Telegraphe Congolais

We're not all sleeping

2006-06-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

OK, blogging is hard and I haven't been able to keep up. But it looks like the press may be turning around on Congo coverage. The election coming up means the Congo will be a big story again, at least for a little while.

Check out this week's Time...

Also, much respect to Black River Eagle over at Jewels in the Jungle for this beautiful post. And thank you for your support, BRE and Ingrid. We are working hard and should be done by September. Keep updated at gomafilmproject.org.

New Webpage!!!!

2006-04-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while... I haven't disappeared...

Check out the new Goma Film Project website (sidebar link). You can watch a trailer of our film, LUMO, there.

There will also be a screening on May 1st at the IFC center in New York. Check gomafilmproject.org for details...

the Congo war is being fought online.

2006-02-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

Jeez.

The Internet as war weapon.

The Congolese Mai-Mai rebellion homepage.

Thanks Ingrid.

Gomasat

2006-02-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

Sattelite's eye view of Goma with Lake Kivu and Nyiragongo crater.

Rutshuru shelled; Nkunda on the loose

2006-02-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

Back in November, we took a trip to Rutshuru, a town 45 minutes north of Goma in North Kivu, to observe a disarmament ceremony in which the UN and the 5th integrated FARDC brigade accepted the surrender of about 250 Mayi-Mayi guerillas. This came after the first 'succesful' joint UN and Congolese operation in Virunga National Park, where armed groups had been sheltering in the wilderness and abusing the local population.

Since then, things have been grim: Rutshuru was shelled and a renegade Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, is starting trouble again. It seems that the valorous 5th brigade, whose lack of training was apparent even to this inexperienced observer (though they had a great repertoire of martial hymns), collapsed under the assault of a much-smaller rebel force. It's possible many of them are still loyal to Nkunda. The fighting seems to threaten the Indian base there-- I can only hope that the friendly officers who showed us around are keeping safe behind the wire.

When we were there I also met an interpid young journalist of Radio La Colombe-- a tiny station and the only one operating for miles. He was wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt and a Rasta hat of black nationalist colors... in the footage it's totally jarring when he pops up in front of the green-fatigued troops. It looks like he may have been in serious trouble, as well.

I can't really get in touch with anyone. It's a bad feeling...

The Lancet's Congo Mortality Survey

2006-01-11T07:26:00.000-08:00

Not a surprise, but from a notable source. The Lancet, a British medical journal, has a recent article about mortality in the Congo. Available online here (reg. required):

Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: a nationwide survey
The Lancet 2006; 367:44-51

Summary

Background
Commencing in 1998, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a humanitarian disaster, but has drawn little response from the international community. To document rates and trends in mortality and provide recommendations for political and humanitarian interventions, we did a nationwide mortality survey during April–July, 2004.

Findings
19,500 households were visited. The national crude mortality rate of 2·1 deaths per 1000 per month (95% CI 1·6–2·6) was 40% higher than the sub-Saharan regional level (1·5), corresponding to 600,000 more deaths than would be expected during the recall period and 38,000 excess deaths per month. Total death toll from the conflict (1998–2004) was estimated to be 3·9 million. Mortality rate was higher in unstable eastern provinces,
showing the effect of insecurity. Most deaths were from easily preventable and treatable illnesses rather than violence. Regression analysis suggested that if the effects of violence were removed, all-cause mortality could fall to almost normal rates.

Interpretation
The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains the world's deadliest humanitarian crisis. To save lives, improvements in security and increased humanitarian assistance are urgently needed.

2006-01-05T07:42:00.000-08:00

At home for the holidays and travelling. I'll be blogging again in February and working on the project website... thanks for checking in and please check back.

muggin'

2005-12-13T02:53:00.000-08:00

Pics of the team... bye Goma

BJ on motortaxi

I do rep Providence hard here in Congo

Lynn with Horeb, a director to watch in east Congolese film

Nelson on a shoot

Nelson oblivious to military funeral, at his peril. I just liked the picture.

Soon, soon, you’re a balloon…

2005-12-07T23:56:00.000-08:00

I’m leaving on Monday [make that Wednesday]. Taking the Okapi bus, where new friends are made in your lap (the guy who sat on Nelson’s lap on the way in invited him to his wedding). Barrelling to Kigali from Goma over the mountains, with one last backwards glance at the terraced hills and a woman balancing 150 pounds of lumber on her head with implacable assurance. This kills me…

I will be thinking about little Itebero, the baby mountain gorilla who resembles a dwarf with a beerbelly in a monkey suit, taking his guard’s hand and gingerly ambling away from me and BJ into his room. Why can’t I have that job—gorilla tender… long ago I came here trying to find a gorilla to marry. Itebero is too young, but at least I’ll leave knowing I found the perfect monkey wife: curious, intrepid, not too itchy, capable of emitting a fine and sonorous “oop.”

This has been a grand, sometimes trying but all around unbelievable trip. Still lots of work to do. But we have a movie, come what may. With tanks, senators, protest marches and some very tough but redemptive stories.

See ya...

Political statements

2005-12-05T03:35:00.000-08:00

At the Governor's mansion (Mobutu's old palace): Senators from America came to visit. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan) touring ahead of an Obama-Brownback cosponsored bill to up aid to the Congo. Durbin dancing at the hospital with the fistula patients was uncomfortable and amazing.

The thing about being a kid from the slums of central Africa that's great is the selection of cool secondhand clothes that suit your lifestyle and philosophy.

Too much gun talk

2005-11-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

Here, photos from the Rutshuru mission when the kids turned in their guns:

The Mayi-mayi who'd holed up in Virunga Park, Commander Jackson's "men." You don't see the girls in this photo, but you can see the age range (young).

Here's the haul... I wrote down the number of guns somewhere, in the hundreds... from China via a dozen other countries.

Bonus pic. Find the following elements: a goat, a rocket launcher, a peacekeeper about to shoot his foot off.

On the march

2005-11-27T02:44:00.000-08:00

On Friday, there was a march organized by UNICEF to call for ending violence against women in the Congo, and rape in particular. The route went from just outside our office to the Stadium of Victory, about a mile and a half. Under the searing sun, I walked with some of the stronger patients at the hospital and, I'd estimate, about 30,000 women who had dressed in all black for the occasion. It was an opportunity to film in town, which we don't do that much because of the hassles that ensue. Due to the march, it seems the police had their hands full, or there was a sense that what we were doing was appropriate and not worthy of a shake-down. A wild scene-- the students here are incredibly rowdy and I saw a couple of fights when motorbike drivers tried to cut the parade route and were beaten by the marchers... a contemptuous military funeral convoy also drove through, flatbed trucks piled high with furious guys who pointed their RPGs and machine guns at everyone-- I could imagine the massacre happening, and was scared (needlessly-- why would they shoot us?). But we filmed it. It was a day, it was a day.

The other highlight of last week was when we asked the MONUC if we could film one of their regular patrols through town. Major Navdeep of the mechanized infantry said that there weren't any that day, but that he could fix a little something up for us. Which turned out to be a fleet of tanks, jeeps, a couple platoons of Indian and Congolese soldiers, and a helicopter overflight-- all just for us. Nelson seemed small with the camera in the middle of all that... later we found ourselves eating curry and watching Fashion TV's "Midnight Hot" with 10th Bihar's officers in their (plush) mess.

I guess they know the best way to use their money. I wish I knew how to play basketball so I could play them on their court that overlooks the attack helicopter hangar, though.

A little dreamlike...

2005-11-24T03:38:00.000-08:00

From a recent mission... click to enlarge (idiots)

Market in Minova, just south of Goma

From somewhere up in Minova

And here we have the state of things, per MONUC. Thanks bro.

OH YEAH

2005-11-23T23:45:00.000-08:00

Damn. It is my pleasure to announce that we will still be able to eat when we get back to New York. We just got news of our first grant-- from the Jerome Foundation.

Yip yip yip.

A stylish universe

2005-11-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

"Style Fashion Forward Style"

Tea time at MONUC

The Banana Brewery in the Age of Mechanical Beer Production

2005-11-15T07:41:00.000-08:00

This is a still from the shoot of Horeb Bulambo’s new film, “Searching for My Father,” which the Goma Film Project is producing. It was taken last Saturday in a village not far from Nyiragongo and the MONUC airport base, but so tucked away from the road that it could have been Anyvillage, Congo DRC. We spent a day beneath the banana trees among a lot of perplexed villagers. (Seen here, a chief, his wife and henchmen)

It’s a simple story in the vein of “Prejudice,” Horeb’s last movie. A mixed-race girl living with her Mzungu/ NGO worker mother (played by LT, our editrix, who is Korean-American, but all non black or arab people are called “Mzungu” here—even the Indians, who would be called “Mhindi” elsewhere in the Kiswahili speaking world I think—but I digress)—anyway this girl is tired of being called a bastard and sets out to find her father in a remote village. Then it becomes sort of a story of love lost and found, etc., and ends with a group hug (like “Prejudice” did). It has some pretty intense scenes, including a traditional dance of the virgins, in which a son of the village must pick his bride among a seductive line of dancing girls. Horeb wanted to pay homage to tradition while also saying something about cosmopolitainism and the future of Africa... anyway, I'm not in it, so who cares.

The spot for UNICEF is on local TV, and there's a march for women's rights coming up soon that might make a good cap to the movie.

BJ saw the body of a sorcerer on the way back from tennis-- she had been stoned to death. Now, I know what you're thinking-- we all know that sorcerers fly around naked by night on sorcerer airplanes, right? So how could the stones ever bring her down? Well, as a mechanic at the hospital patiently explained, it was surmised that this particular witch must have run out of gas for her magic plane, thus explaining her naked fall to earth. Still it was a strange sight at 7am, per Bige.

The documentary? The actual purpose of our coming here? It's getting bigger and more complicated every day, more and more footage comes in, and we're trying to file down to a few compelling characters. Translation is a burden, but there are many new scenes already and it just keeps going...

Rutshuru: Where the kids turn in their guns

2005-11-09T05:41:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in a bit since I've been down with a short but violent case of Nyiragongo's revenge. On Sunday we had a great day on the boat-- the area really is much safer now, so we went down the coast a little. There are some beautiful cliffs that hang over the water, and we pulled up to them to go exploring. Me and Nelson climbed up a wall and were oblivious to the fact that the rocks we were on were completely detached, as our boatmates directly below were glad to tell us. Then I climbed around a small island outcropping to get picked up on the other side... gripping the side of the rock face and scooting along little ledges, I was upset to see a large human turd on my next handhold... then another... then another and another... it was the local fishermans' poop rock, apparently. After that, lured by the sounds of cheering crowds, we were nearly boarded by a youth soccer team that waved us in to shore and didn't want us to go...

