailo, a town north of here. The people in Kailo have been almost entirely isolated due to the destruction of these bridges. The only way into the town now is by plane or helicopter. It is estimated by the local organization that we are thinking of partnering with on this that due to a lack of hygiene the death rate is 5 people a day. There are only 11,000 inhabitants of Kailo. While this is horrible, I don’t really understand the statistic. The proposal that cites it does not cite how the author arrived at it or where they found it. It doesn’t really say anything tangible about how these people are dying. Furthermore, I’m wondering why they are dying so fast when most Congolese live without hygiene systems and aren’t dying at the rate of 5 a day.

Thursday, April 08, 2004

The “You don’t speak French (or whatever language) well, so you must be stupid” Phenomenon

This particular quirk is not specific to the Congo, it is found worldwide. However, it has been years since I’ve experienced it myself, since it’s been a while since I’ve lived somewhere where I didn’t speak the common language well.

It goes like this. You ask a simple question, most likely correctly or close enough to be understood, and the person you ask treats you like a complete idiot. Some examples:

When I was studying in Argentina, I was just starting to speak Spanish. I asked my host mother where the iron was to iron a shirt or pants or whatever. Instead of just showing me where the iron was, she also commenced to instruct me in the fine art of ironing, pantomiming exactly how one goes about ironing whatever it was I had in exquisite dramatic detail, as though I had never seen an iron before in my life, let alone actually used one. The same thing happened with my roommate in the apartment to which I later moved when I asked where the washing machine was, but she went one step further and proceeded to explain how the light switch worked as well. You would have thought that I had just woken up from a 500 year sleep and couldn’t fathom modern technology.

So, today I was working on an Excel spreadsheet that will capture the monitoring and evaluation data for one of the projects we are doing. I made some of the cells automatic, and wanted to make sure that everything worked, so I asked the project officer for some of the already filled-in questionnaires. He didn’t get me, since I really was just making up the words as I went along, so I asked for help from a visiting engineer who supposedly speaks English. Instead of just telling me the words, he explained how questionnaires work, that there are some already filled-in (which I clearly already knew), that you could put the data from them into Excel (no shit – I guess that’s why I was using Excel and already had the spreadsheet for tracking the questionnaires made up), and that the word for questionnaire was questionnaire, which I already knew and had already used in our conversation several times. “Ok, madame?” Yes, fine, but are there some filled-in questionnaires that I could have please? Again with the same explanations as above as if I was some kind of nitwit. I never got the questionnaires. Something similar is happening with my supervisor here and the cell phone, but not as bad. I’m just convinced that he thinks that cell phones in the US are completely different than here.

Anyway, we bagged work early today because Abbot François gave us Holy Thursday afternoon and Good Friday off. I’m sitting in the monastery where we are living right now, since we don’t yet have an apartment. It is hot. Today makes me think of the part of the Heart of Darkness by Conrad where Marlow talks about “stony hills ablaze with heat” and later, “The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.” That is exactly what it feels like to day. My skin can’t sweat fast enough to keep me even a little bit cool. But to make it all Africa, to make it perfect and livable and gorgeous, to make it tangible, the choir is practicing for Easter in the cathedral next door. Their fantastic harmonies blow like a breeze through the air. It feels like time only moves at the encouragement of their song’s rhythm. Their singing is like a view of the African landscape: broad, colorful, and full of texture. Of course my concert is cut short by a chainsaw: the brothers have a project. Hmmm.

