Eating in South Asia

Cuisine is rarely a simple affair. Just as every Midwestern farm wife has her own special way of making pie crust or beef stew, so do cooks all over the world differ in how they approach their cooking. This village-to-village variety is compounded in India and South Asia by the variety of ethnic and regional expressions of food. Thankfully, Indian food does go distinctly beyond the chicken tikka masala (which was originally concocted in the UK), saag paneer, and naan common to North American Indian buffets. 

A Karnataka Meal

One of the misperceptions of Indian food is that it is all spicy/piquant. Granted, the use of chili peppers is common throughout India and there are some dishes I've had that set your mouth on fire. But good Indian food is characterized more by nuance and the blending together of many spices and flavorings, including sweet spices (cinnamon, cloves, cardamom), savory spices (cumin, coriander), "wet" spices (onion, garlic, ginger - the "Holy Trinity" of Indian cooking), and other ingredients that affect the taste or consistency of the food (hing/asofoetida, tamarind, lime or lemon juice, palm sugar, coconut or coconut milk). "Curry" is rooted in a Tamil word that means sauce and is not a "spice" at all in Indian usage. Rather, "curry" indicates the blend of numerous sweet and savory spices (every cook has their own recipe) that is added to foods. 

Idli and Sambar

Indian meals generally consist of some form of starch (rice or rice-flour breads in the South, rice or wheat-flour breads in the North), some kind of dal (beans, lentils, etc.) cooked in a rich, savory broth, some kind of vegetable cooked with spices, and usually a chutney or pickle on the side. As Oprah Winfrey discovered in a mighty cultural faux pas in Mumbai last year, Indians usually eat with their right hands, working together the rice and sauces, scooping them up with the thumb, index, and middle fingers, and then using the thumb to delicately push the food into the mouth. It's actually quite an elegant process that, when done right, often results in hands as clean as when the meal began. 

One of my favorite Indian meals is firmly rooted in Tamil Nadu in the South but can be found throughout South Asia. It consists of steamed rice-and-lentil-flour dumplings (idli) served with a spicy soup called sambal and various chutneys. This is a traditional breakfast food. 

Food reflects culture. Japanese cooking is famous for its simplicity and understatement. Chinese food prizes local ingredients cooked in harmony with a few key flavorings and the harmony of the various dishes on the table. Thai and Vietnamese cooking prizes the balance of the spicy, sweet, sour, and salty. Indian food also seeks balance, but of a much more diverse set of ingredients, all combining together into a flavorful whole. 

Snapshots of India

I've had a very hard time putting together blog thoughts during this trip to India. The absence of spare time short of sleeping hours has probably played a part. But I think it's something else as well. India has an immensity about it that is very hard to define. 

Just a few "snapshots"

- Contrary to popular misconception in the West, Hindi is not spoken throughout India. While Hindi and related languages are spoken across the vastness of North India (approximately 250 million speakers, plus many more who use it as a lingua franca). In the South especially, local languages predominate -- Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada are just a few, spoken by tens of millions. Official things are labeled in three languages. Many things in the city are signed in English and the local language, but there are many, many things written only in the local languages.

Elevator labeled in Tamil, Hindi, and (British) English

- Religion permeates everything in India. As you drive through the streets of a South Indian city, you are about as likely to see a  mosque in the Mughal style as you are to see a Hindu temple or a Christian church. Although Hindus compose the vast majority of Indians, the numbers of Muslims (160 million) is the second largest Muslim population after Indonesia. Christians may compose up to 7% of the population, including ancient communities of Syriac Christians that go back to nearly apostolic times. 

A Hindu temple in Chennai

- If Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state, were an independent nation, it would fight with Brazil for fifth most populous in the world (200 million people). The region commonly called North India is home to 900 million people or 12% of humanity. This is about equal to the population of sub-Saharan Africa, just shy of three times the population of the United States, and and about 150 million more than live in all of Europe. 

- The new highways leading the the Bangalore airport (one of India's best) are still under construction and reconstruction, so they involve some creative driving. The occasional herd of cows can wreak havoc on traffic. Stepping into the B'lore Airport, however, you feel like you've moved into a parallel consumerist paradise. Enormous banners above the concourse announce that "Dubai Shopping Festival," showing photos of Indians in hotel rooms with amazing views of the Dubai skyline sheerly exhausted by their shopping endeavors, surrounded by the horde. India is a world of contrasts. 