I just came back from a day trip to Rutshuru, north of Goma at the foot of Virunga National Park, where we attended an arms handover ceremony at a forward operating base presided by the MONUC and the Congolese FARDC. It was an amazing ride in a convoy of Indian MONUC soldiers... the country is so beautiful... the Indians are fun guys... I don't know what to say; it was a little overwhelming. It was my personal Vietnam movie. We were there because after last week's big offensive, about 350 Mayi-mayi militiamen demobilized, and this was a ceremony to congratulate them. I finally got to see the rebels up close. About half couldn't be older than 13. Their guns are a median of 20 years old. Uniforms in tatters. Rubber fishing boots. Girls. The best part was hearing their martial songs as the line of children filed up to the blue helmets, laid down their guns, and marched back. There were helicopters. There were tanks. We got great, hassle free footage of soldiers. A great day in my book.

Blue-turbaned tea time

2005-11-02T06:21:00.000-08:00

The Goma Film Project is diversifying quickly on the ground. This week we are working with Esther and Camille, representatives of a Southern-California based Christian NGO that are staying at Maji Matulivu. We're doing a public service announcement for UNICEF to fight violence against women that's going to be running about a hundred times a day on Congolese TV for the next couple of weeks. Meantime, we're trying to hook up with the Indian MONUC batallion to accompany them on patrol here in town, and to fly over the Interhamwe mop-up operations they're doing in the surrounding countryside in the UN press helicopter... no embedding with troops on the ground per UN policy, unfortunately. OK, I'll admit that I have a juvenile fascination with military things, so I'm pretty excited about the prospect. And wouldn't you know the Indian troops are disarmingly gracious with their guests-- today, after a press conference at the main MONUC compound, we took tea and samosas with some blue-turbaned sikh colonels. Thank you to Horeb Bulambo for setting us up with press muffin Jennifer at MONUC.

Up in Virunga Park, seat of lord Nyiragongo, the Indian battalion is working with the Congolese 8th division to flush out any Interhamwe or Mayi-Mayi militia camps that continue to endanger the people and wildlife of the park. The problem with this is simple: what guarantees that the fleeing gunman won't return as soon as operation Northern Nexus packs up shop tommorow? The MONUC says they can only keep the "negative forces" on the run; only the Congolese FARDC forces can occupy and secure an area subsequently. Great, but unless Kinshasa pays those troops, the whole operation will only change the national origin of the parasites that prey on civilians. Civilians are rightly wary of anyone in uniform. As far as we've seen every single group under arms here has committed atrocities (not excluding the sexual predators among the UN forces).

My birthday was good; no pretzel cake this year, but I did get a good drunk on with the crew at Le Chalet. Halloween at Coco Jambos was similar; there was lots of international intrigue, and I had high hopes of winning the costume contest with my "Dangerous"-era Michael Jackson-- until Osama Bin Laden showed up...

Nyiragongo on PBS

2005-10-29T03:25:00.001-07:00

For U.S. readers (all 3 of you), a doc about the Goma volcano:

Airing on NOVA: "Volcano Under the City"
Tuesday, November 1st at 8 pm ET on PBS (check local listings)

Filmed by the creators of "March of the Penguins"
Produced for NOVA by Providence Pictures

A team of scientists trek deep inside a volcano, amid rockslides, seething sulfur dioxide gas, and red hot lava. Their mission: to retrieve a lava sample to help forecast the volcano's next eruption. The fate of nearly half a million people in a nearby city could be at stake. The volcano erupted in January 2002, surprising the city 11 miles away. Enormous cracks opened in the ground nearby and spewed fountains of lava, killing 100 people and leaving 120,000 homeless. The scientists' biggest fear is that next time a fracture could open under the city itself and hundreds of thousands of people could perish.

http://www.providencepictures.com/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/volcanocity/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/schedule-local.html (for local
listings)

First week is a wrap

2005-10-29T01:54:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday afternoon and we are resting from a great first week. For the first time since we arrived, the sky is cloudless and a fine breeze is blowing. The lake looks very enticing so maybe it's time to go out on the boat.

Goma was built as a resort town by the Belgians, twin lakefront city to Bukavu in the south. Though it lies almost exactly on the equator, the climate is temperate all year because of the altitude. The sun rises and sets at exactly the same time every day of the year, too-- up at six, down at six. The equatorial sun also seems to snap on and off like a bulb at twilight. Night brings the thrilling sight of Mt. Nyiragongo's glowing caldera in the distance and wisps of floral scents enticing the nose through the open car windows. Volcanic ruination in 2002 hasn't taken the resort feel away entirely.

That's to say it's hard to avoid the fact that this is an incredibly pleasant place to be considering the poverty, war, and disease that afflicts the region. I'm only troubled by the creeping feeling of being posessed by colonial ghosts-- as people jockey for my patronage-- as I get used to being catered to constantly-- as I grow callous to constant pleas for money, goods, and aid from all sides. Luckily there are pints of Primus to help it all go down after dark.

This week we have made many new friends among the patients at DOCS and watched them go through their literacy and sewing courses, their meals, and their prayer services. The women range in age from preadolescent to indistinctly old, but the most friendly are of course teenagers. Speaking much better Swahili than last trip, it's actually possible to have long and hilarious conversations with people, and this is changing the way we work entirely for the better. Nelson has been taking meals in the wards while Bige has been seen doing the roger rabbit before a teary-eyed laughing audience.

If this sounds a lot like what we were doing last year, that's because it is-- but better, more thoroughly, more nimbly.

Halloween party tonight at Coco Jambos-- $100 prize for best costume-- should I just pretend I'm wearing the best Mzungu (white person) costume ever devised? Or dress as deposed kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko?

Itebero the Gorilla: Cuteness or Menace-ness?

2005-10-24T09:07:00.001-07:00

A guest at Maji Matulivu, Lyn and Jo's house by the lake, works at the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund in Goma. He gets to spend his days with Itebero, an infant gorilla that was recovered from the black market. This little lady has become world famous for her unprecedented (in a gorilla) use of tools: she likes to sit and crack palm nuts with rocks using a hammer and anvil method. Read more at this awesome baby animal blog or here. I have some pictures of Itebero sifting gravel for favorite rocks but can't upload them from here, consarn it.

In other news, "Prejudice," the soap opera short we shot last year with local impressario Horeb Bulambo Shindano was featured in an east Congo film festival here last Friday night at the hotel Ihusi. Some of the other movies were impressive; in particular, one about the rotting colonial film archives in Kinshasa, and "Stokyo," about kids hanging out, smoking, riffing, rapping, in Goma (unprecedented in world cinema I think). It was the most exciting experience I've had socially in Goma so far, as I was brought up on stage to discuss our film after the screening in front of a couple hundred people. The spotlight is bright in Goma for Mzungu film actors... I saw my costar Tantine again, beautiful as ever, and we capped the night with drinks and dancing at Coco Jambos, where we met the owner Nono and made friends with the cook Maestro, a real rastaman.

And yes, I'm actually doing work, too: we are meeting and getting to know a new class of fistula patients at the hospital, and they are as lovely and lively and welcoming to annoying Mzungus as ever. The hardest part is figuring out how to convey all they've been through when all they do is laugh and make fun of us all the time. Me and Nelson have been collecting marriage proposals, though we've carefully described our imaginary fiancees back home. Imaginary fiancees... is this what I've come to?

Reading...

2005-10-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

New Amnesty International report about North Kivu, Congo (where I am).

The Goma Bureau of the Goma Film Project is OPEN

2005-10-21T03:56:00.000-07:00

Habari gani vijama!

The Goma Film Project is once again open for business, working out of a lovely office in the Vodacom building, downtown Goma. I fear no one will read this as I stopped writing in the blog a while ago. There was a busy late summer, in which we sent the film (a work-in-progress) to the IFP market in New York, met with the documentary distributors we needed to, and prepared for round 2 of filming in Goma. And here we are. It's all still here-- the mototaxi congestion, the greedy officials, the serenity of the lake, the imposing shadow of the volcano, the beauty of Maji Matulivu, Jo and Lyn's house.

Enter the previous tripod (me, BJ, Nelson), followed by our new editor, Lynn, and a credit-card destroying mound of hard drives, wireless shotgun mikes, batteries, imacs, and baby clothes for the orphans. We all trickled in to Kigali separately-- I was surcharged and searched in several cities on the way (no love for KLM or Nairobi airport)-- and took the magnificent Okapi minibuses to Goma. BJ got here first and really softened the landing by finding an office and arranging a million things. Lynn is a trooper, on her first trip to Africa, unflinching at the sight of soldiers and their careless swinging of Kalashnikovs...

Goma seems a little less tense than last year. All is well so far... more updates soon I hope (writing is a slog for me these days for some reason).

And sorry no video updates. I'm an internet novice, and I'm working on it. Uploading is much harder with this glacially-paced connection.

Kwaheri...

Gomafilmproject.org

2005-09-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

The website is coming together. Video links will be up by the end of next week.

www.gomafilmproject.org

An Update and the Death of Blogging

2005-09-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

OK-- I've become completely hopeless about updating. If anyone is still here, this is what's happening. The documentary film about women and sexual violence in east Congo was shot last fall in Goma. Since then, Bent-Jorgen, Nelson and I have been producing it in New York. At the end of september, we're submitting a short version to the Sundance film festival. Other film festivals, screenings, and fundraisers will be happening in September.

BUT we have all three decided that we need to do some additional shooting before we can be truly satisfied that the documentary will reflect what's happening in Congo, what we saw, and what we know is still happening. So we are returning to Goma in October for three months. Therefore, this blog will resume its true, and much more interesting, role of travelogue and news source for Goma, Congo and environs... starting in October... I can't wait...

[[[Manna good luck in Afghanistan!!!!!]]]

2005-08-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

Though I guess it could have been worse...

2005-08-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

On his recent trip to Goma, Bent-Jorgen learned that the beloved blue Pajero has died. R.I.P.

North Kivu by HRW

2005-07-14T00:55:00.000-07:00

This Human Rights Watch report covers the violence in the specific areas of North Kivu where we went last fall, during that period, and also goes into amazing detail about the political dimensions of violence meaningless to us at the time.

2005-07-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

Friends, my hiatus from the site is not permanent. While BJ is in Uganda working for Witness.org, we have translated most of the footage and hope to put it together by summer's end. Meanwhile, it's been about putting together promotional material and searching for funding. I am also working on a new website with video uplinks. Do check back here eventually (a month or so?) for updates, but patience is the watchword.

Congo's fortunes are neither up or down, and a dire situation continues unabated. Some reporters do their jobs well-- I liked this article recently in the Boston Globe-- but as you may read, hope really is only a glimmer.

N.B.: DOCS Africa has changed its name to HEAL Africa after some changes to the organization. Their new site is www.healafrica.org. Please give them all your money.

