Healthy living

Not long ago, furious about sanctions that had been imposed by the European Union on Ministers and other leaders of the DRC, the Congo announced that it would retaliate. They singled out Belgium as likely to be the first such country to be sanctioned.

He joked about it.

“From now on all those wishing to come to the DRC from Belgium for medical treatment will be turned away.”

The speaker has been living in the Congo for 35 years and survived endless hardships and relentless political turmoil with great stoicism. But he’s got a right to comment on the health system with some authority.

After a colonoscopy at the top clinic in Kinshasa he was rushed to intensive care as there were signs that his colon might have been punctured. They were scared and so was he, but luckily he survived, though being dumped in intensive care with no food or drink for more than a day, and with no information, was no fun.

Two years before he had noticed a nasty sore developing around his stomach, and spreading fast. He saw a doctor at a local hospital, who recommended that he should be evacuated to Paris where the preliminary diagnosis of the Congolese was confirmed. The sore, now the size of a dinner plate, was caused by flesh-eating bacteria.

It took more than two months in the Paris hospital for the condition to be cured and his body repaired with skin grafts, and he is now back to normal.

So life here has its risks . . .

But nothing can compare with the shock we had when we were meeting with a newly introduced service of health inspectors. These are auditors of the health system (not the ones that check restaurants etc.) The audits include financial management but their role is much wider. Among other things, they check pharmacies for fake medicines.

“You see,” said the new manager, “we’ve only been in business for two weeks, but look what we have uncovered already.”

A large box was brought out, full of confiscated products. And out of this he produced a saline drip bag in which there was a substantial greenish/purplish floater. By substantial I mean the size of a plum. I still shudder when I think of it. It made me think of the famous snail in the bottle case which established a manufacturer's liability to its customers in the 1930s.

What so bad is that it’s the poor who are so-called treated by these appalling products. At least they've now got someone on their side. And we are going to help the inspectors do their job better.

Life shorteners

Moving house is not much fun. That’s well established. They talk about it shortening your life, just as getting divorced is supposed to do. Moving countries while moving house is even worse, surely. Add to that the problem of moving animals, not to mention doing it all in Africa and it’s probably a death sentence.

Yes, we’ve had our share of it over the last 8 years. Furniture and dogs to Kinshasa. Furniture and dogs from Kinshasa to Nairobi. Furniture and one dog from Nairobi to South Africa. Furniture, sans dog from Johannesburg to Kinshasa. . . Not to mention setting up home in Guadalajara and then having to find a home for the cat and sell the furniture and moving back to Africa, moving stuff out of storage and setting up home in our flat in Johannesburg (a work in progress) and so on and so forth.

The thing about moving between countries is that it takes time. The goods that we packed from our flat in Johannesburg in March were dispatched in April and have been sitting at the port for three months while we wait for my work permit and the Kafkaesque process of customers clearance to be completed. Even air freight, that we naively assumed would take a few days, takes about three weeks before the goods can be cleared.

So, we move into out new flat at the beginning of June with nothing. This forces difficult decisions. What are the essentials? We decide that, unlike last time when we had mattresses on the floor we would buy beds: these could be used as spare beds when our own bed arrives. Then, of course you need bed linen, towels and pillows. Easy peasy . . . but.  We found a bottom sheet, but no top sheets of the right size. Pillows. But though there were shelves and shelves of long bolster covers in elaborate designs there were no pillow cases. Nowhere.

Since it’s hot at night we like to have the air conditioning operating so that the bedroom is cool, and if it’s cool you need a blanket. No blankets. Eventually we find some fancy blankets from the Middle East with a picture of a lion on them. These are obviously status symbols as they come in zipped clear plastic bags, retailing at $30. Finally, in a rather unlikely shop we find a blanket. It’s single bed size, so eventually we settle for a duvet-type cover.

Kitchen ware is essential. Buying cutlery seems such a waste when we have so much elsewhere, but we buy four of each, plus one saucepan and a frying pan. Two large plates and two small ones completes the kitchen. Oh, and a knife.

What to sit on? Our house agent/friend persuades the owners of a small sofa and matching coffee table that we had seen in a house we were looking at to sell them, and kindly delivers them to the flat. That should be enough. Then we relent and buy two plastic garden chairs.

The net result: outstanding minimalism. It’s refreshing in a way and we know that when our stuff does arrive we’ll be shocked and embarrassed by how much there is of it.

There’s no such sense of shame when it comes to populating our balcony. It’s quite generous, but not huge. Buying the plants is easy enough, and it’s easy to find plastic plant pots, but getting them upstairs isn’t so easy. One thing we have discovered: soil is heavy. And plants are big. Getting the large palm into the lift was fun, gently pushing all its leaves into the tiny space and hoping that bending it over wouldn’t do any damage.

No such luck with the bougainvillea. The moment we transferred it from its black plastic nursery bag into a proper pot it sulked. The leaves wilted, then dropped off. “That’s that,” said Nicky, “I can’t grow bougainvillea. I should throw it away.”

Far from it. The words of Jesus come back, “Oh ye of little faith”. Within days it decided that it liked its new home and is now growing very vigorously.