holes, canals, and the bridge wfp couldn't cross

Right, I’ve had a strange week. In fact, I’m recovering from Malaria (sort of), nearly caught Cholera, saw a forest fire, drove into a hole, found myself outside during a shoot out, and was evauated to safety by the trusty Bukavu mobile police squad.

If you want to read more, scroll down. For those of you who only want to know of the week’s wild t-shirt sitings, soundtrack, or the “brainbeats kudos” award…here you go

Crazy T-shirt: It’s a toss up this week. “Beer—the only Carbohydrates I need”, spotted in Lulimba… “10 reasons why Cowboys make better lovers”, too dirty to quote, but what would you expect from a Calgary stampede t-shirt vendor?...and in Bujumbura, I spotted a shocking front/back ensemble: “make 7(front) Up your’s (back)”

Soundtrack: Sarah Harmer has one my heart once again, “go to sleep” has put me out time and again this week, a sweet melody…and CBC3 podcast, check it out.

Kudos—indeed, I have to applaud the ambition of the of my neighbors, the residents of the marshy district down by the ruzizi river. This week, they got together, formed an NGO, and drafted a letter requesting urgent assistance from my department. The problem, this district is particularly given to being flooded, um, pretty much after every rain…its always mucky, lots of mosquitos. Their proposition, that we dig a giant hole, or a canal, big enough to drain the marsh…proposed dimensions: 12km by 4m…yup, that’s 12 kilometres, apparently almost half the length of the suez canal! Unfortunately, I don’t think its going to work out, but kudos to them for trying.

Alright, are you still with me? What a week…It all started with a quick tour of the deep south, to check in on the cholera treatment centre at Uvira, and then head off to lulimba to assess a cholera outbreak on the edge of the province. Round trip, I think we covered about 500km, and came across some wild terrain! A forest filled with giant clay mushrooms (ant hills?), fields of 15foot elephant grass, nearly 50km of burned out forest—super eery, actually, the tree tops were still green, white trunks, constrast against the burned underbrush—and every village on the way was full of bricks laid out to dry. In fact, at regular intervals, there where new/old settlements of retournees from Tanzania—a very encouraging sight!
Stopped off in Baraka to stage the trip to lulimba…I noticed that there were an heaps of non-uniformed, armed young men roaming about town—an unusual sight these days as most militias have been integrated into the conventional forces and shipped to other parts of the country. Yeah, and when they started to yell at me and the driver, I sorted of, maybe, kind of had some words of my own…note—don’t tell off adolescents with guns or rockets…right, nothing happened, we drove through unmolested, but when I asked my hosts what it was all about, they were pretty alarmed…and then, bbbbbrrraaaahhhh, tactactactac. These guys started fighting with the police! Unbelievable, turns out that it was the militia of a local hold out, essentially the local thug. The customs office tried to charge one of his buddies import duties, things escalated, and the guy’s boys went around shooting the place up.
Strange huh, so the next day we were off to lulimba, saw returnees, the forests, etc, did our evaluation, visited the most atrocious cholera treatment centre I’ve seen yet…I washed my hands diligently, but opted to take a prophylactic dose of doxycycline just to make sure I didn’t infect myself with cholera. Saw a giant forest fire on the way home, apparently hunters thought it best to track their quarry by burning down the forest. So back home, we’ve been preparing for a visit from Jan Egeland (#2in the UN), and one of my colleagues had been so accommodating to one of my teams staying at her field camp…took her out for a beer to show my appreciation, and wouldn’t you know it, something happened between the restaurant and my place…a riot? A demonstration? Well, something happened and apparently people were freaking out in the street, 2 soldiers may have been killed by a mob, but apparently they had been stealing from the community for weeks? Well, whatever was going on, all I know was that when I radioed for a car to take me home, everyone panicked, realizing that someone was circulating during this crisis…yes, and to the glee of my colleagues at the restaurant who immediately began mocking me, the Emergency Response Manager was swiftly evacuated to safety, extracted from amongst my friends by the super-police mobile crisis squad!
Moving on, yesterday we rode to Luhago with an inter-agency preparation team for the Egeland visit…we’ll be showing him around the IDPs settlements in the valley (remember the pictures?) Well, my team was already there, so I hitched a ride with the World Food Programme truck, which was skillfully driven by a city-guy from Kinshasa. Well, on the way home, crossing a very sturdy bridge, he somehow managed to drive into the only hole in the structure, effectively dropping the front wheel into the abyss, resting the axle on the bridge surface.
There you go, my wacky week, and in the midst of it all, I caught malaria. Good times.

Stay safe,
C
(captions—chikuru and the smurf…the bridge the wfp guy didn’t attempt…a tree and what’s left of the forest in the back ground. Enjoy)