We're not kidding

2005-06-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Every day, I see something that validates this quest to make a film about rape in east Congo. Of course I would have preferred to focus on another topic, I'll admit-- the subject is relentlessly unpleasant, and there are many fascinating stories to tell about the region... you could choose not to focus on the horrors in Africa that are all most outsiders hear about.

But we really had no choice. The problem is so bad-- to talk about anything else would be like ignoring a raging city fire to talk about the architecture.

In this Times article from the U.N., I'm wondering if the North Kivu rights organization mentioned is DOCS, or the Pole institute. A shame it wasn't attributed. But to get a sense of the magnitude of the trauma in Goma and its environs:

...in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a local rights organization
reported more than 2,000 cases of "gender based" violence in April alone. United
Nations officials determined that 50 percent of the victims were minors and that
the number of rape victims in the region was more than 25,000 for the year.

St. Nicholas

2005-06-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

The team interviewed Nick Kristof, the Times columnist, for the film yesterday. We showed him our trailer and he talked very movingly of the plight of young women in Africa, from his experiences in Darfur and Ethiopia. He's been writing great columns lately about the plague of obstetric fistula in the developing world, and we thought it was a good time to talk to him. Here's his latest column about the fistula hospital in Addis, with a great multimedia feature on the sidebar. Kristof's weblog has more fistula related links.

A call, a call goes out....

2005-06-09T17:49:00.000-07:00

...for a translator with knowledge of French, kiswahili, kinyarwanda, kihunde, and English! Anyone from the territory of Masisi in North Kivu is especially desired.

Well, since I'm not sure whether posting here will turn up a candidate, I want to say thank you, to the nation of Congo and the people there who taught me so much. Please come here and tranlsate my film for me, please.

Asante sana.

Policing Policemen

2005-06-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

The U.N. Security Council has gotten around to addressing the criminal misconduct of peacekeepers in the Congo (Reuters) . I'd say it's likely that, as reported in the Guardian, more stories will be coming out as the green light is given to member countries to bring forth their guilty. It took too long, but at least they've admitted their mistakes. Recall that peacekeepers are composed of military contingents from member states, not a constant central U.N. force, and that responsibility for troops' actions lies with national commanders.

I'd like to see the U.S. executive take such a salutary approach--i.e., admitting to wrongs and working to correct them-- to the practice of deadly interrogation and detention techniques, taking the lead of the U.S. military and Amnesty International. After all, Congress spent $70 million investigating Whitewater, more than 9/11 Intelligence, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo combined.

I can hear the grinding of Cheney's snaggleteeth.

Nuance

2005-05-31T09:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I read something that makes me remeber what I've forgotten from my short trip to Congo, namely the nuance and complication of the situation. This is what makes advocacy so difficult, the lack of stark enimities, the diffuse dragging nature of the fight. Read this view of the Hutu rebels in the east that I've been talking about. They were too young to be genocidaires. They are rag-tag. Some fight for ideals, some fight for bread, some don't remember what they're doing there and would like to go home but are afraid... all of these guys joined various militia groups in the mid-and late nineties, and this is the ongoing fallout. And since there's no law where they are the criminals among them go unpunished, and the population despises their predation...

Australian Advocacy

2005-05-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

I spotted my hosts in the Congo, Lyn and Jo Lusi, in an article from Australia where they are trying to drum up support for their efforts in Goma. It requires registration, unfortunately, so I'll block quote it at the end of this post.

There were a couple of interesting articles lately, courtesy of my home-town paper and its subsidiary, the International Herald Tribune.

UN Troops Get Tough, by Marc Lacey (my hero)

and

In Congo, Lives Too Wretched to Merit Aid, by Helene Cooper, the assistant Editorial page editor at the Times, who was my boss for a while. She's a tough cookie.

Sometimes I wish I was back there, reporting. Maybe someday soon. It certainly seems that the story isn't going away any time soon.

Keep checking here, for soon I will put up a link to the trailer for "Heal My People," the documentary about rape and recovery in eastern Congo that we have been making.

Eyes shut to chaos in Congo, says doctor
By Louise Williams [Sydney Morning Herald]
A humanitarian crisis 10 times the extent of the Boxing Day tsunami is
virtually going ignored in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where militia gangs
are stripping natural resources and slaughtering and mutilating villagers,
according to Congolese doctor Jo Lusi.
In the latest attack, militia fighters hacked 18 people to death and kidnapped another 50 in the eastern region on Tuesday.
The deadliest conflict since World War II has already cost 4 million
lives. The UN's largest peacekeeping force has secured urban areas, but bands of
gunmen, former soldiers and militia fighters roam much of the countryside. "We
are in chaos," said Dr Lusi who is in Sydney to raise awareness of the
crisis.
An orthopedic surgeon working with the medical aid agency, Doctors on
Call for Service, and a member of the interim government, Dr Lusi said some
militia gangs, run by warlords who controlled mining, timber, gold and oil, were
backed by factions in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda. The gangs were responsible
for looting crops, the murder and mutilation of villagers and the sexual torture
and gang rape of women and young girls.
There is only one doctor per 100,000 people in conflict zones.
Dr Lusi said international efforts to stabilise Rwanda were coming at a dire cost to the Congolese because Rwanda's problems were being pushed over the border.
"We regret the genocide in Rwanda, but the international community has responded there. No one is responding to the genocide in Congo," he said. "The disaster in Congo is 10 tsunamis. I want to challenge the international community: if you can respond to the tsunami
suffering, why not Congo? It is just a matter of using the normal channels.
Where is the IMF? Where are the UN officials? Things are happening that are
so terrible we can't even talk about them; women are being vilified."
Dr Lusi's wife, Lyn, who works with victims of sexual violence, said crops were
routinely looted, so malnutrition was rife in one of the most fertile areas of
the world.
Dr Lusi said national elections, which were likely to be postponed
because of the violence in the nation of 60 million, would achieve nothing
without an internationally backed nation-building effort.

Fatigue du "Systeme D"

2005-05-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

This blog has slowed to a crawl, my friends, I know. What can I say... maybe my approach to it (the fireman/newswire approach) is wrong. There is so much to be said about the Congo, a mighty country with many tales untold. It's a struggle to do justice to what I saw, what I know. This is just a little release valve for that weight I feel.

Marking Mobutu's fall from Kin-la-belle (now, Kin-la-poubelle). The last decade in the DRC has been an unbelievable saga, human history on a grand scale. How isolated, how marginal, the story has been, but it's a shattering story. The dictator's fall. The whirlwind of war and armies of liberation that soured and grew corrupt. The genocide in Rwanda that sent its millions over the border like a curse. The camps. The refugees. The guerillas and madmen hidden in forests and mountains... finally, the unimaginable toll, the millions dead and dying for want of protection and basic medical care.

You need more than an article, more than a film, to capture this.

Slow going.

2005-05-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

We've been translating Swahili and gathering our strength for a push to finish the movie before the end of the summer. DOCS has been undergoing some upheaval which has made the situation a little murky, but the footage itself is definitely fantastic and the story is coming together. We're putting a trailer together for grant season this week.

Au Congo, our rapist brigades have still not departed for home... here's the situation from the International Crisis Group. Interhamwe go home...

That Compassion Gap...

2005-04-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here's an article in the Forward with an interview of Jan Egeland, the UN head of humaitarian affairs. Says Egeland, "I must say that we collected less money in the past 10 years in Congo than we did in the past 10 weeks for the tsunami..."

On a positive note, the Rwandan Hutu militias in exile in Congo may be going home.

For REAL blogging...

2005-04-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

...check out Carine at exiledsoul.com, who has been keeping up with Congo news, including an interesting bit about a tenacious forest reserve manager who saved his trees from the fighting. There are people like him everywhere there's crisis, I think, and I met some in Goma: people with total dedication, unswerving devotion to the greater good-- doctors, volcanologists, lawyers... who exercise their professions in the face of unbelievable odds. Truly admirable.

Those damn internets

2005-04-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

I've been delinquent about posting, but I've been busy! Check out a new article up at Campus Progress, which my friend Elana Berkowitz had to strong-arm me to write.

BJ, Nelson and I finished a rough cut of a promotional video for DOCS in time for their board meeting, which we hope they like. Keeping up the momentum, BJ wrote the script for our documentary, which we will begin to work on yesterday already.

Movies: "The Interpreter" will teach you a thing or two about the complicated lives of white African revolutionaries.

Asante sana.

2005-04-06T17:48:00.000-07:00

Congo watch has been keeping up with the international community's responses to the Congo crisis... the world's greatest humanitarian emergency, and first International Criminal Court case...

she also links to a new International Rescue Committee blog with Congo stuff...

Hypnopompic monkey

2005-04-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

An NPR report that woke me up the other morning really reassured me, as I emerged from a thick sleep, that I was on the right track in some way by focusing on the Kivus... it was one of the three types of Congo stories in our news: a gorilla story. The other two are war stories and horror stories (similar but slightly different).

Anyway, the film trudges on, here at Joe's...

Some Rare Good News

2005-03-31T12:13:00.000-08:00

I am relieved to be able to report some progress towards quelling the violence of the Ituri/Kivu region of east Congo.

The Hutu exiles are, in their official capacity, negotiating, and have made a shocking concession to representatives of Congo's government: they will lay down their arms (BBC).

The ex-Interhamwe FDLR, the group in question here, is unfortunately just one faction of many. But this is a crucial breakthrough. If Rwanda accepts that this is a good-faith agreement, Kagame has essentially lost his cover for intervening over the border in Congo. It remains to be seen whether the lure of resources and profit will spur him to make up some new excuse; this is the moment that will prove who is right about Rwanda's motives in Congo.

As the deadline for disarmament approaches in Ituri, the UN seems to be making some progress: Child Soldiers Give Up Arms (BBC).

This story of the Congo has its spikes of hope and despair, but as always you can only hope for the best. I'm somewhat amused, though, to see that it's still a place my government says I should never have gone. Just a point of personal pride, is all.

Woah

2005-03-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

Party people, I give you

Konono / Congotronics

and the video, here.

[thanks to Eileeen, my roommate.]

Let's keep the fires burning

2005-03-21T09:28:00.000-08:00

As things don't get better in Congo, it starts to seem futile to cover every dark turn to the story. I could be accused of a morbid fascination with suffering, and I know the media often is, but sometimes something jumps out at you that you can't ignore for being too sensational. In east Congo, the sensational is real, is common. Take a look at this, if you have the heart, from the MONUC news agency (it got picked up here and there in newspapers).

Cannibalism in DR Congo: Zainabo's agony

Also, there was a great piece in the Times (sorry to plug the Times, but it's my favorite paper, and also I work for them as a news assistant, a.k.a. a clerk or "copy boy") that gives a general perspective of what's at stake in Congo, and why it deserves more attention from the world.

Beyond the Bullets and Blades, by Marc Lacey

Check out the well executed sidebar graphics.