New construction in Bangalore

- Indian airlines, in my experience, are quite an efficient affair. With the exception of one flight on this trip, I don't think my front door-to-boarding gate experience has ever been more than 15 minutes. They also manage to serve a meal (and not a bad one) on most domestic flights. A burgeoning budget airline industry is also connecting the nation as never before. The new airport in Delhi is a site to behold with sculpture parks, soaring atria, and futuristic electronic billboards announcing the latest entertainment "news." 

Domestic arrivals area - Delhi Airport

- I know of nowhere where the movies hold a greater cultural sway than India, be it the Hindi industry based in Mumbai or the south Indian (especially Tamil) industry in the south. Movie posters -- an artistic genre all their own -- blanket Indian cities. There are a few film stars that are probably among the world's most recognizable faces. 

A few movie posters (far from the best) in Chennai

You see so many things that contradict one another. Ridiculous wealth. Grinding poverty. Soaring, sleek skyscrapers. Crumbling, fetid slums. Remarkable efficiency. Mind-numbing bureaucracy. Yet it's all the same. Every nation has its complexities, contrasts, and ironies. China is another colossus of complexity. But India, if nothing more than in the scope and scale of its smack-you-in-the-face diversity, is in a league of its own. 

Disorder, perhaps

Kathmandu might be the most disorderly city I have visited. But perhaps "disorder" is not quite the right word to describe it. Words like "disorderly," and "chaotic" carry a lot of negative connotations. I think I mean "disorderly" in a bit more appreciative sense, although with firm acknowledgment that the place could pretty quickly drive an outsider crazy. 

16th-17th century royal palace in Kathmandu 

Kathmandu sits in a basin in central Nepal ringed by the foothills of the Himalayas. I'm told that on clear days, you can see the snow-capped front range of the Himalayas from the city. In some ways, the city is geographically similar to Los Angeles, in that it sits in a basin. Like LA, smog tends to settle in the basin, leading to very bad air pollution. Many people wear masks as they are out and about the city. 

Kathmandu strikes me as a place that was at one time quite sleepy -- a crossroads in a remote mountain kingdom. It has a very haphazard feel to it, with roads running at funny angles, tall, narrow buildings sprouting toward the sky, and temples sitting at odd angles right in the middle of intersections. Imagine something kind of the opposite of L'Enfant's Washington or von Haussmann's Paris. 

Entrance to the Taleju Temple, on Durbar Square (under renovation)

A view of part of Durbar Square, Kathmandu 

In the center of the city sits the Durbar Square. Durbar is an old Persian word used throughout Central and South Asia to denote the royal court and the assembly of ministers. Durbar Square and the Hanuman-dhoka Palace (Monkey-Door Palace) that dominates it was the seat of the Nepali royal family from the mid-17th century until the late 19th when they moved to more a more "European" place uptown. Again, the ensemble is quite the opposite of European palaces like Versailles or Schönbrunn, with their symmetrical galleries and gardens. The palace (now a museum) is a gaggle of passageways and towers looking out on courtyards. The areas around the palace are filled with several dozen Hindu temples, often sitting at odd angles to one another. The whole thing is very disorderly. But also very attractive. There's a surprise around every corner. 

The area around Durbar Square is a catch-all of touristy brick-brack and everyday Nepali markets selling everything from bras to beans. Motorbikes, cars, rickshaws, pedestrians, and the occasional cow bump up against one another on their way. As you move away from the center, the likelihood of a cow-enduced traffic jam appears to grow (in the world's most Hindu nation) if my taxi experience has anything to say. 

The entrance to Durbar Square

Yet amidst all of this, new residential and office towers are rising. Multinational firms are thick just outside the historic center. Kathmandu, like most of the world is changing. Rapidly. 

