Oh Joy. We are in Bukavu. Next to Lake Kivu.

As you may know Simon and I are at the moment in the middle of a warzone. While Bukavu is relatively safe, outside the city it is often not; especially not towards the south. But limb-chopping FDLR rebels, never-to-be-trusted FARDC government soldiers or any of the other 600+ different fighting groups are not the only dangers. No; I am not referring to possible diseases that we can catch here. Both of us spent hundreds of dollars on vaccinations and we take our daily shot of Malerone; so we should be ok on that account (at least a bit).

It is around 1am now and we are sitting on our balcony doing work for our COMPS. A few minutes ago – for the second time today – the ground and our house shaked. We have no clue what it was. In first instance we thought rebel fighters, but that already quickly moved to possibly dynamite used in a mine far away, or a small earthquake. Let me briefly tell more about Lake Kivu.

Lake Kivu is known as one of the world’s three so-called “exploding-lakes” – together with Cameroonian Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun – that can experience a lake overturn. The latter is a rare type of natural disaster in which carbon dioxide (CO2) suddenly erupts from deep lake water, suffocating wildlife, livestock and humans. To make it even more fun, the eruption also causes a tsunami as the rising CO2 displaces water. Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun have both already exploded once. The first exploded in 1984; causing the asphyxiation and death of 37 people living nearby. The second exploded in 1986; releasing over 80 million cubic meters of CO2 and killing around 1,800 people. Oh joy; Lake Kivu is 2,000 times bigger! In addition, on top of dissolved gas Lake Kivu also contains large quantities of dissolved methane! As Wikipedia notes “The risk from a possible Lake Kivu overturn would be catastrophic, dwarfing other documented lake overturns at Lakes Nyos and Monoun, since approximately two million people live in the lake basin.”

These lakes explode for three reasons: landslides, volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. Interestingly, a volcanic eruption is quite likely to take place soon; as many already have taken place. Lake Kivu is located in the Great Rift Valley, which is being pulled apart by Mother Nature. In January 2002, for example, a volcano called Nyiragongo erupted; sending a stream of lava 200 metres to one kilometre wide and up to two metres deep through the center of the city of Goma – located right on the other side of the lake. Nyiragongo is Africa's most active volcano and has erupted over 30 times since 1880. Luckily, up to now without making Lake Kivu explode. At the moment Nyiragongo is active again.

The third – and other – trigger that can make Lake Kivu explode is an earthquake… let’s hope the shaking this evening was something else. ;)

Blog on North Kivu.

A great blog on the situation in North Kivu; our neighboring province to the north:

http://stopthewarinnorthkivu.wordpress.com/

PICS: Back from our first few days in the field.

The DR Congo is beautiful and the views are breath-taking. These photos certainly don't represent what we saw, certainly not in this small file-format (internet is extremely slow):


Our car. Remember: this is the national road in the DR Congo (and the best parts of it):



Us, the projects and a lot of villagers:


A truck got stuck. The ICRC drove around it Rambo-style. Those doctors these days:


Joseph and us. I know; but it was 730am, we were awake for maybe 4 minutes and hadn't had breakfast yet:

Back from our first few days in the field.

Yep, we didn’t update our blog for a few days. Reason: Simon and I were in the field to visit several Tuungane projects to get a feel for the project. We left Monday – internet didn’t work on both Sunday and Monday so we couldn’t update the blog – and returned yesterday. We had a team of five people: the driver, Joseph (the IRC coordinator responsible for the projects in Territoire Kalehe), and Bashizi (the engineer responsible for construction quality of projects in the Groupement de Mbinga North), Simon and me.* We went north because at present it is dangerous to the south of Bukavu – the FARDC and MONUC recently started fighting the FDLR.

Monday, June 8.

We travelled on one of DR Congo’s national roads – the N2 between Bukavu and Goma – and only had to drive around 75 kilometers. It took us … about 3.5 hours! Our GPS tracking-devices confirmed that although we drove a 4x4 at the highest speed possible, our average speed was only 22 km/h. Just imagine: if this is one of the best roads in the Congo and we had to drive only 75 kilometers try to get really into the heart of the DRC: a country the size of Western Europe, and without roads similar to the N2.

