Commuting

In the good old days people who were something in the city lived in Tunbridge Wells and would hop onto the train at 9.30 and be back by 7.00 at the latest. Meanwhile their clerks and similar minions would start earlier, but their day was probably not longer as they only had to catch the tube from Bethnal Green or Southwark.

In Kinshasa it is quite the opposite. The rich live only a few minutes drive from their workplace, whereas the poor have a commute of mind-blowing struggle. Many – in fact most – cannot afford the bus fares so must walk. And while finding a place to stay near town is possible the rents are too high. So they have no choice but to stay in a little shack 15 or 20 kilometres from the city centre.

And getting to work: how else but walking? They cannot afford shared taxis or buses. And so it is, that when you drive out to the airport for an evening flight to Europe, what you see is a mass of walking humanity. There are so many people they cannot fit onto the pavements, and, much to the anger of the drivers, spill out onto the road. You can hoot all you like, but not many will get out of the way. You can understand that attitude – they have at least as much moral right to the road space as a well-paid international civil servant in a car.

So their daily life goes like this:

Get up at 4.00. Have a basic breakfast and leave at 4.45. Arrive at workplace 8.00. Leave work at 5.00. Get home at 8.00 or 8.30. Go to bed at 9.00.

Even if you’re not walking, for many this routine is about the same. Our driver has to set aside at least three hours to get to work, and even though he can afford buses or shared taxis, because the traffic is so bad it’s not much faster than walking.

Is this life really worth it? Surely life in the village is much better than this? One would certainly think so. But from talking to people you learn that they have a different perspective. For them, Kinshasa is a step upwards, the opportunity to maybe get a good job and start to save money. What’s more the schools, poor though they are, are better than most in the rural areas, and the medical care is far better.

So daily life may be tough, but better than rural isolation.

Surviving

The second anniversary of the blog has prompted some reflections. Several months ago I had reached the unenviable distinction of having been in the Congo longer than any expatriate at the British Embassy. That’s an indication of how fast things change here.

The two year mark had brought a sense of belonging and familiarity, and like several other people who had reached this watershed we had begun to understand that this isn’t the unspeakable place that it is often made out to be. We found ourselves nodding in agreement when people said “I wouldn’t mind another year here. It’s not so bad, is it?”

One of the sad things about life here, though, is this turnover. No sooner do you make friends with people than they leave, and with it there’s another void in one’s life to fill. Friends are the most important thing here, because without the human dimension there’s not so much to enjoy.

But blasé though we may have become about Kinshasa, we are often reminded how awful it seems to newcomers. Before going further, I think it is important to mention that in the stories below both women are French speakers, so one of the obstacles that many people worry about is not an issue.

A colleague of good friend of ours arrived to take over his job. They had worked overseas for years and years, and their last assignment had been in Papua New Guinea which had given his wife and family the excuse to live in Cairns, Australia – a life of simplicity enriched by the amazing barrier reef and other things oceanic.

The contrast between Cairns and Kinshasa cannot be exaggerated. Add to that, the fact that the newcomer’s wife had made him promise that he would never work in Africa, and without her full knowledge or consent he had signed up for a (highly lucrative, no doubt) stint in Kinshasa. When he had come on a familiarisation trip he had told us about his wife’s fears, so when she arrived we took her, so to speak, under our wing. She who must be obeyed took her shopping, showed her all the interesting places to eat or relax, and introduced her to many people. And? The poor woman was inconsolable, and would just sit at home crying. Even many weeks later, so cannot see the good bits about life here.

Her situation was brought home to us when we recently met a younger woman from Cameroon, which is right next door to the DRC. So culturally and linguistically this is a cousin state. Her husband works in an Embassy but she was not working: they had three children who needed looking after. She said felt very uncomfortable here from the start, but her depression just got worse and worse. She felt trapped by the city of Kinshasa, because she never felt free to do anything without worrying about policemen, traffic and so on. She longed for the sense of personal freedom that she had had in Paris, where you can walk wherever your fancy takes you. It took her six months before she took the (medication free) decision to look on the bright side, and now feels comparatively at home.

If these two stories sound sad, what about the woman from Britain whose husband had come to work in the Embassy? She was living in a gated and guarded compound with many other Embassy wives but was so scared she stayed in bed for a month.

At which point I can only send my best wishes to all blogsters, hoping that wherever you are you feel free to get out of bed.

The Princess and the Phoenix

Looking back at the earlier story about my princess friend (written almost two years ago, in May 2010 to be precise, and called Two Policemen and a Princess) I noticed that my first Congo blog was written exactly two years ago. So welcome, dear readers, to our second birthday party, and congratulations for ploughing through so much drivel. And thank you for your feedback, which has been fascinating.

The said Princess, when I first wrote about her, was the head of our office in Katanga. Unfortunately, a few months later she committed some financial malfeasance – minor, I must stress – and was, as our American friends insist on euphemistically calling it “let go”. She was a dynamic person and had been selected for the job thanks to her achievements as an activist in civil society, though her royal connections undoubtedly helped. It was a great loss.