Friday, April 09, 2004

The annoying African day

1. I did my laundry yesterday, and hung it outside to dry, so that I would have some clean clothes to take with me to Goma. Today I went to look for them, and they were in a bucket, in a ball, soaked. Apparently the caretaker of the monastery decided to take them off the line after they were only there for two hours. Great. So, I picked out two things that were almost dry, and put the rest on the line.
2. The bread for breakfast was stale. It’s terrible bread anyway, and even worse when stale. I can deal with stale bread if I can make it into French toast or toast of any kind, or bread pudding, but since I’m not in charge of the monastery kitchen, I just tried to chew my way through a couple of pieces.
3. The Engineer, who said that he would be ready to be picked up any time after 6am was not ready when we went to get him. Then…
4. He brought a box of bushmeat with him that filled the vehicle with an odor of decay. I thought that something had died in the car before we pinpointed the source. We drove all the way to the airport with the stink, wondering whether the rather proper Swiss UN guys would even let the dead animal on the plane. They did, and thankfully it was a normal plane where the baggage and the seating area were separated.
5. We arrived in Kisangani, thinking that we were 1/3 of the way finished our trip, but NO! There were other problems. We tried to check in for our onward flight to Goma via Bukavu and Kigali (yes, the capital of Rwanda), and were turned away by one of the rudest people I’ve ever come across. He told us that the flight was full without even looking at our tickets, and then said that there were no more flights that would get us near Goma so we should just go home, but we probably wouldn’t even be able to do that because probably the flight to Kindu wouldn’t come in time. We were flying on the UN system, because it is free for NGOs, and this guy worked for them. Unbelievable. He was really rude, especially to our Senegalese boss. So, we cooled down a bit, and then tried to arrange something, and finally got a private flight ($126 per person each way for a 1 hour flight) directly to Goma. We ended up getting in earlier than we would have with the UN, but it was irritating because we had to pay. And it was raining in Kisangani, so we were wet. And there was no food so we were hungry.

While this is a particularly bad example of the Irritating African Day, there are many other examples, and also examples of the Irritating Latin American or Asian day that aren’t too different. In addition to the larger infuriating moments, there are the ever-present smaller irritations that make it nearly unbearable, like the fact that you have to go through immigration in each city you land in on private airlines, or that the local police try to get bribes from you by grabbing your ticket from your hand and making you wait to get it back until your flight is gone or you pay them, etc. I’m not sure why this happens, but it can really turn you into a jerk if you let it get to you. In small part, it has to do with everyone trying to make themselves as important as possible in their small little job, and with knowing that they can get bribes, and with bureaucracy, but there seems to be some kind of lack of dignity associated with it as well. Add to all this the heat and dust and rain and hunger and you get a recipe for a serious temper tantrum that will only make things worse.

Goma

We arrived at Goma to the welcome face of the Caritas Goma expediter. As I mentioned before, expediters are wonderful amazing people on whom your ability to do most things depends. Eddy is also the head of logistics for Caritas Goma, and is great. He whisked us (as much as one can whisk anything in the Goma airport) through immigration, health, and customs, onto the car, and worked out our return flights, hotel, car needs, and everything for our whole weekend here.

Goma was hit a couple of years ago with a volcanic eruption. Being the Congo, you can still see the black scar left by the lava within and around the city, pouring silently and ashen down the side of the stunning volcano by the city; very little has been done to rebuild since the disaster. It may be for the black volcanic gravel that paves the entire city, or maybe because it is the rainy season here above the equator (it is the dry season in Kindu, south of the equator), but Goma appears darker, although busier and more organized than Kindu. There is something a bit shadowy and sinister in this dimness that doesn’t necessarily make one feel too comfortable. Our hotel is quite nice, though, and even has TV and hot water. The food at the restaurant was good, and served in a timely fashion, and was affordable! I’m looking forward to a dinner out, pizza maybe, and some dancing!

Saturday, April 10, 2004

The Coco Jambo and the Ladies of the Night

So, last night, my two colleagues and I went to a local bar around the corner from our restaurant after dinner for some drinks and maybe dancing. It is actually a nice and comfortable bar with fun music and regularly-served drinks. We did quite a bit of people-watching at first; the place is frequented by better-off Congolese, MONUC people, and people like ourselves from international humanitarian organizations. It is also frequented by prostitutes, who make the whole scene a little more interesting, and a little more surreal.

Our Base Manager is a married older man from Senegal. His wife is still there, but he’s very faithful to her. So, when he attracted a rather persistent prostitute, he was mortified. She kept asking him to dance, and when he repeated that he didn’t want to because he was tired, she said that instead she’d give him a massage to liven him up. The poor man was mortified. She was very determined, and kept coming back throughout the night.