A disorderly city, certainly. A city that test's one's patience, certainly. But also one of the more explorable, inviting cities I've encountered. Kind of fun to have a half day to play the tourist… 

Reading the day's news in Durbar Square

A grain stall selling all manner of pulses and other grains on the edge of Durbar Square

The Complexities and Uncertainties of Progress

You cannot travel to China or India (or most other places in the world) without feeling the frenetic pace of economic growth combined with globalization. Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, and Delhi -- my Indian stops on this trip -- are perfect examples. These cities are undergoing remarkable amounts of construction. Cranes dot the skyline. Billboards tout brilliant apartment complexes. The streets near airports are like tiny dens existing under the shadows of new highway systems under construction. Chennai is in the midst of expanding its already significant light rail system along the coast to a city-wide transit network. Cities are exploding with continued rural migration to the cities. Mumbai -- a colossal agglomeration of 21 million -- is set to become the world's largest metropolitan area. 

Construction of new overhead train lines in Chennai

All of this constitutes something that we sometimes call "progress" as millions of human beings flock to cities, (perhaps) find greater opportunities, (perhaps) rise into the middle class, and (perhaps) pursue economic possibilities. This massive urbanization of India (and many other places, especially China) is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, migration of human beings in history. This migration is quite literally changing our world. Tens of millions of new cars flood the streets of Indian cities. Energy and water demands rise as standards of living of the wealthy and middle classes rise. The food needs of massive cities continue to grow. Instability breeds as some find that life in urban slums is not what they had bargained for. In many ways, the shape of our world is being set in these Asian mega-cities. 

It is easy to lose the humanity amidst the numbers. Yet it is a deeply human story. Some of the stories are indeed stories of success -- of poor, rural families finding new possibilities in cities and moving, by way of slums and later more settled communities into productive urban life. I've met many people like that whose grandparents or great-grandparents labored in subsistence farming with life or death at times depending on the timing of the monsoons. Yet there are many other stories too. I'm told that the construction of the new metro system in Chennai has brought in 35,000 workers from the poor eastern states of Orissa and Bihar. For some, this is a great opportunity, but for many at the lowest levels, I am told, it is a life of bonded labor that is exploitative and nearly impossible to escape. Thousands more end up in bonded labor as prostitutes. "Progress" truly takes a toll.

Construction of a new overhead highway in Chennai, India

These issues are not unique to India or to Asia. There are in many ways parallels to some aspects of life in the west. Many of these issues have existed for centuries. But the remarkable thing here is the scale and the speed of change. The number of Indians under 14 - 189 million - is 35% of the Indian population (compared to 20% in the US, which is also a young country). These massive urban centers - with their progress and their problems -- will continue to shape our global life, for good and for bad, for decades to come. 

Fishing

fishing on Lake Albert (from USB website)

Flying from Entebbe in southern Uganda to Bunia, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is not for the faint of heart. The flight across the planes and hills of western Uganda at relatively low altitude gives a sense of the contours of African communities. But the amazing part of the trip comes when you come to the Ugandan shore of Lake Albert and begin to see the outlines of steep mountains rising from the Congolese side of the lake. Lake Albert, along with many of Africa's Great Lakes, is formed by the geographic colossus of the Rift Valley, which stretches down from the Red Sea, across Ethiopia, before splitting into the Great Rift Valley of western Kenya and another, westerly Branch, that forms Lake Albert, the dramatic peaks of the eastern DRC border, and the other African "Great Lakes". As our flight came up over this ridge of mountains, the broad planes of Ituri opened up and the city of Bunia began soon spread across the horizon. 

Bunia has near trebled in size since the end of the war in the region in the middle of the last decade. Part of this has been the influx of security through the presence of United Nations peacekeepers. But mostly, this growth has resulted from a combination of urbanization as people from the surrounding countryside move to the city as well as through natural population growth.

Like a lot of smaller African cities, Bunia is spread out with broad, dusty streets and few tall buildings. Many buildings in the city center date to the era of Belgian colonialism. The city center is dusty in the height of the dry season, but neat and orderly, with traffic police in bright yellow shirts directing the modest flow of traffic at the city's main intersection, where the airport road meets Boulevard de la Liberation. Such a name begs the question "liberation from what?" It turns out that the avenue was named Mobutu Boulevard until his downfall in the late 1990s and the "liberation" for which the avenue is named was liberation from the Mobutu regime. 