The news had not reached me until this week that she has come back to life as the Bourgmestre of the most important Commune in Likasi. (For those who don’t know the French system, towns (headed by Mayors) are subdivided into communes. Likasi has three communes, with populations of between 100,000 and 160,000 each, each headed, in Belgian parlance, by a Bourgmestre).

We go to her simple office. It is Saturday morning, but the staff are all there. Her eyes shine bright – “You see what we are doing?” she asked, almost like an eager school child showing a painting to a loving Mother. “How clean it is? Did you see what we have done with that roundabout? And the street signs – for the first time streets have names.” And so on.

Then she started to talk about the problems she is facing in the nine months since she was appointed by the President. How the Mayor refuses to share the receipts from the Markets, which should properly come to the Commune. How he was reluctant to even meet her and wasn’t collaborative.

The grave vine told us about the problems with the Mayor. He is, apparently scared of her clean government approach, because has been trying, more than anything else, to cover up the process by which he accounts – or does not, as some would say – for the receipts from the numerous taxes that his citizens pay. He’s also probably jealous, thinking that her high profile changes, which have hit the press, make his efforts look inadequate. What’s more he and the princess come from different political parties, so it’s his duty to run her efforts down. (Being a Bourgmestre is a high risk job – one of the communes that we work with has had three of them within one year. Even though they are appointed, it seems that they can easily be made scapegoats for anything that goes wrong.) But this has not yet killed her energy, and she’s determined to make a difference. And she doesn’t seem scared of these political tactics: indeed she may be politically more powerful than he is.

We also heard about the struggle she’s having to convince her staff to act responsibly, and do their job. For so long they have been used to arriving late and leaving early, often using office time as a cover for running their businesses. She’s trying to get them to see themselves as public servants, whose duty is to serve. It’s not easy after decades of maladministration, infrequent salaries and no resources.

She left us in no doubt about her determination to get proper revenues for the Commune, and start providing proper services. To which one can only say: Best of British Luck!

To workshop hopefully is better than to arrive

To workshop hopefully is better than to do

Someone had been elected a rapporteur, and this morning his proud task was to present a summary of the previous days proceedings at our workshop.

He started by observing all the protocol: identifying the Mayors and Commune Heads, naming the respected facilitators and so on. With this pleasurable duty over, he could read out the full title of the workshop, the dates when it was being held, the sponsor and the name of the organization running the proceedings. Then to his summary: he had to remind all present what the timetable had been the previous day.

That over, he summarized the content of what had been presented yesterday, and the discussions that had taken place, pausing for effect every so often to emphasis the importance of what he was saying.

As it ended, after about 20 minutes, I was thinking “All form and no substance,” and wondering whether I was getting intolerant in my old age. But I knew that the participants would give him a hearty round of applause and then we could get on with the day’s proceedings.

Not a bit of it. Someone complained that he had got the dates wrong. Someone said that he should have mentioned all the different organisations represented, not just the local authorities. Someone else complained that he has summarized his contribution from the floor incorrectly. In brief they squashed him. That took another 20 minutes.

The fact is that workshops are a way of life here. They help us to tick the boxes and affirm that we are really doing something. For the participants they mean a few nights in a nice hotel and generous daily allowances. So the one thing that no one will ever say is that a workshop was not a success, and they will never say that there is no need for another one. There’s always a need for at least one more, and dragging out the proceedings with elaborate protocol, rapporteurs, election of chairmen and similar formalities ensures that we stretch what could probably have been done in one day to three.

It makes one reflect on the tools of the development trade. It all has to start, of course, with a strategic plan, and a vain effort to prescribe what will be done not just next week or next month but three years down the line. But if you don’t have a strategic plan you are considered to be a real amateur.

Then you’ve got to identify implementing agencies. As we all know, the government machine in the Congo is fragile. In fact, a senior civil servant was remarking the other day that there isn’t a government worthy of the name here. The Cabinet met less than five times last year, and cabinet meetings are typically called with half an hour’s notice; papers are not distributed before the meeting, and meetings are typically confined to an hour or two at the most. “So,” he said, his eyes watering in despair, “our so-called government is run by people who cannot think further than one day ahead.” What he really meant was, that it is run by people who are more preoccupied by making money during their term of office than doing their job as government ministers.

So that’s why we donors insist that we each have our own implementing units. The staff are typically paid substantially more than normal civil servants and are well trained in producing the reports in the format that we require. These units purport to be part of the government machine but are, for all practical purposes, independent. The Ministry of Health has received more donor funds than any other, and what is the result? The Ministry proper is a weak, underfunded and unmotivated, but reporting to it, in principle, are 52, yes 52, special units each funded by a donor, and each related to a specific disease. The same thinking applies at the hospital level where you’ll get a gleaming HIV clinic, for example, and filthy wards for everyone else. The Minister of Health pointed out that because a disproportionate amount of money is thrown at the pet projects of the donors, while the amount of money going into health has never been greater, the treatment patients get is worse than it was twenty years ago.

Maybe we should prepare a strategic plan to reintegrate the Ministry of Health. And how do we do that? Have lots of workshops, of course.