In addition to hitting on men, the prostitutes dance. They dance in predictably “sexy” ways, aiming, one would suppose, to attract customers (usually MONUC guys and international businessmen). The strange thing about this isn’t that it happens, but rather, how the performance is carried out. Most of the girls stand in front of the mirror on the wall at the back of the dance floor and watch themselves dance. So, instead of looking out at the crowd or dancing with each other, they line up like students in a dance class in front of a mirror and watch themselves intently. Very strange.

Just like anywhere else, prostitutes here get a bad name in their communities, are looked down upon by most people, and are more likely to be HIV positive. However, you have to give these girls a bit of credit – they are most likely the most ambitious and financially successful members of their villages, and they had the initiative to find a profitable business. While I’m not sure that the inevitable self-destruction that comes with such a profession is really all that better than the poverty they came from, one can clearly see the draw. They wear nice clothes, make a lot of money, get gifts from rich foreigners, get to eat out at nice places, etc. Most are desperately trying to support their families.

Sunday, April 11, 2004

There is a military contingent in our hotel, meeting about some kind of inclusion of the former rebels into the national military. I have to admit that they freak me out. They’re young guys, slouching about, probably have a hair-trigger…

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Meeting with the Donor

In this business, field office and headquarters offices alike complain that there is a disconnect between the realities of the field and the requirements of managing a worldwide program from a city in the US. This is true not only of NGOs like the one I work for, but also of the donors who finance our programs.

As you can imagine, it isn’t easy determining who has disarmed and decided to return for good to civilian life and who is only claiming to do so, or planning to do so for a little bit. Huge logistical, cultural, and practical obstacles prevent us from being able to guarantee that a soldier who gives up a gun to the UN and states that he wants to go back to his village is actually going to go back and stay back. However, we still need to ensure that these people get the humanitarian assistance they deserve, such as non-food household items, in order to decrease the likelihood that they will take up arms against us for not fulfilling promises, or against the government because they disarmed and then couldn’t make a living.

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Lokando and other things

Yesterday, we went up to Lokando, a town down river (north of here) on the Congo. We went up to arrange the set-up for the distribution we’re going to do there on Friday, and also to make sure that things were calm. Normally, most of the towns we work in are pretty calm, but a couple of days ago, a battalion of MPs had been assigned to the town, along with an appointed “governor” from the west of the country. To you, this may seem like no problem, but to the people of Lokando, this is a potential spark for conflict.

Lokando was a center of activity for the Mayi Mayi, the home grown militias that fought against the Rwanda-backed RCD (Rassemblement Congolaise pour le Developpement – Congolese Assembly for Development, which it most certainly was not), considered an invading force. During the last war, the Congolese military was mandated to protect the population and fight the invasion of Rwandan troops and their supporters, but instead, they just fled, raping and pillaging as they went. The rebels or the Mayi Mayi (whoever the opponent of the day was) moved into the towns virtually without a fight, but they found nothing but devastation. It seems to me that more harm was done to this country by their own military than by any rebels or foreign militias, although all three groups played a significant part in the destruction of the Congo.

So, now Lokando, a formerly Mayi Mayi town, hosts a Congolese Army MP Battalion and a governor appointed to them by a leader who lives far away in Kinshasa, and who was a leader in the Mobutu era, which makes him less popular. When we met with the leader of the MPs, he asked us if we could bring tools for the men and their families when we came to do the distribution on Friday. This is where we get to the heart of why the military pillaged their people instead of fighting: lack of national sentiment, lack of pay, and the culture of “Article 15” or “debrouillez-vous” (make your own way however you can).

During the Mobutu years, the country was kept together tenuously by the magnetic personality of Mobutu and his ruthlessness with perceived threats to his power. However, in order to maintain his power, he played regions and ethnic groups off one another, deepening rather than healing feelings of antagonism between sub-national groups. He systematically kept the focus of loyalty on himself rather than on the country, in essence making of the national army a private security force with no special feelings toward their country. Since they lacked nationalism/patriotism, when the country was beset by incursions from neighboring countries, the armed forces felt no responsibility for protecting the people at the possible expense of their own lives. This was compounded by the fact that they were (and still are) paid very little, if anything.