We stayed over in the local church in the village of Kale (don’t even bother looking it up on a map). Interestingly, government soldiers (FARDC) left less than three months ago – they had confiscated the church for several months. Trucks and jeeps that broke down were still lying scattered around the church. Laurant Nkunda and his rebel troops had confiscated the church before that when he advanced with his troops from Goma on Bukavu; raping and pillaging in the process. We tried not to think too much about the things that most likely have happened within the walls of the room we were sleeping in.

In the afternoon we visited a project only a 2 km drive from the church; the CDV** is called Mungwahere. The villagers were building a “centre d’alphabetisation”. The local chief was quickly at the scene and so were tens of people from the village. While the walls were up and a roof was placed, the floor was not yet done and the windows were not yet in. We had a lively discussion and Simon and I asked many questions. It is incredible how much more one learns from being on the ground compared to reading reports while sitting in a comfortable chair in New York. At around 5pm we headed back to the church. Simon and I – not used to sun-light and overly bumpy roads – were exhausted. We had dinner at the church with the priest and an intern, and because there is only electricity between 645-9pm we were in bed early.

Tuesday, June 9.

The next morning the plan was to leave early. However, we first made sure to tell the local authorities of our presence – one never knows and can’t be too safe. Unfortunately, this took a while, despite the fact that we had our passport and official documentation from the IRC. Reason: A not-important bureaucrat was trying to be top-dog. He said he had to be very strict because many people pretended to be from NGOs while they actually were from a rebel group. He also told us that there would be consequences if we would take pictures (don’t be afraid, we took many). Funny: He looked at my DRC VISA for almost 10 minutes; instead of looking tough he made himself look illiterate.

After a drive of 50 km (i.e. around 2.5 hours) we arrived at another Tuungane project. Here the villagers were building a hospital (see picture). Also this building was not yet finished; they were running out of money as the prices of materials had risen over the last months. Another reason why these projects often take long is transportation. For example, these villagers have to travel 3 days to a nearby village by bike for bricks. The atmosphere was great as a large chunk of the village walked out to greet us. We spend around an hour in Misinzo-Kazo (the name of the CDV) and then went on to the next project site that was relatively close by. After a twenty minute ride we arrived at the CDVs Nukwidja and Cilina: two villages had pulled their resources in order to build a market. At our arrival a village meeting was called together and Simon, Joseph, Bashizi and me had to sit in front of some 100+ people (see other picture). Was great and we learned a lot from the project, how the people perceived it, what the problems are, etc.

In the evening we again had dinner at the church. The dinner at the church was very luxurious (for Congolese standards). We eat bananas and avocados from the garden, foufou (typical Congolese food), and fish from Lake Kivu; Peter had the fish’s head. We had a long chat – as we had the evening before – with Amuli; a very knowledgeable guy of our age who did an intern at the church. He was also headmaster of the local secondary school. We asked him many questions about the civil war, politics, African history, etc. We went to bed, again, relatively early, because the next morning (Wednesday) we left for Bukavo; Macartan arrives on Friday and we better be prepared.

Some final random things.

1. Women carry a lot of stuff. 2. The roads are in really bad shape. Strangely enough, this seems to be especially the case within small towns. 3. The country is utterly beautiful. 4. Why is this country so poor? The food is all around. Corn, for example, grows everywhere. Is that the reason? People never had a need to cooperate or build tools for survival? 5. “MONUC”! “ MONUC”! Is what the small children scream when they see us. Everyone that is white is seen as a UN soldier. 6. The village chief in the first village we visited wanted us to bring him to the entrance of the village. We think it is for status reasons; being seen in a big 4x4 car and with the people that provide money to the village. 6. Most cars on the road (which are very few) are either humanitarian agencies or UN, or trucks bringing commercial goods from Bukavu to Goma or vice versa (the latter are most of the times stuck in the mud). 7. “If you find a dog on a tree-branch, you should ask yourself who put it there.” An interesting Congolese saying that was used by Amuli in the context of Rwanda; while it is a very small country it is very powerful in this region. Reason: Likely backed up by the West. 8. There are so many small children in the Congo.