One of the most striking aspects of central Bunia is the presence of dozens of poissoniers, or shops selling fresh fish. They are everywhere, ranging from tiny wooden kiosks to fairly imposing brick buildings. I'm told that fish is brought by way of a rather treacherous road up the mountains of the rift valley from Lake Albert. Since the 1990s, however, fish has grown more expensive as fish stocks have been depleted on the Congolese shores of Lake Albert. Ironically, much of the fish sold in Bunia is actually imported from Uganda, where it is caught in the Ugandan waters of the very same Lake Albert. Poor fishing practices have led to this decline.

Central Bunia

The Christian university I am visiting in Bunia, Shalom University of Bunia, has a program in fishery management, one of a large number of practical yet deeply rooted programs that have emerged in this remarkable place. In the post-war Bunia, Shalom University, with its sizable campus just off the city center, was one of the few social institutions remaining somewhat intact. Founded in 1961 as a theological school by five mission-founded denominations in Eastern Congo, the school has made a marked transition since 2005 into a vibrant Christian university with faculties of community development, agriculture, theology, business, and a number of other disciplines. These departments are not developed in order to form a coherent liberal arts program. Rather, they were founded because they were perceived to answer a glaring need in society. The whole place is permeated with an ethos of integration of Christian faith with active practices that truly respond to needs. I have to admit, this was the first time I've ever had a conversation about what it might mean to teach about fisheries management in a way that integrates Christian faith. 

Professional internships form a core of every training program at Shalom University. Last year's fisheries students spent several weeks at the lakeshore interacting with fishermen as well as government workers overseeing the nation's fisheries. All lamented the increasingly small catch and the attendant fall of incomes and taxes from fish. Over the course of their internship, the Shalom University students were able to suggest some small but meaningful steps to help strengthen the fish stocks of Lake Albert. Six months later, local officials from lakeside communities were asking the school to send more students for internships, as a noticeable uptick had been seen in fish stocks in those communities. While it will take years or decades for fish stocks to recover from overfishing, something changed. Motivated by a care for their country, a concern for stewardship of the environment, a concern for the good of their society, and some practical knowledge about fish, a few students made a fairly dramatic change. It is this sort of rooted and applied learning, it seems to me, that will help make this world just a bit better place. 

My experiences of Congo

The following is an attempt to capture just a few of the sensations of my time in Congo... a very limited experience of a tiny bit of a vast nation. 

The Sounds of Congo 

1.  Motorbikes - car traffic in Bunia and Beni seems to be limited to large white Range Rovers, most pained with a large "UN" with the rest painted with the logo of a multi-national NGO. Motorbikes (les motos) constitute the majority of the vehicles on the road. I'm told that a Chinese-made motorbike can be purchased for about US$200. There are also official "moto-taxis," for transport within towns and to nearby communities. Taxi-drivers wear special silver vests. Many of them turn off the motors when going downhill in order to save petrol, starting their engines again as they coast up the next hill. The buzzing of these bikes is everywhere.

A dusty road in Beni (forgive the poor photography)

2.  Electricity - or rather the sounds of problems with it. While Bunia has a municipal power plant built in the 1960s that operates at 10-15% capacity, Beni and the other areas between Bunia and Goma (several hundred miles) has no public power grid whatsoever. All power comes from generators and is usually available for just a few hours each evening. The place where I stayed alternated between their own generator and "community power," which was a larger generator shared by several homes in the area. There is a strange little buzzing sound that precedes a "cut in the current," often followed by the revving of dozens of engines as generators kick in. 

3.  Singing - I don't know that there have been many moments between 7 am and 11 pm where I haven't been able to hear some kind of music, either African pop played out over speakers from street kiosks, worship services of some type or another, or sometimes just a circle of women standing under a mango tree singing their hearts out. 

4.  Cell phone ring tones - Most people I've met in Congo in any position of leadership seem to have 2-3 cell phones (I've yet to quite figure out why). Sometimes multiple phones ring at once. Congo is a great example of a country that has "leapt over" landlines directly to a mobile age. 

5.  Birds - I've seen a greater variety of birds here than almost anywhere else. 

A view of Beni, North Kivu, DRC

The sights of Congo

1.  Colors - although almost all of Africa is known for its beautiful, colorful cloth, I don't think I've ever seen dresses with accompanying head-gear quite as beautiful as I've seen in Congo. These tall ladies in striking colors are especially thick along the sides of any road, often with a baby on their back and/or some sort of cargo balanced on their head. 