You know, the militias in east Congo don't have tanks or artillery. Just small arms, machetes, and the occasional grenade or RPG. 50,000 troops (maybe from countries with a bit more resources to spare than Nepal or Bangladesh, who are there now) could secure the place. I doubt it would cost a billion a week like a certain ongoing counterinsurgency. [[Actually, it seems from the reports of the recent UN skirmishes in Ituri that some militias indeed have artillery, and a fine command/deployment structure; so they are not to be taken lightly. All the more reason to beef up the MONUC beyond its current overstreched capacity.--ed]]

Back to Terry Schiavo's feeding tube...

Filmmaking Update/ Proposal

2005-03-09T18:48:00.000-08:00

About the film: BJ, Nelson and I have been digitizing our footage and have rented a small office in Hell's Kitchen (sub-let from a former cast member of MTV's The State). We hope to cut a trailer in time for grant season. If you're REALLY interested, here's the grant proposal. I wish I knew how to tuck it into a jump page... please skip and read other, shorter posts if you like.

THE GOMA FILM PROJECT PROPOSAL

Background

The Goma Film Project came about when Doctors on Call for Service (DOCS), a teaching hospital and nonprofit organization located in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), enlisted filmmakers Louis Abelman, Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, and Nelson Walker III to produce assorted informational videos. The first of our assignments was to create a small series of surgical training videos documenting vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF) repair, the most common procedure performed at DOCS on any given day.
A vesico-vaginal fistula is a tear in the uterus that opens into the urethra. In the first world, fistulas are rare; in most parts of the third world, they are caused by complications during childbirth. In the eastern Congo, they are primarily caused by an epidemic of violent rape and torture taking place in the war-ravaged countryside. Marauding armies and militias, some responsible for the Rwandan genocide of 1994, continue to stalk the forests and villages of the region. Women and girls of multiple tribal and ethnic backgrounds have increasingly become victims of plunder, rape, and slavery by the many armed groups involved in the ongoing conflict. At least 40,000 rape cases have been documented in the past several years, with some estimates of up to a million additional undocumented cases. DOCS is the only hospital in the region that offers a comprehensive rehabilitation program for women who have acquired fistulae from rape.
We learned that in the Congolese context, a fistula is a severely debilitating condition, which adds tremendously to the suffering of women already living with the mental and social consequences of rape and insecurity. The incontinence, infertility, and hygiene problems caused by fistulae lead to social ostracism, depression, and potentially deadly infection.
The magnitude of the problem is such that VVF patients have overwhelmed the normal operation of DOCS and live on the hospital grounds in every available space. We became personally acquainted with these patients while filming a segment on their rehabilitation program, Guéris Mon Peuple (“Heal My People”), for a DOCS video.
After the women receive their operations, their healing process takes upwards of six months, the first two of which are spent in a hospital bed shared with another woman. The women who are further along in the process care for those who are bedridden, as well as for their children, who also live in the ward. The trauma each woman has faced does little to dampen the collective spirit of the room; and ethnic and national rivalries, the cause of so much discord outside the hospital walls, make way for an overwhelming sense of community.
Most VVF patients enter DOCS as rape victims who have been rejected by their husbands, families, and communities. Many have acquired HIV and/or have been impregnated by their rapists, and almost all are incontinent and unable to have sex. Because of this and other factors such as crowded living quarters Because their lives have become extremely difficult, and laws against rape are vague and ineffective (in Goma, for instance, only two perpetrators have ever been prosecuted for rape), many women arrive in a state of poor health compounded by hopelessness. At DOCS, they quickly learn that they are not to blame for their suffering, and can easily see that they are not alone in having undergone traumatic experiences.
With the guidance of counselors (many of whom were former VVF patients themselves), the women go through an intensive rehabilitation program through which they receive physical therapy, counseling, and training in micro-finance projects that aim to help them become self-sufficient after their treatment. As a result, many of these women leave DOCS not only physically healed, but with a new sense of dignity and awareness that they will be able to resume their normal lives. Sadly, this isn’t the case for all of them; many fistulae are irreparable, and some are so severe as to be fatal.

The Project

Six different languages were spoken in the ward, none of which we understood upon our arrival. The camera became our primary means of communication with the patients, most of whom had little exposure to such technology in their villages of origin. At first we would entertain them by flipping the camera’s view-screen around so they could see their own image. After a short time, many of the women expressed a curiosity for the camera itself. We placed the camera into their hands, and showed them how to operate the zoom. As the women became more comfortable with the camera, they began to experiment more and produced some beautifully poetic, even humorous moments. Upon learning to manipulate the zoom, one woman zoomed in on the rear-end of her friend across the room, setting off peals of laughter from those watching over her shoulder. With a stroke of good luck, we discovered that DOCS owned a projector, and took the opportunity to screen their footage and ours on the wall of the ward. The entire hospital would attend the screenings, the crowd spilling many heads deep out the door. From this light-hearted footage, one gets a sense of tremendous resilience that many patients possess in the face of incomprehensible personal violation.
Recent popular exposés of rape in the eastern Congo have drawn heavily on the testimonies of violated women, who describe at length their rape and how it has adversely affected their lives. Documenting the truth, no matter how clumsy or painful, is a vital first step in the battling the climate of impunity that allows for the rapes to occur. However, we feel that to simply dwell on the horrific nature of these crimes serves more to satisfy morbid curiosity than to foster empathy. Given only the graphic details of the rape and the prolonged suffering and humiliation it has caused, the women become little more than victims in the eyes of the viewer. To us, this exhibits a lack of faith in reality and leaves out an important dimension— the women’s joy as well as their suffering.
Our approach to filmmaking is in keeping with our beliefs about reality and truth. We avoid when possible news magazine style interviews and voice-over narration in favor of capturing direct experience as it unfolds. Our goal is to create a film that takes viewers through the process of healing as guided by the women themselves, who will collaborate in the process of its construction. The final product will consist of our footage and theirs.
Together we will document the women’s experiences, beginning in their war-torn villages, through their stay at DOCS, and to their eventual return home. We will project the raw footage as well as small edited segments in the wards regularly. We hope this will enable the women to inform the editing process by means of their reactions to the material. Our faith in reality will steer us clear from the pitfalls of this sort of project, which all too often become complicit in neo-colonialist logic by aggrandizing the actions of the filmmaker in an exotic context.
Due to our personal friendship with the hospital administrators and the staff of “Guéris mon Peuple,” our team was granted total access to its workings around the clock. The doctors, counselors, and administrators were the gateway into the lives of the patients and familiarized them with our objectives in producing the film. These personnel are often the most trusted figures for women shunned by their families and communities, and are also perceived with great goodwill and gratitude by these patients. Sharing in that trust is the most difficult and sacred responsibility for us to take on while making the film.
Establishing a personal and active relationship between the patients, the camera, and ourselves is the central goal of our filmmaking process. We rely on our French and Swahili in order to communicate with the women, and always have a translator at hand to communicate with the women who don’t speak either language.

Distribution

Our intended audience is two-fold. Through various means of exhibition throughout the DRC, we want our film to reach a wide Congolese audience and serve as an engaging documentary that exposes the problem of rape in the DRC and how VVF patients at DOCS manage to deal with it. In the DRC, having organized forums and debates after movie screenings is a common practice. We hope that our film will foster such discussions and enable the people of the DRC to speak openly about one of the greatest problems and taboos affecting their society today.
We also hope to broaden our scope to a worldwide audience in order to raise awareness about the issue of rape in the eastern DRC. As was mentioned to an audience of millions on the Oprah show several weeks ago, gender-based violence in the eastern DRC is currently one of the world’s largest and least documented human rights catastrophes. We hope to reveal the situation to the world in a way that captures the truth and reality of these women’s experiences, by allowing them to become active participants in the film.
We seek funding to help us realize this film in its development, production, and post-production. Most immediately, we will use a portion of the funds to defray the cost of completing a trailer from the footage we collected during our first visit. We will also use a portion of the funds to take an intensive Swahili course in order to communicate with the VVF patients directly. Another portion of the money will be used to cover the expenses of creating promotional materials and a press packet for use in securing the necessary funding to complete the project. We will be submitting applications to a number of foundations for the spring grant cycle, including Ford Foundation, ITVS, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation.
Once we have secured enough funding for the development of the project, we will use funds to return to the Congo for a period of six to eight months in order to complete principal photography. Our biggest production expenses will be airfare, equipment, and room and board. We will then use the remainder of our funds to edit the film and begin the process of distributing it. We hope to travel to Goma in the early fall of 2005, and then have a finished product by the following summer.
Although the problem of gender-based violence in the eastern-DRC has recently received a lot of attention from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations, it still remains an issue unknown to most of the world. Our goal is to reveal the severity of this issue to an international audience while preserving the integrity of our subjects.

A question of scale

2005-03-09T16:58:00.000-08:00

Is it a worthwhile endeavor to draw up a taxonomy of disaster? A baedeker of pain?

Here's an arresting quote. The source is a humanitarian news service, which has a vested interest in maximizing the press of disasters to attract donors. But here it is:

"[The Congo]'s the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust," John O'Shea, chief executive of Irish relief agency GOAL, told AlertNet. "The greatest example on the planet of man's inhumanity to man."

Congo war tops AlertNet poll of 'forgotten' crises.

In the center of Africa, the centerpiece of the world's suffering. A rich land laid to waste while the world waits.

Running

2005-03-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, a well-done take on the Ituri violence by a Timesman, Marc Lacey. It's about a grandmother living on the run...

Go out and keep the peace

2005-03-02T06:10:00.000-08:00

In the wake of nine casualties last week, the MONUC has killed 60 militiamen in Ituri, in their largest firefight since the mission was deployed. It's within their mandate to respond to attacks and protect civilians with deadly force... this operation used helicopter gunships, though, so it appears that it may be a punitive/revenge raid (though no one is going to admit that).

Most people are pretty gung-ho on U.N. peacekeepers, since the debacles of Bosnia and Rwanda, using force more freely to prevent civilian death. The problem is that if you are going to start fighting a real war, you need real army numbers, not a madly overstreched peacekeeping force. It must also be reasoned whether more fighting makes things worse, even if it's otherwise warranted, especially in a situation of ethnic war.

Since the battalion has gotten blood, perhaps things will quiet down again...

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is trying to get to the bottom of the peacekeeper sex scandal. I wonder if they can keep two things in their minds, at the same time: peacekeepers committed crimes, and peacekeepers save lives. Baby, meet bathwater; bathwater, baby.

Death of U.N. peacekeepers

2005-02-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

Nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers were killed in Ituri on Friday. Just north of the Kivus, Ituri is just a little bit more unstable. Bunia, a town in northeast Congo that has seen its share of massacres but which has been relatively quiet for the past couple of years, seems like it is teetering on the brink again. [The instability there is related to what's happening where I was but is something else again.]