* From large to small, the DR Congo is organized as follows: Province -> Territoire -> Groupement -> Chefferie.

**CDV stands for Community Development Village. An indication used by the IRC for the level at which projects are undertaken. A CDV consists out of around 1,200 people.

Shame on almost 3,000,000 Dutch!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8084281.stm

C'est tranquille

It's a bit harder to work on Sundays when power is down, you run out of laptop batteries, the internet is off, and the backup generator is "en panne" (until now!). Luckily sunsets on lake Kivu are fairly reliable.

Guns and Balconies

The house has a really nice balcony where we can read and relax (or judging from the amount of laptops in this picture simply do more work in a nicer setting).

A lot of NGOs (including our own) have this funny stickers with AK-47s crossed out. They basically mean we can't take armed personnel in our car as a matter of policy.

-S

First working day (Friday June 5).

Macartan (he will be introduce in a future post) told us that the day after arrival should be a day to relax, because soon after that it will be work, work and work. He told us to expect to work around 15 hours a day, 7 days a week; and that for two months. Well, that idea of having the first day after arrival as a relax day didn’t really work out. Yesterday I woke up at 6am, Simon before 7am and at 8am we were both at the compound; also called IRC headquarters or more commonly “the base”. There is a lot of stuff to do, and I have to say that the both of us are eager to work. Again, the IRC is well-organized. We received a fully-furnished office for the two of us (Columbia University do you hear this!), and - important - around 11am somebody passed by to bring us some coffee. On our first working day we mainly did two things: 1. Meeting many new people and introducing ourselves ("we are the two guys that will be evaluating TUUNGANE"), and 2. Installing ourselves in the office and doing the preparatory work for the four projects (set out a road map for upcoming two months, wrote a bunch of memo’s, who is responsible for what, etc.). Already at around 530pm, however, we had to leave the base as it was getting dark and we still wanted to pass by a supermarket. Although we were by car with driver one should not do that in the dark; and around 6pm it is dark. After a great dinner (which was prepared by our cook), we worked on our COMPS (unfortunately, definitely more on this in future posts). We went to bed around 1130pm; still tired from flying around I think.

Some final completely random notes.

1. Some things already went wrong. But, each of these did not happen in the DR Congo. Simon’s trousers tore apart at Schiphol airport. When undressing for the security gate at Schiphol I tore my belt in two pieces. Finally, the airplane from Kigali left one hour too EARLY; without any explanation. Here in Bukavu we heard that that happens regularly and that the Rwanda Airlines, as a result, often leave people in Kigali. 2. On day number 1 Simon lost his phone. It is back again, but I just had to write this down. :). 3. The shower is cold; no hot water whatsoever. There is also not much pressure; close to none. For the people that experienced my shower in Harlem; we have even less pressure here. But we don't mind (of course). 4. Yesterday morning we had breakfast with good coffee and pancakes; both made by the cook. Incredible. 5. Yesterday, we saw the first FARDC troops. Only two trucks with around 12 men. FARDC is the government army and known for their looting; which is not strange as most of them haven’t been paid for months. They behaved. 6. The supermarket was extremelty expensive, but we already heard about that. Still, $67 for some cookies, some crackers. 5 liter red wine, shampoo, and 6 apples. That's a lot.

PICS: Introducing Simon

Simon at Kamembe Airport, Rwanda.

Simon as a real African bureaucrat. The only thing missing are a few meters-high piles of dusty documents.

Introducing Simon

As you may have noticed I have used the word “we” quite a few times in previous posts. I am here together with friend and fellow PhD-student from Columbia University Simon Collard-Wexler. Simon is Canadian, American and French; I know, that much be horrible for him, but one is born with it and we just should not tease him too much with it. He is way too smart, interested in international relations (for the laymen among us: big bombs. Indeed what is he doing in the DRC?), and looks like a CIA operative (he keeps on saying he is not making things only more suspicious). He works for the Canadian Foreign Service (they pay his PhD at Columbia) and Simon has – in contrast to me – already spend time in war zones; Afghanistan, Haiti, and Lebanon. I just changed things in such a way so that we can do this blog together – much more fun.