2.  Green and Brown - it is the dry season in Eastern Congo (although everyone agrees that the once certain lines between these seasons are growing blurrier; few in Africa question the reality of climate change). Roads are dusty and red dust covers my shoes every day. But in Beni, a bit further south into the forest zone, the verdant tropical greenery is everywhere -- the kind of greenery and lushness that appears ready to jump out and wrap a vine around you at any minute. 

Dusty Red Shoes

3.  Mountains - the vast region of Eastern Congo is filled with mountain ranges. The Rwenzori Mountains form a spine near the Ugandan border, part of the Great Rift Valley geographic formation. These mountains are often covered in wispy clouds in the morning hours. 

Another vista in North Kivu

4.  Crumbling edifices - what the economic collapse of the Mobutu regime didn't ruin, the great Congolese wars did. Congo is littered with shells of Belgian colonial architecture and later buildings. In the city centers of Bunia and Beni, many of these buildings are being restored and revitalized. 

5.  Billboards (sort of) - Bunia appears to be a "one billboard town." It is located right outside the exit from the airport. One side advertises a bank, the other side, beer. Beni has a few more, nearly all of which appear to be advertising beer. 

6.  International Agencies - the United Nations has one of its largest missions based at Bunia with another large base at Beni. Most of the UN soldiers appear to come from South Asia and Latin America. The black-and-white UN vehicles and airplanes are everywhere, as are many aid/development organizations, such as the Red Cross, Médicines sans Frontières, and many others. Most of the Congolese I met with did not hold the work of most of these large agencies in very high regard. 

The smells of Congo

1.  Wood smoke - hardly unique to Congo, the air is (rather pleasantly) tinged with the scent of woodsmoke, both from cooking fires and the burning of brush on farms. Partly due to the lack of steady electricity and/or gas and partly out of appreciation for traditional modes of cooking, most Congolese cook over home-made charcoal -- a laborious, all-day process (that is also having major ecological impact). 

A Charcoal Stove

2.  Flowers - even in the dry season, there are lush flowers blooming everywhere. This country is remarkably blessed with natural abundance. 

3.  Coffee - the areas around Beni and Butembo in North Kivu were once major coffee-producing areas. This industry took a double hit from the Congolese wars and a leaf blight that hit the crop in the early 1990s. It is slowly recovering, and the local coffee is excellent. 

The tastes of Congo

1.  Banana - in all forms (raw, cooked, and mashed), all types (sweet bananas, as in the US, and starchy plantains), all colors, shapes, and sizes. You see on the road huge trucks of bananas coming from the countryside into markets, often with 10 or 12 farmers sitting on top of the bananas. Fried plantains (usually accompanied by fried potatoes - frites - and/or rice are usually served with some kind of stew). 

Fried Plantains and Frites

2.  Greens - manioc root often serves as the starch staple, with manioc leaves serving as the green stew on top. 

3.  Sambusas - the South Asian influence on East African cooking penetrates even as far as the Eastern Congo, with Sambusas (basically samosas) and chapati being common dishes, often sold along the streets and roads. 

Making Sambusas in Beni 

4.  Tropical fruits - it is hard to adequately describe the bounty of passion fruit, papaya, pineapple, oranges, and other tropical fruits in this part of the world. Sadly, February-March is one of the few times of the year when mangoes are not plentiful. 

5.  Mayonnaise - the Belgians left many legacies in Congo. Perhaps one of the more benign was an appreciation for mayonnaise, which along with red-pepper sauce (piment or peri-peri) is a staple on the table. 

The feel of Congo

1.  Dust - it is the dry season, and dust is everywhere -- in your shoes, in your lungs, in your hair. 

2.  Breezy - even on hot days, something shifted in mid-afternoon as cool breezes kicked up and the atmosphere grew more and more pleasant as the sky grew golden about 5:30. 

