Killing Time in the Heart of Darkness
By day eight in the Congo, two facts had become clear:
1.) The South African Army’s gin rummy talents far surpassed my own.
2.) We were not dealing with a government that necessarily wanted to be helped.
Bidding a bittersweet farewell to Kenya, I hopped a night bus bound for Kampala, Uganda. Unkempt yet eager to take a stab at improving my karma, I arrived on the figurative doorstep of a Ugandan man named Charles. A former UN employee, part time preacher and full time idealist, Charles currently works for a Finnish NGO that has a long history of tough and successful aid work in East Africa and was now aiming to extend that service to the tumultuous Central region of the continent.
Under heavy coercion from a mutual friend (thanks Kevin!), Charles had foolishly agreed to let me tag along on his organization’s first ever relief mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The plan was to get in, spend four or five days distributing non-food aid items (blankets, cooking pots and tarpaulins) to several refugee camps comprised of “Internally Displaced Person,” I.E. Congolese
citizens run out of their homes by rebels or the government warfare used to combat said rebels, and get out.
With an appropriate touch of drama, we departed Kampala for the Congo in the deep blue hours of the early morning. Scratch that. We *arrived at the tiny airstrip outside Kampala with intentions to leave* under the cover of darkness. By the time our pilot arrived, checked our baggage with a cheerful, leisurely pace and actually lifted our tiny bush plane from the pock-marked tarmac, the mid-day African sun was beating down with a far less dramatic tone.
This would be a sign of things to come.
From the day we stepped into dusty Beni, DRC, the mission was besieged by delays, corruption and expenses that strained an already drum-tight budget — all the direct result of a bureaucratic force that would have the IRS crying uncle.
Trucks were waylaid at the edge of town for days on end, with their Kenyan drivers forced to camp out underneath indefinitely. Bribe upon bribe was demanded, mythical permits were lost, hoops were raised, red tape was reinforced. We spent the first five days in Beni trudging through an alphabet soup of government and non-governmental offices literally begging for permission to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars of free equipment to people in need.
The regional folks blamed the clowns at the capital — but promised to plead our case for a few francs and a “sample” of the goods.
An outraged member of parliment offered to publicize the plight on the local radio station — and then moved on to the next injustice before the commercial break.
The UN and USAID said they’d love to help — if only we’d asked sooner.
I don’t mean to suggest no one cared; Eventually a few local NGOs and faith based non-profits went to great lengths in search of loopholes for our project and ultimately their assistance and endorsements likely helped loosen the bureaucratic murk. However, there is undeniably some darkness in this continental heart, even if it runs in the less than exotic shades of corruption and indifference.
Even as progress toward the end goal was elusive, we were still privy to amazing opportunities: Visiting IDP camps (And hitching home after the car broke down. In rebel territory.), touring the refugee’s farming, irrigation and wood working operations, and playing a million rudimentary games with their brilliant children. These kids absolutely illuminated at the simplest gestures — adults paying any attention to them, listening to them sing, shaking their little hands, crouching down to their eye level and acknowledging in the barest, easiest way that they matter too.
We got to know the aldermen of a local church that served as our partners in the distribution effort - spirited, optimistic and patient old gentlemen whose faithful hearts for their challenged, challenging country were more than a little convicting on the days I spent cursing the place.
We wandered through the market, made crippled French small talk with the women hawking vegetables and voodoo cures and found a friendly little shop that served goat milk yogurt.
Once we earned permission to at least transfer the aid items into storage in Beni, we spent a long tough day offloading four truck loads of goods with a handful of local men. I’ve never seen anyone work like these guys worked - old and young, parched and eventually coated with the dust of every dirt road between Nairobi and Beni, straining under the weight of boxes and bags that required two to move, they never slowed down and never complained once.
And in the midst of the moderate activity and endless waiting, we made a home in Beni. Specifically at the Hotel Beni — the finest establishment in town — where the water ran cold and brown, electricity emerged once a day to briefly illuminate the long black nights and a worn sign in the lobby warned that “brawls, thundery discussions and breaches of the peace” would not be tolerated. The hotel made the best fried bananas I’ve ever had, the nightly parade of prostitutes provided amusement and I was able to kill some of the long, waiting hours playing cards with a benevolent South African Army captain named Braam. The few hands I won were undoubtedly due to him throwing the game…a charitable spirit I rather hope he does not take to the battle field.
When I wasn’t busy losing at rummy or sweetly batting my eyes at some government official in the naive hopes that I might melt their hearts and suddenly compel them to permit our relief mission to proceed (Can’t you just imagine the triumph!? It’d be Oscar worthy.), I searched for rebels. It was a sort of real life, high stakes version of “Where’s Waldo.” A game neither Charles nor Braam likely enjoyed as much as I did, though they patiently tolerated my eternal question:
“Is that a rebel? “Wait - is *that* a rebel!?”
“No Erica, that’s a farmer. No Erica, those are students. No, Erica, that’s the actual Congolese army.” (To be fair, you wouldn’t expect the national army to take public transportation, would you? Though it is the Congo….)
On the subject of how I channeled my impatience: Being in the company of two African men had its advantages. I could suggest any number of ill-advised, absurd ideas and both were too macho to object. Which is how we ended up on the back of piggy-piggies (the moto taxis that dominate Beni’s dusty main street like locust) slogging up the steep foot path that runs to the top of a squatty green mountain overlooking town. And though I slid off the back of my driver’s bike more than once, the adventure paid off big time when we got to the top of the hill and saw for the very first time a snow capped, shear tower of a mountain rising from the horizon. We were all — even our Congolese moto drivers — spellbound and speechless. Feeling our most useless, discouraged by wasted days and delays, the sight of this Shangri-la-ish peak standing above us, under our radar all along, seemed incredibly methaphorical; Perhaps a solution or divine intervention was just as imminent.
Within a few days, with no movement towards distribution in sight, I was obligated to abandon the effort and head back to Kenya for a flight to join my parents in Egypt. I was torn: The relief I felt at escaping the madness-inducing frustration of a government that makes good so hard to do was significant. On the other hand, this was my big chance to make some miniscule difference in a life that is all too often all about me. And I felt a bit the failure for not seeing it through.
The church’s old boys club hugged me goodbye at the air field, the congolese government ripped me off one more time with a few last minute fees and fines and Braam gave me a care package of toffees, cookies and playing cards.
Within a couple of weeks, things fell into place without me.
Charles’ remarkable perseverance paid off and he was able to oversee the delivery of more than a thousand relief packages to families who’d been waiting in hope for over a month. Admirably, he’s already talking about heading back and what more can be done to relieve and fortify the country.
Braam is still serving his time in the Congo, attempting to register reformed rebels into the National Army while avoiding the constant landmines of corruption. He hears rumors that his troops may be sent home around the Congolese election season, a brief respite while the country is left to battle itself.
And me. I guess I learned that as far as I might run from politics, life is a pretty political beast by nature. As I’ve heard from Peace Corp veterans in Mali to missionaries in Kenya, the aid game ain’t as idealistic as we’d like to imagine, but good work continues to get done despite all the challenges, constraints and bureaucratic dances.
Maybe most of all, I realized it really doesn’t matter if I was there to pose for a photo op or hand off the goods to the refugees myself or personally taste the tropical fruits of victory. Time only remembers that the job got done. And I am grateful to have spent a couple long weeks learning from the folks who did it.
Tags: Congo, Travel