Peter

What are we doing in the DR Congo?

[I wrote this post on 03/06/09 while sitting at Schiphol Airport waiting for my plane to Nairobi and being utterly bored].

So what will I be doing in the Congo for two months? In brief, together with a friend and colleague from Columbia University (Simon, whom I will introduce in a next post), we will be coding in the Congo. In more detail (making this a much longer post, but I am currently sitting at Schiphol Airport waiting for my plane):

The Democratic Republic of Congo –formerly known as Zaire – is in very bad shape (also more on this in a future post). In the east of the Congo – the part of the country that is doing worst of all – the International Rescue Committee and CARE International implemented a so-called “community-driven reconstruction”-program. The program – called Tuungane – is a development project completely in line with the well-known idea – and too often used one-liner at dinner parties – that a development project should not give fish to villagers but a few rods and then teach them how to fish. In brief, Tuungane first helps the villagers to work together. This is difficult as villages in war zones often have a large in and outflow of a diverse kind of people. Then these villagers themselves have to come up with projects. The IRC and CARE are as “hands-off” as possible, only providing funding and expertise when asked for by the villagers. Tuungane is also big. The budget is over 24 million pounds and it covers around 1,780,000 people in 1,266 villages! The four provinces that are covered – South Kivu, Maniema, Haut Katanga, and Tanganikya – have a combined size equal to France! The project started in 2007 and is likely to finish in 2010. Importantly, Tuungane has to be evaluated. Did it work? Can it be improved? That is where we come in; with what is likely to be currently the biggest evaluation project of its kind in the world.

What Simon and I will be doing in upcoming two months can be separated in four chunks: 1. prepare the final survey, 2. geo-reference the 600 villages, 3. clean the baseline-data, 4. establish a pilot for the Phone Project. Again, in more detail (I am still waiting for my plane):

1. Prepare the final survey.

Before Tuungane started 600 villagers were randomly selected in the aforementioned four provinces; around 300 are in Tuungane giving us a so-called control and treatment group. In 2006, before Tuungane started, a survey was taken in these 600 villagers among households and village chiefs; the so-called baseline-survey. This survey, and the accompanying dataset, is massive and the dream of each academic. It covers a lot of people (both households and village chiefs). It has a lot of questions (around 150) on many different topics. It was obtained in a very difficult area; to reach a village, try walking from the north to the south of France (and don’t forget to add jungle, mountains and rebel groups). In 2010, when Tuungane is finished, another survey will be conducted in these 600 villages; the final survey. What we have to do is to make sure that the correct questions will be asked in this final survey. Do the questions relate correctly to the things we want to know? Do people understand the questions we ask them? Etc. Which questions should be dropped from the baseline-survey, and – importantly – which questions should be added? We received a budget to hire staff here in the DR Congo to pilot questions in villages to answer the latter.

2. Geo-reference the 600 villages.

Another important thing we will have to do is to geo-reference the villages; that is, indicate on a map exactly where the villages are. Unfortunately during the baseline survey no GPS systems were used; something we will definitely do this time. This second chunk of work, however, is more complicated than it seems. It is difficult to travel in the area. Also, villages have a tendency to change names or to disappear (due to war, drought, etc.). By making use of GPS devices, the infrastructure the IRC has in place and ArcGIS – which is really cool and very nerdy software to work digitally with maps – we hope to pull this off, though.

3. Clean the data.

This chunk of work is why the blog received its particular name: Coding in the Congo. We have the data from the baseline-survey, but it is ‘raw’. It is very raw! Around 150 questions were asked in the survey, but many questions were very different; some had a binary yes/no answer, some had a number as answer, some questions were subdivided into multiple sub-questions, etc. Before we can use the dataset in statistical software packages to in the end be able to analyze whether Tuungane works or not this dataset has to be transformed; it has to be ‘cleaned’. Therefore an important chunk of the work we have to do here is to program code – in so-called “.do-files” (using for example, Notepad++) – in such a way as to convert the raw dataset into a dataset that can be used in for example Stata. For the nerdy-people among us: indeed, this is going to be a lot of work; and behind desk and laptop.