Flying with MAF in Congo

If I had to name the guiding principles of my life, one would certainly be "every day is a potential adventure and learning experience; embrace every one." I knew that this trip to Congo would present a number of adventures, including those of air travel. Although there are commercial flights that operated into and around the eastern Congo, they are unreliable and of questionable safety. Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) provides transportation across eastern Congo and some other remote parts of Africa for those involved in mission or humanitarian work. On Monday, I traveled from Entebbe Airport outside of Kampala to Bunia in eastern DRC by a regularly scheduled MAF shuttle. The hour-and-fifteen minute flight was uneventful other than its spectacular views of the Rift Valley and Lake Albert. 

MAF "mosquito" for flight from Bunia to Beni and back

Today's smaller flight from Bunia to the city of Beni, about 200 kilometers to the south in the north of the region of North Kivu, was an experience that truly deserves the title of "adventure". This particular adventure began on the campus of the Université Shalom in Bunia when the person who was to take me to the airport received a phone call from his wife (who had the car we were to take) informing him that she'd been detained by the traffic police, for the reason that their "papers were out of order." This was clearly fishing for a bribe. Rightly, my host was eager to help his wife extract herself from a situation that, while likely not dangerous, was certainly unpleasant. I ended up traveling to the Bunia airport with one of the gardeners driving the 30-passenger university bus. 

The Bunia Airport terminal

The Bunia airport is a tiny, colonial-era building about the size of an average American ranch home. There is a narrow entry area for arrivals with a small, dark, stuffy room for passport control. The tarmac behind is littered with the shells of various abandoned airplanes, some of which appear to have been sitting there for 30 years. When we arrived today, the gardner who drove me was told that he was not allowed into the airport because he was not properly dressed (he was, of course, wearing gardening clothes). I made my way into the narrow check-in area which was thronged with people, all holding out their papers to the check-in clerk. It wasn't at all clear which flights were departing. Thankfully, the MAF clerk asked me if I was flying with them and processed my papers, handled my departure tax payment, and checked my bag. I then pushed my way to the small waiting room which was thankfully much less crowded. After about twenty minutes of being serenaded by Congolese music videos, a man approached and asked me to follow him. We walked across the tarmac to a tiny MAF plane, where I joined two other passengers:  one a retired Swedish missionary who was born and raised in Congo and the other an American lady making a documentary. We made our way into the small, six-seater plane (if you think commercial economy seats are tight!) and took off fairly quickly. 

Parking area for MAF, UN, and other private small planes at Entebbe Airport

The scenery of eastern Congo from 2500 feet in the air is stunning. You can see people making their way by foot down dirt roads between villages filled with thatched-roof huts and newer tin-roofed homes. Here and there, you see the remains of a colonial-era Belgian plantation home, most of which were destroyed in the Second Congolese War of the early 2000s when rebels swept through the area. We landed 15 minutes later in the town of Nyankunde, which is about 80 kilometers south of Bunia on the edge of the great forests, nestled below some beautiful hills. The airstrip was grass and the water from recent rainstorms splashed up as we touched down and taxied to the small parking space. Several dozen children from the village lined the airstrip to see the plane. One of my fellow fliers and a pilot departed at Nyankunde. Since it was now just one pilot and two passengers, I was asked to sit in the co-pilot seat. What an amazing, fascinating experience it was to see the mountains and rain forests spreading out below through the front of the cockpit. After flying across a range of steep mountains, we landed on a graded dirt airstrip at the city of Beni, where I was met right on the airstrip by my hosts. A porter carried my bag on his head while one of my hosts took my passport to complete all of the "formalities." I was thankful for that. I've had enough experience with dark little rooms for "formalities" in airports that this is an adventure I will gladly forego. 

War that we do not know where it comes from...

Perhaps more than anywhere I've been, war and its influence in the eastern DRC is hard to comprehend fully. Part of this is that the region has been hammered by several major armed conflicts since the 1990s. 

