Bukavu

It was only just over a week ago that I was quoting from the report of our office in Bukavu, and here I am.

This is the third visit and I’m amazed by the obvious prosperity. As you drive on the (new, chinese-built) road from the airport you are struck by the lush fields, the beautifully dressed school children, and the newly painted houses in the many villages on the way. From time to time you come across the ultimate symbol of success, Bukavu-style – an elaborately dormered, steep roofed, caricature of a Belgian farmhouse. You can sense the pride with which the owner ambles around it in the evenings, and the elaborate respect that the other villagers must give the owner of such a building.

Like Uganda – which is just round the corner, so to speak, the area is blessed with an all year rainfall in which bananas grow like weeds, so no one need ever grow hungry. But yet, this lush Garden of Eden is poisoned by rampaging bandits, violent militias who will stop at nothing, and out of control armies. They rape, they pillage and they destroy, making whole areas uninhabitable. So what has happened it that people are increasingly coming to live in the town, simply for security: and in so doing are turning themselves from self sufficient peasants to refugees begging for their next meal.

Just in front of our office there is a grocer’s shop which stocks goods imported from Europe – so it proudly says on the shop front. Every Friday, this shop is the magnet for all poor women in Bukavu: the proprietrix has told her staff that no matter how many there are, everyone who is in need must be given a food parcel. It’s not much – some rice, salt and oil, maybe – but it means a lot to the destitute refugees. What, I asked, is the story behind this generosity? I was told that the woman came from a very poor family, but as a girl she managed to get accepted into an excellent trade school, where she trained as a carpenter. She then worked in a furniture factory in Bukavu, where she met a Belgian. Remarkably, for those times, they married and ended up in Belgium. He later died, leaving everything to her, and with some of that money she started her shop.

Yesterday, as we drove out of the office, I was overcome with admiration: both at the women waiting for their food, and for the owner. The beneficiaries were sat in neat, flawlessly neat, rows on the ground, just waiting and waiting, probably about 70 of them. There was no doubting their poverty: their clothes were torn, thin and grubby.

So yes, there’s poverty. But there’s also no denying the prosperity. Where does it come from?

The moment you arrive at the airport you are made aware of the magnitude of the UN peace-keepers’ presence. There are Pakistani camps, Bangladeshi camps, Guatamalan camps. In town there are huge UN facilities to manage logistics, vehicle maintenance, and so on.

And in the main hotel, the world is buzzing with international experts, all spending their easily earned cash with abandon. Their 4 x 4s fill the car park, proudly proclaiming World Food Programme, Medecins san Frontiers, Oxfam, Save the Children and the International Red Cross.

Along the main street, it’s the same: you see sign after sign of NGOs.

That’s it, of course. It’s not the work that we do, but the money we spend which has brought the prosperity. Aren’t we useful?