4. Establish a pilot for the Phone Project.

Very briefly, we hope to set up a system to receive better data on violence. More information will follow.

All in all, I will spend quite a bit of time behind a laptop I am afraid. We will get our hand dirty, however, as we have to go into the field several times. To experience how the surveys are conducted and in what conditions, to check such basic things as whether the villages have electricity to charge the cell phones, etc. It’s going to be much fun these two months.

PICS: Kamembe Airport

About to land at Kamembe Airport. This was the first time flying in a plane that has seats below the wing.

Kamembe Airport, Rwanda. It is a 5km drive from the airport to the Rwanda - DR Congo border. Although it doesn't look like it, the weather is great.

From our balcony (first DRC post)

My first post from the Congo. To be more specific, a post from the balcony of IRC House 5 in Bukavu (IRC is the International Rescue Committee – more on them in the next post). It is around 10pm now. Yesterday – late in the evening – we arrived in Kigali. After a taxi-ride from the airport, a tasty local beer, a night in an ok hotel in Kigali, another taxi-ride back to the airport in the morning, and a 45 minute flight we arrived this morning at around 11am at Kamembe airport. We were picked up by a 4x4 of the IRC. We crossed Rwanda’s border, then Congo’s border and finally arrived at the IRC headquarter. We were introduced to the IRC, the house where we will live for upcoming two months, we did logistics, and we just came back from a dinner with IRC staff. Regarding some keywords:

Accomodation.

Simon and I live in a house that is owned by the IRC. The house is perfect. We each have our own room, big bed with mosquito-net, there is internet connection (albeit extremely slow), we have a cook and cleaner, and… we have a view on Lake Kivu from our balcony. In total we live here with 4 people. The two of us, plus Jana and Stefan (more on both in a future post as well). Also, the temperature is great and I haven't been stung by a mosquito yet.

Security.

This is likely the word I have heard most often today. Bukavo seems to be relatively ‘safe’. During the day one can walk over the streets without additional security people. The IRC, however, is really tight on security. Staff is not expected to walk over the streets and everybody makes use of 4x4s of the IRC; these cars are constantly in contact with "the base". Each of us received a radio and a cellphone (in case the radio doesn't work); to call in a 4x4 and driver, but also to call if something goes wrong; we should always have them close. We have two panic buttons in the building. We also have a 24/7 guard at the house. When we went to dinner this evening we were driven and the driver waited outside. Interestingly, when we were in the car on our way back the IRC radio center called around all the names of the IRC people (a few hundred) and everybody has to respond via radio. A nice security check I hadn’t seen before. Anyhow, security is tight, which seems wise. While Bukavo seems safe at the moment, everybody acknowledges that the situation is fluid; it can change any minute. This is especially so now the government – together with, among others, MONUC – has started a military operation in this area to push the FDLR (Hutu rebels here in the East) back into Rwanda. People here do not yet know what is going to happen because of this. There is quite a bit of uncertainty. The people here however seem quite relaxed and we join them in that.

First impressions.

Let me finish this first post from Congo with my first impressions. I have four. In chronological order. 1. When I was in Rwanda I caught myself thinking: Would this person be a Hutu or a Tutsi? While the genocide happened more than 15 years ago, I did think about it when I was there. Do the people of Rwanda think the same? Unfortunately, our stay in Kigali was very short. 2. The area is beautiful. Lake Kivu is a pearl, the mountains are big and green and flowers and birds are everywhere. Was it not for war, poverty, etc. this would definitely be heaven on earth. 3. The IRC is very well-organized. Our pick-up at Kigali was on time, we received a security briefing, we received brand new mobile phones and radios, if it wasn't the case that we already had 3 laptops with us they would have provided us with laptops as well, the drivers keep track of what they drive and when, security is tight, etc. 4. The roads are really bad - one really can't do without 4x4s - and there are many international organizations around. On the latter, today we have seen many MONUC soldiers (i.e. the blue helmets based here in DR Congo), and cars from (to mention a few): the IRC, CIRC, WFP, Medicines du Monde, MSF, UN, OCHA.

I hope to upload a few photos in a bit, but the internet connection is slow (extremely slow).