For the conservatives who come down unfairly hard on the U.N., here are soldiers from a poor country dying in a poorer country, bravely as any American. Support the U.N., don't dismantle it.

Belgium repents

2005-02-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

The colonial museum in Belgium's new Congo exhibit. It took a century, but the record stands corrected.

Salt in an Open Wound

2005-02-12T16:12:00.000-08:00

The U.N. mission in Congo, the MONUC, is in upheaval over a sickening sexual abuse scandal. Peacekeepers of different nationalities are accused of exchanging money and food for sex with local women, and a French logisitics officer's been found to operate a pedophile pornography studio in Goma. Here's the BBC.

What can one say about this? I would hope the scrutiny and embarassment for the U.N. will end these crimes. However, I am wary of the outcry raised by right-wing outlets over this scandal. I don't think it's cynical to say that they are concerned with discrediting the U.N., as they have been trying to do for some time, rather than with the Congolese population, which they've been ignoring for years. There is a massive epidemic of marauding militias in East Congo, and the U.N. crimes are, I hate to say, a drop in the bucket, and do nothing to obviate the necessary (if flawed) role the MONUC plays in restoring order there...

Killers from the woods

2005-02-10T10:30:00.000-08:00

Who is doing all the raping and killing in North Kivu? The Washington Post has the story... money quotes:

KIWANJA, Congo -- Julienne Kyakimwa, 34, was picking beans in her family garden when a man emerged suddenly from the jungle with a gun in his hand, a machete on his belt and a menacing look in his eye. The wild-looking man spoke in Kinyarwanda -- the language of terror to many people here -- as he roughly demanded she turn over the beans. [...]
A decade after the genocide in Rwanda, as many as 15,000 Hutu guerrillas are still hiding in the forests of eastern Congo, according to U.N. peacekeepers. Remnants of the militias and security forces that carried out the mass slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994 and fled across the border live off the fertile land, steal from villages and wait for the next opportunity to attack Rwanda. [...]
"In North Kivu, the war is still there."

2005-02-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

Doctors Without Borders top ten underreported stories of the year. Number 2 is Congo. Via The Regular.

O lost war of Africa

2005-02-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to try to turn this into a Congo-News blog, as filmmaking is too long and straightforward a process to talk about much. Why: Congo is the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time, and no one talks about it!

Here is east Congo in context, translated from Der Spiegel in the NYT. As always it's simplistic, blames Rwanda too much, etc., but a good round-up.

Here is the arch-cynical War Nerd on Congo, from a couple years ago. I love this guy, but he is a complete asshole. Maybe in his urge to offend the reader's sensibilities, he manages to capture some truths that others don't, amid the bluster (from his cubicle in Fresno).

As far as what's happening in the DRC now-- elections have been controversially postponed, fighting continues in Ituri, the border with Rwanda remains quiet...

Will the trickle become a roar?

2005-01-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

A new article, this in the Guardian, that features the people that we worked with in Goma-- Lyn, Dr. Kalume, Virginie... I am happy that the word about what's happening in the east is coming out. Here's Lyn and Mama Jeanne on the BBC from a bit ago.

The use of a topic as explosive as mass rape to attract attention to the situation in Congo is complex, a dynamic that our project fairly bathes in, really. It may be an illustration of how neglected Africa has become when only the most lurid episodes and problems-- child soldiers, child rape, mass rape, brutal dismemberments and the like-- are featured in the western press. These problems actually do exist, of course, but the focus on them at the exclusion of more mundane problems and dynamics-- agricultural politics, education, ecology, you get the idea-- isn't exactly very helpful. An impression is created that all of sub-saharan Africa is a blood-spattered killing field, when really most of it is serene and agrarian, a place where problems of poverty vary and make life difficult but not a version of Dante's inferno.

We need to figure out how to get people to think one step beyond "Jesus, that's horrible!" when they think about Congo, if they ever do. At the same time, I may be accepting the horror to a greater extent than I should, simply because I must get my mind to wrap around the world I am living in, that I have now also seen and touched (AIDS sarcoma, machete scars, frenzy over a bic pen) though I am now spending weekends browsing designer boutiques and dancing... ??? And I will never, never be able to do enough. And what are we fighting? I think the goal is to allow people to have lives free of all the unnecessary suffering they endure, the excess, the stupid excess of it. Life can be hard, most people's will be harder than mine and yours, but shouldn't be absurdly, disgustingly so.

If you are reading this, I thank you for your indulgence my friend.

Oprah's on

2005-01-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

Jen was at the dentist and she called me to say that Oprah had a segment on rape in the eastern Congo... you know, just after the piece on Ricky Martin visiting Tsunami victims. Lisa Ling, lately of Channel One news (the one they show in high school homeroom) with the story.

Oprah: So you were just telling me that the Congo is the worst place on earth.
Lisa: Yes, it's the worst.

Wow. It's always good when the Congo shows up in our press, and I'm sure Women for Women international, Oprah's chosen charity, is a good one. But come on, Lisa, did you really risk your life to get the story (as the show claimed)? With your SUV caravan, your armed guards, your buying off of local rebels, etc.?

I found I couldn't write about the subject of women, the overflow of stories and anecdotes that are variations on the theme of "I, my family, my children, my people, endured things that go beyond the sternest vision of hell that you could ever imagine" -- I couldn't even take on the subject or talk about the things we heard when working with the patients at the fistula program at DOCS in Goma. I couldn't put myself there, even though I mentioned it in the IHT article... I didn't want to add my measly "Africa is really f'd" to the torrent that's out there already. And it all came down to "a glimmer of hope." So I failed, and I will freely admit, it was way too big for me to handle.

My personal hope is that the images of our documentary (that we have just begun to work on) will speak for themselves, but Nelson has suggested that what we have is perhaps only a beginning, and we need to go back there with more intellectual preparation, and stay longer, to break through the many traps and paradoxes of such work... to avoid them unlike Oprah just now...

Actually, all of this is painful to think about at all and I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Thanks Oprah!

(Oprah also has letters from women in Bukavu, in South Kivu, about their experiences... they are painfully similar to what we took down in Goma...)

Clippings

2005-01-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

Here, click here, in the IHT, is my article about my experience in Congo. It's a little hackeneyed but so am I. My first published article!

The whited sepulchre

2005-01-13T08:29:00.000-08:00

Apologies for not writing. I can't even write email anymore.

This blog is not dead. Check back here in the next week to see if the IHT publishes my article. Also check for a raft of new photos.

Transition... well, time was compressed in the Congo and it seems like I was there a long time. Nothing has changed here, pleasantly, and I was able to go back to normal routines, minus work. But sometimes I feel steeped in a feverish kind of limbo.

Guns... that night on the dock when I heard my first salvo, how thrilling, then deeply creepy it was. I keep thinking of guns. And contrasts: the light outside is much dimmer in winter and it seems like perpetual twilight here, adding to an abiding sense of strangeness and dislocation.

Stories, pictures... go and see "Hotel Rwanda" as I think they got some things really right.

Boomerang

2004-12-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

I made it out of Africa, none the worse for wear... man, is it cold up here.

There were 40 U.S. refugee program refugees on the plane from Nairobi, a perfect counterpoint to the shrieking deportee that was on the plane I took to Kigali three months ago. They had been in camps in Ethiopia and Sudan, some since 1991. And here they were watching I, Robot and eating mini Belgian cheeses on their way to New York slums and Kansas factories, well-behaved children in tow. The way things go nowadays.

I will keep updating this blog about the movie, etc., but for now... a long holiday season to let the paint set. Check back in a little while...

Thanks to all of you who read this, my first attempt at blogging. Sometimes I wondered why I was doing it, but it was really fun (which explains the millions of blogs out there). Maybe I will keep blogging someday, but not until I have something to blog about. Oh something, something to blog abouut...

Telegraphe Rwandais

2004-12-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

The internet is everywhere.

Hrmmm. I just accidentally erased a long post from where I am, a
solar-powered internet cafe on Shyira hill in very rural western Rwanda. We
made it out of Congo and are staying at an Episcopal mission hospital with
the Kings, a Swiss family Robinson of Harvard-eduacated doctors and
tow-headed blond children perched atop one of Rwanda's thousand hills... the
beauty of this place is stupendous. Sinister too, since I'm rereading "We
wish to Inform You..." while sitting here where It happened, only ten years
ago.

The hospital, which has no power, serves 150,000 people who come by foot or
mountain ambulance (man-powered) from miles and miles around.

I want to come back to this country. It's completely unreal. The air is
sweet and pure, wildlife abounds, people are walking up and down dirt paths
that wind everywhere around sheer, endless hills where little glades and
waterfalls are separated by starbursts of banana plantations and simple
brick houses. It's the landscape I drew pictures of when I was little.

I tried to do some farrier work on the overgrown hooves of the household
donkeys, and am very tired from it. Mom would have been disapointed.

To Kigali in the morning, Brussels by the next morning. I love you all.

(www.shyiradiocese.rw)

A dramatic goodbye

2004-12-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

Here it is, the last day in Congo.

It feels strange to leave just as a weekend lull presages a violent week ahead. Ethnic troubles that Goma has avoided for the most part up till now have begun to infect the city. Jo is running around, attempting to mobilize all of civil society to refuse the coming bloodbath. Fatalism reigns among most people I talk to. Soon, news of a wave of violence overwhelming the city I've come to know a little in the past two months will be something I dig up on Google, if I hear about it at all.

I'm hoping to come back sometime; like the ground here, the stories are very rich. Dr. Ahuka at DOCS proposed we do a film about the pygmy populations he's been working with deep in-country to the west of here. Lyn thinks we should document the project DOCS is setting up in Maniema province. Jo said Lubutu in Maniema is to Goma as Goma is to NYC. It's terra nulius. If you can get to these places, filming something compelling is as simple as turning on the camera.

I'm blown away by what I've seen, and haven't processed it yet. Nelson wrote from New York complaining of cold and difficulty negotiating the sidewalk. I'm baffled by the thought of the subway. Can you play tennis at the courts in McCaren park on a winter saturday, maybe if it's sunny? How am I going to live up to the commitments I've made here, for example procuring goat-cheese making technology for Papa Prosper?

I feel like I've lost a lot of fear coming here, which was like crossing into a dark and imaginary place that became real... I survived, I didn't get malaria or some virulent parasitic boil on my face (I hope), I passed out cigarettes to drunken militiamen with a smile, I listened to volleys of automatic weapons fire and learned not to care (silly people), I worked on a really good project, I sat in urine-scented rooms with women who have lived through things that would have destroyed me and listened to them laughing, I met a lot of good people, truly good... I ate really well and spent mornings playing tennis and swimming, evenings watching films and listening to interesting people tell amazing stories... all in all, I would recommend this kind of trip to anyone. It helps if you go with some stand-up guys like BJ and Nelson, and have a surgeon/senator's house to call home base.

