Magical Moba.

Today I woke up at 5am, packed my bag and was picked up at 6am by one of the IRC drivers. I made sure to have some extra time at the airport because I expected trouble at the DGM because of my laundry machine-washed passport. The DGM is the Congolese migration and each time you arrive in or leave a big city, you have to go through customs. I indeed had problems; not only is my DRC visa difficult to read, custums also put my Congolese entry stamp with my wrong visa. Luckily, I got into the ECHO flight to Bukavu, which left Lubumbashi Airport at 8am.

I was traveling together with one of the IRC doctors (Doctor Joseph):

This 1,030km flight was utterly beautiful; flying over the many Congolese mountain tops, forests, and over the shore of Lake Tanganyika. The flight also stopped twice: in Moba and in Kalemie; the latter is located right next to Lake Tanganyika.

Moba is a magical place and located about a 1.5 hour flight away from Lubumbashi. After first a fly-over to check whether everything is ok, the plane lands on a dirt road. This dirt road is surrounded by beautiful mountains whos tops are hidden in the clouds and small villages whose inhabitants run towards the dirt road when the plane is landing.

Moba is also the place where thousands of Congolese are currently being repatriated from Zambian refugee camps. Last weekend when I played cards at one of the ICRC houses I had a long chat about this with some UNHCR people; I am very interesting in the implications of IDP and refugee movements.

Finally, as I wrote before, on January 13, another ECHO plane crashed in Moba. Today the plane was still there, but without any EU logos on it; the sneeky European Union had painted over the logos. :). So, hereby pictures of a crashed European Union plane:

Because the crashed plane took up part of the run way our plane had to turn around rather abruptly: