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. 

Dining in Malta

Octopus Stew, cooked with peas, olives, tomatoes, and white wine

There is only so much one can do with institutional food. Cooking dinner for 500 or so, as the conference hotel where I am staying does, can only be seen in industrial terms. The decidedly Mediterranean-inspired buffets provide nourishment, yet everything - including the beautiful desserts - somehow falls a bit flat. 

I am thankful for a few opportunities to explore Maltese food outside the conference environment. I am told that the meat of choice for a Maltese feast is actually rabbit, with the head and "boney parts" stewed in a tomato sauce served with pasta as a first plate and the stewed rabbit meat served with roasted potatoes and vegetables as a second plate. The Italian influence in both content and style of serving is apparent. While English is spoken nearly everywhere on the island, Italian is unquestionably the language of food. 

Yet Maltese are quick to point out the unique aspects of Maltese cooking. While pasta is often offered as a first course, meat is usually served with potatoes. Seafood of every kind is plentiful - even if very expensive. Sea bass appears to be a nearly daily staple, along with beautiful bread, abundant olive oil, fresh goat cheeses (known as cheeselets, which I have had both spiced in olive oil and fried in crumbs), and the biggest capers I have ever seen. 

Dessert usually revolves around either fresh fruit (it is blood orange and grapefruit season) or something employing dates and/or figs. Even at this decidedly non-touristy time of the year, hawkers on the street sell various forms of nougat (a kind of fudge-like thing with nuts or other flavorings). Tiny cookies filled with figs and fried appear to be a breakfast staple. Numerous other sweet pastries are sold in small shops everywhere called pastizzerias with Italian-style small cups of coffee or cappuccino. 

A fig-filled fried crêpe

The few open fields of Malta are filled with vines, and the local wines are both white and red and very inexpensive. A meal without wine appears to be akin to an ocean without water.  Dinners are long and lingering.

Undoubtedly, I have merely scratched the surface of Maltese cooking. It is really amazing to me how much more most cultures around the world value food - be it China, India, Europe, or Latin America.  Food is an art form. Although the idea of "convenience foods" are spreading, there still seems to be a greater appreciation for the beauty of what food can be. Perhaps this is returning a bit in the United States, at least in certain quarters as local ingredients, seasonal dining, and home cooking become a bit more prevalent.  

Just one small anecdote to close. At a small restaurant near the hotel, a couple of colleagues and I have hosted several small dinners this week. The restaurant is small, no more than 10 tables. Only one waitress is not part of the family. The menu is enormous, filled with choices, yet it becomes clear very quickly that only items reliant on seasonal ingredients are available. When one of my fellow diners ordered a caprese salad (fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil in olive oil), the waitress gave him the kind of look one gives a recent arrival from Mars. "How do you expect me to make you a decent caprese in January?" she asked incredulously...

Visiting summer holiday spots in January...

View from Valletta

I arrived in Malta in the throws of a fierce Mediterranean storm, the kind that I am told are not particularly unusual in January.  The cold winds howled at a clip great enough to nearly knock me off my feet as I made my way to a nearby drugstore to buy some toothpaste on Thursday evening.  Huge waves crashed into the sea wall, sending spray many feet into the air.  It was not a day for a pleasant stroll along the promenade.  

Even as the weather improved and I found enough free time between meetings to venture out, I was reminded that visiting a place like Malta in January is not ideal.  Many shops and restaurants close down for the month of January and others keep irregular hours, ready to close up early for the day if business is especially slow.  I found downtown Valletta nearly deserted on Sunday afternoon, with only a few of the tackiest tourist shops open. The silence was broken only by a vibrant celebration of the feast of St Paul's shipwreck outside the famous church of the same name. 

Mdina Cathedral

Valletta, the capital city of this tiny island nation, sits on a peninsula high up above the sea. The walls are, at times, nearly twenty stories in height, plunging down to the sea. The straight, Renaissance-era streets (this is the new capital, after all) are lined with shops, churches, coffee houses, and offices. From the gardens at peninsula's end, there is a fabulous view out over the seas and the surrounding communities. Sometimes it seems that even an ugly city - which Valletta is decidedly not - would appear beautiful under the golden light of the Mediterranean sun. There's just nothing quite like Mediterranean sunlight.  

The northern side of Malta is densely populated, with one village flowing into another (although I'm told that local communities have a fiercer-than-average local pride and identity). This gives way slightly as you head inland, where a few farms begin to appear in the sloping valleys. The ancient capital city, Mdina, is found high on a hill near the center of the island. An ancient fortress containing several Roman ruins and even more ancient burial sites, Mdina is a medieval beauty. Visiting her on a sunny Monday morning in January was perhaps an advantage. Although many shops were closed, I had the narrow streets mostly to myself.  Tranquility was a word that came frequently to my mind as I explore tiny alleys, ancient churches, and a few museums. These are the kinds of museums that were established to display the "stuff in the basement" of churches that includes everything from medieval liturgical books to early modern altarpieces. You never know what treasure might lurk behind the next corner in a place like this.

Seventeenth century altar painting of the nativity in Mdina Cathedral Museum

 The fine cathedral of Mdina, constructed after the great earthquake of 1693, engages all the senses with music, incense, and beautiful artwork, including "tombstones" of inlaid marble that cover the floor of the nave and the chapels, exulting in Latin long deceased bishops and archbishops, often depicting them as skeletons setting aside their earthly crown for a climb toward heaven. 

I am not sure I would recommend visiting Malta for a holiday in January. But it has certainly had its advantages in terms of tranquility.  

Artifacts

St. John's Co-Cathedral - Valletta, Malta

It is hard to travel in southern Europe or the Middle East without using the word "artifacts". The lands around the Mediterranean are abundant with remnants of millennia of human civilization, as are parts of India, China, and elsewhere. I remember being awed in my earliest travels by churches and Russian fortress walls that had endured from the 12th century or so in Moscow. The Mediterranean makes this look positively recent by comparison. This is as clear in Malta as anywhere, with the site of Paul's shipwreck from the book of Acts, numerous Roman ruins, and prehistoric temple remains dating back several thousand years before the Romans.  

Malta is a crossroads. A tiny island about 10 miles wide and 20 miles long, it is home to a rather densely packed 350,000 people. The architecture is in some ways definitionally southern European, with an abundance of baroque Catholic churches, grand villas, and sprawling piazzas. Yet in another way it has a deeply Middle Eastern feel, with many homes constructed in a manner you'd see in Jordan or Lebanon. Sitting almost at the middle of the Mediterranean, Malta has been a crossroads of cultures - Roman, Greek, Arab, Norman, British, and Italian, among others.  

This is visible even in the "artifacts" of language. While British English and to a lesser degree Italian are spoken nearly everywhere (Malta gained independence from Britain in 1964 and sits not far from the southern coast of Sicily), Maltese is used on most signs and is heard everywhere. Maltese is at first a disorienting language to bold in written form, with its numerous additional characters added to the Latin alphabet.  The language is Semitic, in the same family of languages as Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic, though it is the only Semitic language to be written in the Latin script. 

A sample of Maltese and English

There are few architectural or other artifacts to recall that Malta was under Arab control for several centuries, as was its northern neighbor, Sicily. These artifacts of Muslim presence here have largely disappeared in the past few centuries. It is not dissimilar from the way in which Christian artifacts have mostly disappeared from areas that were once predominantly Christian - Algeria, Mesopotamia, Turkey, and to a lesser degree Central Asia and western China. In all of these places, once vital and numerous Christian communities died out, some over the course of centuries, while others disappeared more quickly, leaving in some places - such as Kyrgyzstan - only a few Christian tombstones written in Syriac script as physical reminders of this Christian presence.  

Times change. Things that seem permanent - even entire civilizations - pass away leaving only few artifacts in museums to remind us of what was most precious or most intimate to these people. It's a good reminder to those coming from the "young" side of the world that there's a lot of accreted experience in this world, and that it has much to teach us.  

My thinking on artifacts has been inspired in part by Philip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity, which is a good, readable-yet-grounded look at Asian and Middle Eastern Christianity - the "eastern half" of church history that is all too rarely told, but so very important.  Highly recommend.