It's time to go home, though, and I am so excited about seeing my friends again. I want to go to the movies, get drunk in a bar without fear of armed robbery, eat a steak au poivre/a juicy bacon cheeseburger, and listen to some music with some damn computer-generated heavy bass. Turn it up!

Three months is really nothing. I've been on a ride, suffered no hardship. I very lazily executed my journalistic imperative (article being worked on, publication uncertain). When I get home I think I have enough material to write a magazine-length article on sex crimes in east Congo, but I don't know if I want to yet.

Wish us luck on the trip home. We're going to a mission hospital in the mountains of western Rwanda for a couple of days, so radio silence until I get to Brussels/ Paris on Wednesday or Thursday. It may be my last chance to find a monkey bride (I'm thinking an adolescent lady gorilla of birthing age) in the cloud forests of the volcanic mountains. If she asks me to stay I will think about it. I'd bring her to Brooklyn but I hear it's hard to get a U.S. visa for a monkey nowadays.

It's alright, mama...

2004-12-10T01:43:00.000-08:00

To those of you I freaked out with news of yesterday, I apologise. I should have made it clear that everyone here understands white people have nothing to do with what they're fighting about. It's true that, and let me quote Jo again, that bullets don't have your name on them, but as long as you don't go the specific place where people are shooting each other, whether it's down the block or on the other side of town, you have nothing to worry about. That's the number one thing I've learned about small arms warfare while here in Congo.

On the other hand, isn't it good news that colonialism is over? ha ha ya.

The only thing we're worried about is Rwanda closing its border if the conflict heats up. That just means spending another thousand dollars to re-route through Kampala instead of Kigali. Two more days!

It's nice that since it doesn't snow here, students have riot days off instead.

What's sad is that as I'm leaving, I finally have a handle on all the dynamics of this conflict. Anyone who is interested in the details, ask me sometime, but I'll need markers and different colors of paper, and maybe some post-its.

Our final task is to film women in the recovery ward watching a film we took of women in the village singing a song about "thank you, I'm healed" in Kinyarwanda. pomo.

Tonight: final throw-down with peeps from UNICEF and the International Rescue Committee! Jello shots, luge shots, body shots, special african male potency shots, malaria shots, gunshots.

email me now if you want fetish dolls. IF mom wires me that money, hear that, mom? I'm in a war here, hell-oooo?

O Pakistan, O Pakistan

2004-12-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

Thank you to the soldiers of the Pakistani battallion of MONUC, the U.N. mission, who have begun patrolling the town on foot.

The Rwandophone inhabitants of Goma are rioting today against the arrival of troops from Kinshasa. Pro-Kinshasa inhabitants are shooting them. We've been barricaded in DOCS all day. Shots ringing out regular-like. Five reported dead. The blue helmets just brought in more injured.

It's a beautiful sunny day. We hope the border with Rwanda stays open until we leave. If not, I'll be adding Uganda to my itinerary.

We are still safe because we're not Pakistani, Congolese, or Rwandan. Now that's what I call white privilege my friends!.

So if the troops from Kinshasa get here, the party in power, which is allied with Rwanda, is going to strip the down bare and burn it to the ground. That's what people say here, in any case. I like the fact that we have access to a motor boat and everything, but I still hope we won't have to use it to escape.

Can't wait to see y'all again.

Ordre de Mission

2004-12-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

We are back safe and sound from Masisi, having apparently escaped the pincers of two opposing armies marching on the territory from opposite directions for a showdown. Or so the rumor goes. All I know is, we were running late and got a flat tire on the way back about ten minutes from Goma as darkness was beginning to fall. Mama Jeanne called Lyn, who in the cell phone static misheard the word "ambush" and was seriously concerned. We knew nothing of this; I was only scared later when Jo, who came to DOCS to meet us, told us he had phoned the governor and was ready to come extract us with a military team headed by someone named "Second Death."

It was quite mission. BJ, who was grumpy with a case of Leopold's revenge but managed to stay hermetic despite the bumpy road, kept turning to me periodically and saying "hey Lou, we're going into a war zone to rescue rape vicitms." I found that funny and was just spacing out, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the scenery while Nelson did all the work. Also funny was Nelson hanging out of the bus filming scenic views while showing serious asscrack views to the women passengers. Mama Jeanne was on her game all day, giving dap and saying something in greeting that sounded suspiciously like "Yo!" to various rescued orphans, pauper pastors, and local bureaucrats. In bed last night Masisi was streaming in my mind in a strange and psychedelic way... I was having visions of women carrying heavy loads on their heads across plunging roadsides, goats jumping out of our path, shepherd boys chewing grass in peaceful meadows, of stern stares, smiles, and a soldier who came begging to the window, his gun drooping pathetically at his side.

Nelson has gone to Kigali after a laying on of hands by the Assembly of God...

Send me money, because I'm strapped, and I'll bring you ivory toothpicks and Livingston fetish dolls. I know a guy who can get a bucket of grenades for a ten spot.

Baby give your trust to me...

2004-12-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

In case the last thing I posted got lost, an update...

Goma is calm, but as Jo said, "the peace of terror is not peace." Something may well happen here, but it's unlikely. If it did, though, it would be big. So I think we'll be out of here just in time. Nevertheless "War" just means a spike in the intensity of the area's perpetual war.

We are off to Masisi this morning, or as I call it, "land of a sixth war waiting to happen." Five wars since 1993, hundreds of thousands killed, and an epidemic of rape as a war weapon. We'll see if we can spot any Rwandans cleaning out Interhamwe spider holes, though according to Rwanda they were here and now they're gone. I am officially French today and the others are Canadian. We are taking two cars, one DOCS SUV and one minibus to be filled with Masisi patients coming to DOCS. Nelson has the hidden camera set up and the patients here are preparing a sung welcome for the new arrivals. We have two cases of Fanta and some bread, the cameras are charged up, and the rest is in the hands of Mama Jeanne and hopefully not the Mai-Mai militas.

Nelson is leaving tomorrow, which means the end of our work, or so it seems to me. I can't imagine having accomplished anything here without him, and in fact I consider myself his assistant. In the past week he has made great strides with the patients, letting the women use his camera to film each other and then having a screening of what they shot. Sort of mind-bending (kids will wave at themselves waving on screen). I think this kind of thing will make our film. Nelson's been living with Phil Masles and has the verite thing down. I wanted to turn everything into an episode of "Frontline." I'm glad he won.

We shot a music video for "Wanted G2K" at club Bobongo yesterday instead of going to church. Hi-larious, and this time I made BJ take my role as the perfidious white man (I don't want to be typecast). These things are going to be on Congolese TV which also makes my mind reel.

Before we go, interviews with the U.N. and the Pole Institute (www.pole-institute.org), a wonderful local think tank. A week and counting, and I don't know how we're going to finish all this. Back in NYC it will be 100+ hours of tape, a lot in Swahili and the rest in French, to start editing. Got to get it done in time for Sundance if not Cannes, bitches.

Congolese quote of the day: "The life expectancy in Congo is 24 hours, renewable."

Scooped again

2004-12-02T23:49:00.000-08:00

Apparently it's easier to figure out what's happening in the Congo-Rwanda border region from Johannesburg than from the Congo-Rwanda border region. Oh, my bad, NYT.

I'm working on something for the IHT and the pressure is on. To the wire, to the limit la la laaaaa...

You know I'm loving this. Goma is like a second home now. The blue Pajero gets thumbs up all over town. Yesterday we got stopped by the police... they wanted a ride down the street.

Tonight I'm going to the weekly U.N. security briefing for expats. Will report further. As for the war, it's happening, but Goma is safe, firefight-free and the border is staying open. It's hard to figure out exactly what's going on, to tell you the truth, but we aren't being foolish. A week and a half to go. Peace.

Scooped

2004-12-01T23:48:00.000-08:00

This is an article from January, but here is
Mama Jeanne on the BBC. The reporter seems to have been on our turf. i talked to Dr. Ahuka about it; of course the reporter promised to tell him about it, but never sent him the article. Journalists.

Kagame's boys cross over

2004-12-01T05:40:00.000-08:00

The rwandan army has crossed into Congo at rutshuru, in small but signifigant numbers, 80 miles north of Goma.

For the documentary, Nelson and BJ insist that we must return to Masisi, those verdant heights, to capture our subject matter at its source and in depth. The last trip was short because of security constraints. it's a miracle we could even go at all, and this time we might be pushing our luck. A war is starting. it's not that the rwandans are up there-- in fact, the rwandan army, being relatively disciplined and salaried, is no trouble. The mai-mai militias and the interhamwe (exiled hutu killerz) are the problem. The rwandans are gunning for them, they are rag-tag as all hell, and they think all foreigners (especially americans and british) are spies. And when the war rumors fly, trigger fingers limber up.

But we rely on our guides to give us the clearance. in any case, they have camembert up there! you couldn't keep me away. And Hutu death squads love French nationals thanks to operation Licorne back in 94, when French troops blocked the tutsi advance, extending the genocide by a couple of weeks. the Interhamwe is still misty-eyed over that one. [That should be Operation Turquoise. Licorne was the botched mission to Ivory Coast last year. --Ed.]

Speaking of a slight problem or a large one-- we have been doggedly filming women in the most sensitive possible situations. it occurs to us at this point that we may face some serious questions about consent when we return. we are covering our legal bases, but the larger ethical question remains... the fact is that village women who have never watched television, who we are bribing with unrefined sugar and body soap, could consent to pretty much anything. to white men in the company of doctors, even if we are careful to ask.

i knew the line between journalism and exploitation was fine, but it is horribly uncomfortable to live out. we have now filmed two patients days before their deaths. we filmed one woman's funeral procession.

but we are doing our best. i hope the product justifies the method.

Cruisin...

2004-11-29T01:51:00.000-08:00

So waiting for this so-called war to happen has been very relaxing. I spent the weekend sunbathing and canoeing. I didn't take the canoe out too far because-- as Dr. Jo would say, this is a silly story-- last week some NGO pleasure boaters went out to explore Minova, the territory on the far shore of the lake to the south, and came under fire from the 10th Congolese battalion. A British girl got shot in the calf and fell out of the boat, swam to shore and was taken into custody. Seems the boys of the 10th imagined that the boat full of mzungus crossing into another military sector could be mercenaries. More likely they were having a little target practice. In any case it was a clusterfuck and the british girl was brought to DOCS with a flesh-wound, for which she was airlifted to South Africa at a cost of $500,000-- and that could buy a lot of yellow-fever vaccinations. Silly NGO people. N'empeche que we were on our way to that same place earlier that same day but didn't have enough gas for the two-stroke. Prudence, prudence serves you well in the Congo my friends!

