Six years ago and it is 2005. It is hot
and heavy before the rains in the Democratic Republic of Congo and at this
moment I am sitting in the airport in Kinshasa the capital, waiting to be
called fora flight to take me to Ituri region in the north east of the
country.Bunia is the main town in this part of the world and it is my second
time to go there in six months.One third of children under the age of 5 there
are considered to suffer from malnutrition, my reason for going. I have worked
overseas in emergency nutrition programmes for several years.
 |
| Driving in Ituri during the rainy season |
To be honest, after reading a few reports on the
north east of Congo my heart had sunk about six feet the first time I went
there. Even travel guides only devote a couple of perfunctory pages to this
massive, diverse country, declaring most of it as a no go zone.They warn any
traveler who may haplessly happen to wander into north east Congo by mistake,
on the dangers of banditry, rape, erupting volcanoes and other apocalyptic type
events.
Sitting in the airport I remember the last time I
arrived to Ituri, It was in a tiny Cessna – the size of a model kit aero plane
that dipped down into a heavily militarized town bristling with rolls of barbed
wire, tanks on street corners and UN peace keepers. I remember the Congolese
staff with whom I worked and one person in particular. Like many people who
have done great things in a modest way,
Liathi was unassuming, quietly firm and to be
honest often overlooked. Like many people he had a history.He came from an area
hard hit over the last couple of years by fighting.It started one day when the
militia entered his town and everyone had to flee.All that he and his family
had owned was razed, along with the town. He had to flee with his family
through the streets – him trying to cover the eyes of his 3 year old daughter
with his hand, trying to protect her from the sight of the corpses slung all
around. Tragically he somehow became separated from his family. For the next 3
months he did not know whether they were dead or alive. But all stories have
some sort of ending which if not altogether happy is one we can all live with.
And so it is with this one. He found his family after 3 months. They had lived
for weeks on end in the vast Ituri forest hiding from militia. So when I
met him all was well – they have all had to start from
zero but are getting there and Liathi has only two regrets:
-
that the last view his children had of the home his family had lived in for
generations was that of a place completely tattered by conflict.
-
That he still has to comfort his daughter at night. Somehow even his hand over
her eyes as they were running through the streets could not protect her from
the awful sight of those bodies. And so she still dreams of them.
Still musing in the airport I remember
the place where I used to stay in Ituri, a small hotel around 10
minutes walk from the office of the aid organization with whom I was working.The
hotel was a bit ad hoc.
 |
| My hotel room |
But I was very fond of Maurice who worked there.He
wore a red apron with a picture of a beaming marmalade cat on the front. He
never tied the apron at the back and he was always rushing around a lot with
the result that he looked like an aeroplane about to take off – his apron
constantly billowing. Maurice seemed to do everything. I used to meet him
cleaning the bathroom, filling up the barrel with water ready for our bucket
baths, sweeping bedrooms, cooking, rushing off to market, starting the
generator whenever the town electricity went off and in the evenings ironing
away in a lather of sweat. He zoomed around everywhere, always with a beatific
smile on his face and generally accompanied by the hotel cat (lurking round
Maurice hoping that he would drop one of the many meals he was always
transporting from kitchen to table). Generally the hotel trundled on in a
haphazard town under chronic conflict sort of fashion. But on a few mornings I
used to get up and come down to find the hotel in a sort of
post Bacchalian stupor – empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, chairs
overturned and hotel workers staggering round clutching hung-over heads (except
for Maurice and the hotel cat of course).
On those days when I did not go out to the villages
I would walk to the office from the hotel in the mornings. Everyone was very friendly
and wished me Good Morning (Bonjour) in French or Swahili (Jambo) with a big
smile. It was a strange contrast, the forbidding military aspect of a town
under siege with the bouncy gaiety and chatter of everyone I would pass by.I
would think of London and going to the
train station in the morning. I would pick up my free copy of the Metro,
stand on the platform and wait for the train.There would be an eerie silence although the platform is
choked with people. The train would
arrive and I would get on.
Immediately confronted with a fug of
misery – a carriage full of people staring ahead, hunched away from body
contact, eyes resolutely not meeting other eyes, no chatter, no cheery smiles
or Good Mornings.
 |
| Not much to smile about for this young mother and her malnourished child. Leave him at home and he may die. Bring him for treatment and she runs the risk of being robbed raped or shot |
And yet in London there is no barbed wire everywhere
to snag yourself on, no hushed talk of the latest conflict/ethnic killing/
harassment of people, no checkpoints, no 1 in 5 children dying before they
reach the age of 5 years. Nothing like that…….. so why all the misery I wonder
to myself?
Back to walking to the office in Ituri …….One day I
walked past a billowing roll of barbed wire sitting on the top of a wall like a
rather sinister Swiss roll.Except this particular bit had a fabulous blue tide
of Morning Glory wreathed around it. You see Morning Glory a lot in
Africa in white or blue. It is from the bindweed family. It fascinated me that
something so beautiful was growing around something so horrid. I promised
myself that the next time I passed by I would take a photo. However the next
time I passed by all the flowers had shrivelled up and died.I used to ask
myself how the Congolese in Ituri manage to be so cheerful, friendly and
courageous in what must have been at that time one of the most god
forsaken places on earth – up there with the Sudans, Somalias and Iraqs
of this world. Personally I think that they have realised that when for a
brief moment something is going well – they take that moment and enjoy it
even if it is just to look at a flower. Because unfortunately in the Ituri of
2005 the next time you passed by everything would have changed – you
arrived back to a village you had left that morning to find it razed to
the ground or you look at a flower one day and then the next…. all
shrivelled up and dead like that that beautiful tide of Morning
Glory that I used to pass each morning.
And so here I am still sitting at Kinshasa airport
waiting once again to go to the north east of Congo. I can see an aero
plane on the runway so that looks promising. There does not seem to be a tanoy
system here for calling the flights or if there is I cannot figure it out. What
seems to happen is this:
-
a bus arrives at the door to take you to your plane I presume.
-
Everyone in the airport stampedes forward towards the bus which disappears
under the onslaught of people. You can see the bus driver’s face fixed in a
sort of horrified rictus smile before he also disappears under a flurry of
people.
Every time this happens I join in the fray and when
I am in the middle of the crowd breathlessly ask someone if this is my flight.
Each time I return to my seat a little more bedraggled than before.
And so it is again. I sense a change in the crowd
around me. A silent heave is beginning. I see a bus in the distance and I see
everyone around me gathering up various boxes, bags, parcels, infants sleepily
swinging around in bright coloured sarongs used as slings on their mothers’
backs, the odd chicken or two. The surge forward is about to start. I
better gather myself up too, just in case. Here goes ………… and so, into the fray
once again.