Students at Université Chrétienne Bilingue du Congo

The Congolese Wars (or as some in Congo say, the First African World War) ripped apart the Eastern Congo in the late 1990s-early 2000s, leaving more than 5 million people dead. These conflicts were tied in various ways to the Rwandan genocide and Burundian ethnic conflicts, as well as many internal Congolese conflicts following the downfall of Mobutu in 1997. Little was left unchanged by the war. Landing on the tiny grass airstrip in Nyankunde earlier this week, my seat-mate, who had been born in Congo and served as a missionary there for many years, pointed to the various ruined buildings in the landscape that were destroyed when rebels swept into the town in 2002. Among the destroyed places was the Nyankunde Hospital, one of the finest medical centers in the region. Only today is it beginning to return to normal. I did not take photos during my brief time in Nyankunde, for I was too busy trying to take it all in. iPhone photos would hardly convey the beauty, tragedy, or endurance of the place. Googling images of Nyankunde brings up a number of great photos, and commentary from various perspectives. 

Besides the obvious loss of life and infrastructure, the war has left incalculable emotional scars on the population. Widespread conscription of child soldiers (often drugged), mass rapes, and brutal violence leave scars just below the surface (and sometimes on the surface). But beyond this, it had a deep effect on community. As one of my hosts said contrasting life in Congo before and after the war, "community was clobbered by the war." Not only were communities uprooted and displaced, but the bonds of trust that bound these communities together were severed to a great degree. Various works of reconciliation -- from the grass-roots to the governmental -- are taking place in the region. But community will never again be what it once was.

Concurrent with these changes is the inflow of modern and post-modern culture through television and the internet. Young people, I was told by several, are less content to sit with granny and aunties shelling beans and are more likely to spend time watching television or on social networking sites (I was told that Facebook is popular, although I didn't understand how that squared with little to no internet access). All of these changes create deep tensions in society. 

Perhaps the most frustrating fact about the Congolese conflicts is that no one can really say what all the conflict is really about. As one person put it today, it is the stress "of a war that we do not know where it comes from." Although there are some obvious roots of violence in some real ethnic tensions in eastern DRC and there are some well known connections between rebel groups and other nations in East Africa, the pieces do not all add up. It's unquestionable that Congo's rich bounty of gold, diamonds, rare metals used in electronics, and timber create interest in keeping Congo "weak for the harvest." It is all quite utterly depressing. 

Yet hope remains, especially in the Christian university communities I have visited on this trip in the cities of Bunia and Beni. They do not allow room for despair and rather seek to inculcate a sense of what is possible. A sense that Congo can be different and that individuals-in-communities are able to contribute to that process of transformation. I have immense respect for friends here who are up to their elbows in this work of transformation in many different spheres, fighting all the time against corruption, lawlessness, unjust exploitation of natural resources, and perhaps the most powerful enemy of all, complacency. 

Planting at tree of hope at the UCBC in Beni, DRC

A City of Seven Hills

View over downtown Kampala in early morning

East-Central Africa is known for its hills. Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is the city of a thousand hills. Kampala, the sprawling and verdant capital of Uganda, is known as the city on seven hills. Located in the southern edge of the country, just off the shore of mighty Lake Victoria (the source of the Nile River), Kampala is an unusually lush and green African capital. The city spreads over the original seven hills, as well as a number of others colonized by urban sprawl in more recent years. At night, it is a mesmerizing sight with lights twinkling on hills and valleys of the city.

Kampala is possibly one of the most energetic cities I've ever encountered. It also has some of the craziest traffic I've ever seen with a level of aggressiveness in driving that I've seen paralleled (perhaps) only in Cairo. Just as anywhere else in the world, driving is a deeply social experience. Unlike in the US, where (most) traffic rules are followed without question, Ugandans seem to turn things on their head and drive with very little of what Americans might call rules. Yet there is a very clear set of social expectations in driving. Traffic police, at the city's busiest intersections, are to be obeyed. Motorbikes are expected to use any means possible to slip through any open space. Drivers are expected to nose into any potentially available space with no concern for the fact that there are mere fractions of an inch between moving vehicles. You are expected to yield to someone who looks you in the eye (and therefore, people raise their eyes to others directly with caution). Yet somehow, despite what seems like chaos, everyone manages to get where they are going. 

The main junction of the Entebbe Road coming into Kampala

Like most African cities, Kampala greets a visitor with a telltale smell of burning firewood (mixed to greater or lesser degrees with automobile exhaust). In some places, such as Addis Ababa, this smoky smell is scented with the cooking spices of millions of people. But in Kampala, it is merely an earthy, smoky smell that is just distinct enough to remind you that you are in Africa.