In spite of the fact that Mobutu and his cronies were making billions by gutting formerly profitable enterprises of the Congo, including the mineral companies that were nationalized under the policy of Zairization, none of that money was seen by the populace, including the military. If they were paid at all, the recruits were paid little, and had to purchase their uniforms out of the small salary they were given, as well as support their families. No wonder that when push came to shove, they were willing to use the guns and power they had by the nature of their jobs to steal from anyone they came across. They had no loyalty to the people, so stealing from them became normal. In fact, the military frequently operated as though the population was obligated to turn everything over to them, including houses, food, clothing, tools, everything.

“Debrouillez-vous” means something like “make your own way, manage for yourself”. The trend began in the south of the country during the Mobutu era. Rather than wait for the state to provide or for things to get better, people were encouraged to make their own way. This sounds well and good, but without rule of law, this turned into a horrible degeneration of the work ethic, massive corruption and theft, and a breakdown in society. This culture is also active in the military. Because they are paid so little, they are expected to figure out how to get along on their own, even if this means pillaging. The leadership not only overlooks this behavior, but they also participate in it and encourage it. There are of course more positive examples of this mentality, such as the incredible black market in Kinshasa, but for the most part, it is played out in kleptocracy and petty corruption.

So, given all that, it is not surprising that the military commander asked for tools from us. He will never get them from Kinshasa no matter how many times he asks. He is expected by his higher-ups to find a way to get them himself. He has little if any money, and how many troops and their families to look after while keeping mutiny at bay. He probably feels that he and his men are entitled to whatever they can lay their hands on. This may cause us problems after the distribution. I’m sure that the soldiers won’t cause problems on the day of the distribution, but we have already heard stories of soldiers in other towns going at night with guns to steal items from the kits that we have given to families. What can we do? We can’t just stop giving out the kits because the people need the things, and the military doesn’t get to everyone (or not just yet). But we most certainly cannot give out kits to the military – that is the purview of the government. There is actually plenty of money to pay these guys at the national level, the mystery is where it leaks out on the way down.

Just take a second to imagine what it would be like to live in constant fear that the soldiers in or near your town will come into your village drunk with their guns, rape you and your children, take everything you own, and burn down your house because you didn’t give it all up voluntarily. There are villages where this has happened more than 20 times. There were two big “Pillages”, in 1991 and 1993, but in both cases, many villages were run into the forest several times. I can’t even begin to imagine the horrifying fear that the Congolese must live with each night. The very people who are supposed to be your proud protectors are armed villains sponsored by your government who will never be called to answer for their actions. Each night, you would lay your head down but not to sleep, just to wait for the banging at the door. Every sound becomes a footstep, voices of soldiers, the cry of your daughter. It would be enough to drive you mad. And yet, the people return to their villages and rebuild their houses and get on with their lives. What else is there to do?

When the military and rebels pillaged the towns during the conflicts, they also frequently raped women and girls. In the Congo, there are no rape hotlines, no kind nurses and doctors at hospitals, no access to the drugs that can help you avert HIV or other infections, no “morning-after” pill, no counselors. Here, women are frequently ousted if not from their communities, then from their homes, divorced by their husbands because they have been raped. These women get no treatment, unless it comes at the hand of an NGO. Not only do they have to go through the normal struggle that any women goes through after such an experience, but they have to do it alone, with almost no one to rely on for friendship, love, and support. Here, Cooperatizione Italiana, the Italian organization, is working with these women to try to help them recover and get back on their feet.

Privacy

There is none here. I’m going crazy. I can’t even have a telephone conversation in private. There is always someone listening. When I heard that my friend’s mother passed away on Sunday night, I didn’t even have a place to cry alone. No where. It is really getting to me. I feel sometimes like I’m peeing in a store window.