A word about Mama Jeanne. We have been visiting her orphanage a lot lately and it is the most impressive, filthy, warm, and effective operation, overflowing with children, chickens, goats and rabbits. Nelson was taken with a tiny little girl in a lavender dress who is the most ruthlessly adorable child in history. That is, until the dress flapped up a bit and we found that this was in fact a little boy who only has access to said dress. It was a little jarring for poor Nelson, and all of us in fact. We were treated on Sunday to lunchtime-- a boiled egg, beans, bugari (ground manioc) and a piece of goat meat for each kid, a hundred or so packed into a tiny clapboard room. After the plates were cleared it was sing-along time, and hoo boy. That was crazy. I think it can only be conveyed with footage, which hopefully will be in this incredible nobel-prize winning documentary we are making.

Have suffered notable reverses in tennis progress. Will advise.

Rumors of War/ Rabbits

2004-11-26T05:04:00.000-08:00

Well, as I sit here drinking a delicious orange Fanta (glass bottle, mmmm) everyone is talking war. The Rwandan president yesterday threatened to invade eastern Congo and take care of those pesky Hutu genocidaires in the hills once and for all. Here's an article from the Guardian and here's one from Reuters. Nothing here is ever as it seems on the surface, of course, and no one I trust is especially concerned (for now)-- it's probably just another bit of posturing and jostling for mining, money, and power. I heard BJ just now promising Freddy (the legless ex-boxer who heads up security at the DOCS compound) that he will defend his country, the Congo, against all foreign agression. Which made Freddy smile through his Ray-Bans.

Please remember that for us mzungus, war is just a hassle that will send us packing to the Kigali airport a little sooner than planned. Nothing life-threatening.

In other news for the past two days it's been widows, widows, widows! Today we were shown how at one widows' compound, they take their rabbits into their bedrooms at night to prevent theft. Their request: beds so they don't have to sleep on the floor with the rabbits.

Tiny baby rabbits eating cut grass next to a woven sleeping mat.

Also spent some time with Basara, an agronomist and a most genial man, at his farm outside of town. He grows seedlings for the needy and also produce. Ate passion fruit off the vine and chewed some medicinal herbs. Beautiful weather.

German journalist arrived for dinner. Grrrrrr.

Goma has advantages: carton of cigarettes (Sportsman brand) for five dollars. Buy some peanut brittle from a widow for a dollar, receive sung praise and ululation. Plus, we had a turkey for thanksgiving (it was running around the yard the day before) and Kitsa was able to mimic perfect stuffing, lord knows how. Also, it's the one day when the charity-drive cranberry jelly from America which no one ever eats actually gets eaten. Happy holidays.

U.N. embargo on firearms to eastern D.R.C is being violated

2004-11-23T01:56:00.000-08:00

Latest Human Rights Watch report on the very place I am in right now. Check it out:

According to local sources, local government officials have delivered firearms to civilians in Masisi, North Kivu, long the site of conflict between different political and military groups. Other shipments have been delivered to Ituri, another persistently troubled area in northeastern Congo. U.N. sources reported that some 300 Congolese high school students, refugees in neighboring Rwanda, abruptly left their schools and are said to be undergoing military training.

Good idea. Next year's elections should be fun here.

2004-11-21T03:30:00.000-08:00

Internet access has been difficult for the last week and the power supply episodic. I like reading with candles but I miss nightly action movies with Aimé and Kitsa, who huddle together and whisper intensely as they try to piece together the plot of “Spiderman II” or “Hellboy” without understanding English. They liked Spiderman and described it as “that movie with the red ninja… and the snake-man who walks like a cowboy” (Doc Oc?). Makusu, the 19-year old guard with the baby-face, likes violent movies and makes machine-gun sounds when referring to them, and he’s usually holding a machine gun while he does.

I’m finding it hard to grasp the seriousness of events here as they happen or are recounted to me. The general attitude towards life is slack and shrugging with regard to even the most frightening things-- which I guess is normal when you can’t even remember a time of relative stability. Then there is the tendency, among Congolese, to discount unpleasantness, and the tendency among young expats to gleefully exult in the proximity of carnage because it proves how bad-ass you are to be in a warzone and everything (see the posturing in this very blog). But it can get to you sometimes.

There have been run-ins with officialdom and the police state. It is difficult to take pictures in public and illegal unless you have the right papers, which we admittedly should have but have been slow in getting. We were out taking pictures of carbonized cars that are immerged in solid lava and ourselves pretending to drive them when a bunch of plainclothes guys surrounded us and started arresting us for “photographing a military installation.” Jo was in Kigali so he couldn’t rescue us; a young DOCS surgical resident happened by and tried to resolve things, “Congolais à Congolais.” No dice and we were taken to the security station by armed escort. Speaking French I pleaded with Capitaine Christian, the bleary-eyed security officer in charge, for a good twenty minutes and did all the groveling I could, but in the end it was Dr. Justin who got us out of it. “Congolais à Congolais.” I now regret passing up the offer to broker tantalite and diamonds in the U.S. for Desiré, one of the “plainclothes security officers” or maybe just their associate.

White people=money. The children say very gravely the phrase they know in French, “Mr. the white man, give me money.”

What is the difference between extreme poverty and “insecurity”? Is it worse to die by violence or disease? To be a refugee from another country or an Internally Displaced Person in your own? (it makes a difference to UNHCR.) To be raped or widowed, or raped and widowed, or simply to die of complications from childbirth?

We did an expedition to Masisi territory, adjacent to Goma territory in North Kivu but high in the green volcanic mountains on 80 miles of dirt road… It used to be called the Switzerland of Congo for its dairy production and steep cultivated inclines, but it has been desolated by a decade of constant war (indeed, the Congo wars started in the area). No power, no water and villages made up of mud and wattle huts. They are beautiful, those huts, they look timeless, they hang in clumps from impossibly steep slopes of bean and banana fields, but no one would choose to live in them. They are pure products of rural destitution. Say the Mamas we talked to up there, “We are miserable… help us to build houses of tin that keep the water out.” But the mud houses are so lovely! I say to myself. Romance dies hard. I don’t think we were really supposed to go up there but Mama Jeanne, who lives in an orphanage of sixty kids and runs “Gueri Mon Peuple,” the program for fistular women in the territory, guided us, palms greased a little by the donation of 100 pounds of rice and sugar, as well as three cases of Fanta and some sacks of bread. It’s rebel territory (rebel? bandit? It’s a mess up there) so we came home before nightfall. I will remember the women who walked miles over the mountains to see us, the wooden divan for a sick woman carried to the hospital by ten men, piglets, long horn cattle, and the misty landscape like an amazing vertical quilt of fields.

I won my first game of tennis. I even served an ace. I still jump like a girl when I go for the ball though.

More Pictures

2004-11-15T06:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry I can't hyperlink, but please go to

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2273920093

for new pictures.

But seriously...

2004-11-13T03:54:00.000-08:00

We've finally filmed some interviews of women who are patients of the rape victims' program "Gueri Mon Peuple" here at DOCS in Goma. Each story is more unbelievably horrible than the last.

Here's a UN news agency special about gender-based violence, which has a documentary starring Lyn Lusi, the amazing woman whose house we are living in.

Here's the Amnesty International report on sexual violence in east Congo.

And just for fun, here's a UN news agency article about the reigning climate of insecurity here in Goma. I wouldn't worry about us white boys, though, since we have Jo's guards with us at night. They have been given a special dispensation by the governor to shoot anyone they feel like to protect us. So we've been taking them to nightclubs and starting fights...

One filmmaker's apocalypse

2004-11-13T03:29:00.000-08:00

For the past two days we shot "Prejudice," a film written and directed by Horeb Bulambo, the communications director for Worldvision in Goma. The shoot... it was something. ("Mistah Kurtz... he dead.")

If you ever shoot a short film in the eastern Congo, don't do it like we did. Don't use a cousin of the general of the province as an actress, because it will mean dodging all AK-47 and grenade-launcher toting soldiers because "Mireille isn't supposed to be out without her bodyguards."

Don't shoot the key prison scene in an Italian Catholic orphanage housing 1600 reformed street kids, because all 1600 will want to participate/ try to make you eat their snot (some of those kids were tough). Don't shoot a dialogue scene in a moving vehicle on a lava road through a "bad" (bad for Goma!!) part of town and drive slowly enough for every kid in the neighborhood to jump on/in the car.

Try to finish before dark (curfew!) / before the tsunami.

As for the film, BJ and Nelson, who are in film school, just laugh when I ask them about it. A pity: the acting was some of my finest work.

Ain't no Party like an NGO party

2004-11-08T03:31:00.000-08:00

I went to my first NGO party on Saturday night. It was at the Doctors Without Borders compound, and I was surprised to find a bunch of euro-kids, beer, and Snoop MP3s. Sigh. Single man Nelson chatted with a lovely Sweedish midwife and I talked with a fat man who works at AirServ, a transport service. Some French girl, when I told her how cool and weird it was to see all this beer and dancing in the middle of a disaster zone, said "you really should have been in Afghanistan during the war. The parties were amazing." Doctors Without Borders: heal the children, get crunked up.

On Sunday we went for a drive out in the country and visited those donkeys.

We only have a month left here, and time is starting to seem short for everything we are trying to pull off. I'm to star in a short film by our friend Horeb titled "Prejudice" about a white man who becomes suspicious of his Congolese wife... can't wait to bring a copy of that one home.

Otherwise the only thing that happened of note was when me and Nelson tried to go to the soccer game, only to be apprehended by some drunken cops. "Chou Chou", the ranking officer, said our insurance was expired and couldn't we buy her and her friends some beer? Instead she hopped in the Pajero and we drove to DOCS, where Dr. Jo was able to charm her by pointing out that she was wearing lipstick instead of eyeliner. So we got to keep our ten bucks.

pitcha pitcha

2004-11-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures of Goma. I'll put up more sometime (I have a smashing series with a local donkey, and if that sounds dirty, it's your fault).

Sign in as goma04, password goma if you don't want to join imagestation (it's free though).

Salama Tu, the world doesn't end

2004-11-04T05:53:00.000-08:00

When I decided to come here, my reasons weren’t all very sound, and some were a little ridiculous. One was that I felt that I was living in an envelope of privilege—a city, a social world, a job—that was somehow hiding the true face of the world from me, a truth that I knew existed through reading. The envelope I was in, I felt, was making me sluggish and would not allow me to become what I was fated to become, whatever it was.

Nothing I have seen or done so far, though wildly outside my personal experience, has sparked the alchemy that I’d hoped for— of course, what I’d hoped for was silly and impossible. There is, finally, no escape from the thingness of things, or the drowsiness that grips me. It’s called the actual real world, and it's here to stay.

Ahem. I think I’m trying to say something about the weird existential experience of watching the election on a glitchy satellite receiver transmitting CNN in a palette of static and blue, in a community of evangelical Christians (rightly, in truth) impressed by the Bush administration’s diplomatic ejection of foreign armies from their territory. The world is firmly opposed to Bush, but I’ve managed to land in one isolated corner where people support the president re-elect for reasons I can relate to, or at least forgive. I can’t tell if this helps or hurts my feelings of dread after the fall of Ohio.

The world is now in the hands of God-People, as I have started thinking of them. I think of them with weariness, fear, and a little bit of awe. I know that faith is a force that can propel sustained and diligent action. I know it is something I lack, and sometimes feel I need, though don’t regret lacking. There are many reasons to want to reject faith as a basis for decision-making, but there is no reasoning with the faithful that now rule over us, because by definition they believe, and they are many. The obviousness of that came to me in the middle of a church service in Goma, with the preacher howling praise and the congregation echoing him with stuttering phrases, yelps, and moans, the whole thing finally ending in a spontaneous hymn for pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by.

But the hymn was very beautiful…

forgive me this weighty blah blah.

Birthday blowout!

2004-11-02T03:57:00.000-08:00

Dr. Jo is back from Kinshasa. He's now a senator in the Congolese parliament, and they are drafting a new constitution. He's also a man of profoundly skewed sensibilities who enjoys beginning stories of horrific trauma witnessed and healed by saying "now this is a very funny thing..." In any case, now I am learning Maji-maji guerilla marching songs during the morning jog. (Maji-maji=magic water, the kind that makes you invulnerable to bullets. They are a terror in the rural areas.) Jo's father was adopted by american missionaries and became one of congo's first surgeons. So Jo was bred to be a doctor, and he's very good one and well known in the region. The programs they've started here in Goma for rape victims are set to be expanded into other areas of the eastern congo, places like Maniema province which lack any medical infrastructure whatsoever. Jo says people there are so poor there they lack even rags for clothes, and will be ecstatic if you give them salt as a gift.

Jo's cook, Kitsu, who makes us huge meals every day, made me the biggest birthday cake I've ever had last night: it was a little strange, made of bread and vanilla cream and decorated with pretzels, but I was really moved by its size. I warn, though, that anti-malarial drugs and Primus beer, when mixed with cake and chicken, produces vivid nightmares AND explosive diarreah-- just so you know.

I'm staying up all night to watch the effing election... my faith is with the infantry in Ohio! I know who I will thank for victory, when it comes. I am with you in spirit. You will all get cabinet positions in a Kerry administration; some of you will prefer the government pot/Alexandra Kerry gift package. It's your choice.

2004-10-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba never showed up. I learned from Carole, our Swahili tutor, that his aspirations for the scheduled presidential election in 2005 are compromised by the fact that many in the population believe that he has eaten the flesh of a pygmy for medicinal purposes. Certainly it costs him the pygmy vote.

V.I.P.s

2004-10-29T02:05:00.000-07:00

Today the DOCS compound is full of Congolese Army regulars who are providing a security cordon for the visit of one of Congo's four vice presidents. We are here to film more surgeries, but are trying to film the V.P. as well, as he is visiting the rape victims-- it would be a good thing to have in our documentary. The permission to do so rests with the men with guns, however, as always. We have been having some tricky run-ins with officialdom for our visas and filming permits, and the objective is not to let yourself get extorted any more that is absolutely necessary.

Only soldiers smoke cigarettes here, and they always bum them off me. These guys look great with their green berets, long knives and modified AKs, but they all have facial tics when you talk to them (you wonder what they have seen and done). The policemen here look even better as their uniforms are purple and yellow (Lakers?).

A detachment of Bangladeshi U.N. soldiers just drove up in an ambulance and I shook the hand of their captain, who inquired after my health. It's the first time that any UN people have been less than totally rude to me. Bad car wreck came in as well. Busy day.

We filmed Devon's school yesterday and got a healthy dose of politics, as the administrators were feuding and all the teachers we interviewed used the time to demand salary increases. It reminded me of a public school in America, except it was a wooden shack on a wasteland of lava. The kids put on some great skits for us.

The moon is full, the Red Sox won, and I am exercising regularly. Some devil's magic is afoot in the world!

Congolese Question of the Day: Mister, who is richer, Michael Jackson or Kenny Rogers?

Mzuuunguuuu!!!

2004-10-25T04:22:00.000-07:00

We are settling into a nice lifestyle here.

This morning, for example, we jogged from Maji Matulivu (still waters, Jo and Lyn's house) with our tennis rackets at 6:30 am to the Hotel Karibu, about a mile and a half. The jog is along a nice little lane with flowering trees and views of the lake on one side and the volcano on the other. Each way we pass an old property of Mobutu's, including the lion trailer where he kept his pet lion, and the compounds of other grandees including the area's governor, UNHCR, and the heads of the RDC, the political party in control of North Kivu. If we go early enough the air is clear, but later diesel SUVs from various NGO's make breathing a little difficult. Everyone we pass looks at us like we're insane, but the soldiers guarding various entrances seem particulary bemused. My favorite part is running by a house where a starled four-year old always shouts MZUUUNGU! (white man in Swahili) and starts running after us. Today we had a whole pack of barefoot boys running after us asking for biscuits (the NGO's often give out high calorie snacks to kids). When you're running along with a tennis racket the whole scene makes you feel like a preppy psychopath.

I suck at tennis, but Teo, a pro at the Hotel (clay courts!) is giving me lessons.

We have a jeep here, a blue Pajero with "orthopedic and tramautological surgery" painted on the side. Driving around Goma is crazy. Most of Goma was destroyed by the volcano two years ago, and most of the roads excepting the main drag are actually just raw lava floes. Tough on the suspension. Lava rocks cover everything and they are black and jagged. Watching the little kids run around barefoot makes you wince. But Goma is still pretty big, with about 600,000 people, and it is absolutley hectic with traffic, hawkers, barber shops, cell phone shops and shoe markets. The buildings are low, made of concrete or planks of wood, and all the shop signs are hand painted. BJ wants to have a coffee table book of just the signage-- hulk hogan, rambo, 50 cent, Craig David (??), hulk hogan fighting Craig David. Everyone stares, waves, laughs... if there's one Swahili word I'll never forget, it's "Mzungu."

The dutchmen have left. All brothers, they were inspirational... they've been running a small foundation in Congo for twenty years and go everywhere, to the smalllest villages, just fixing things, buying property for people, importing equipment. They were a bit paternalistic but seem to have adjusted to Congolese rythyms over the years.

We've visited Mama Jeanne's orphanage (600 kids) and Devon's school. Every day going back to Maji Matulivu is like hopping worlds, economies. Poverty is awe-inspiring, finally, when its scope is so extensive, and people's resilience in the face of horrible suffering is admirable, yes, but also terrifying. It is totally alien. I can only watch, listen, but I can't feel it.

The volcano, which looms over the plain where Goma sits beside the lake, glows a molten red at night.

"Please Don't Eat Gorilla"

2004-10-22T04:16:00.000-07:00

Title of a song I heard yesterday... I love that song.

So today was a baptism of sorts as we began filming surgeries. I held up okay. Nelson passed out for a second, but it was from camera strain, not horror. I love the way doctors talk in surgery-- so urbane.

We may have settled our plans for projects. 1) is a promotional video for DOCS to take around to the donators abroad. 2) is to shoot some episodes of "Chagua Maisha," Choose Life, which is a sitcom about dealing with AIDS. 3), and this is the big one, is a documentary on women and war, focusing on rape victims and their recovery process. Here they are specializing in fistula operations, or vaginal repairs, which now make up 80 percent of their cases. Then they have a whole psychological unit as well. It's amazing, amazing what they do with what they've got. But they have more than I thought. Then again, I'm not a doctor. But I look like one in scrubs.

That's already a lot... but we want to 5) film a number of procedures to leave a video library for instruction (as med students can't get cadavers here, ironically enough, due to refrigeration problems). 6) is a short promotional video about the school that BJ's friend Lyn founded here.

So we should be busy. I'm trying to figure out what I can cover in an article, and I've met Horeb, who could be my "fixer," which is the proverbial go-to guy for a journalist who gets you to stories and tells you where to buy your special passes and what to say to officials... ha, do I sound like I know what I'm doing? I don't.

I will marry my bride, when I find her, on the slopes of Mt. Nyiragongo (note I mispelled it in the last post).

Karibu, welcome to Goma

2004-10-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

We are in Goma, where it is the year 2004. Call us here at 243 0 81 73 74 305, my french cell phone which I fixed up to work here. Maybe leave off the first 0, and I'm sure it will be very expensive.

Here in Goma, Congo, the one thing everyone is talking about is Red Sox, Red Sox, Red Sox! Sadly, no, but people are talking about the american election. Everyone loves George Bush because the Democrats are seen as supporters of Rwanda.

We got here after driving from Kigali, through the northwestern part of the country and its thousand hills. Every foot of the red earth is cultivated in small plots, creeping up the steepest slope where you couldn't imagine anyone would be able to swing a hoe. There was less forest cover that I expected. As we approached Congo the volcanoes appeared. They are massive, imposing, active and darken at the upper slopes which disappear into cloud. Nyirango, which destroyed Goma a couple of years ago, is not due to erupt for awhile, and we want to go hike it.

It was quite a trip. Saw my first grenade launcher. Rwandan soldiers are non-threatening and somewhat professional, unlike their counterparts here. But we have fixers and guides and nothing is a problem. People here at DOCS are amazing.

We are lucky to have incredibly luxurious accomadations at Lyn And Jo's. It's just us and some Dutch engineers and the kivu lakefront... Goma bears heavy scars but seems calm, and business is back. Four competing cell phone companies. We've been touring around, meeting people from NGO's and talking about the projects we are going to do for DOCS. My french has been very useful, but many people here speak four languages or more, French, Swahili, Lingala, Kinyarwanda... hoping to work on the Swahili as it seems extremely useful.

It's been a long two days, and we have a lot of work to do...

Arrival

2004-10-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have arrived in Kigali, Rwanda, after a perfectly prosaic flight, interrupted only by the supernatural shrieks of a man being deported back to Rwanda from Brussels very much against his will. We flew in an arc that straddled the Adriatic, the Aegean, skirted the nilotic plains of Egypt and unremarkably overflew bleeding Darfur. As we passed the equator the light grew unmistakably murky through tropical clouds. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban played on and I read about John Kerry in the New Yorker. We touched down; mid-seventies, the air smells of wood burning. Israel Jacob, the driver for DOCS, patiently escorted us to the Hotel Okapi. A pint of Primus, the national beer, a filet of Kivu lake fish, the internet and then bed, it seems. BJ has lost his suitcase in transit.

I didn't mention the third member of our team: Nelson Walker, who some of you may know. He remembered to bring Cipro. No one brought sunscreen.

Update

2004-10-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

There has been progress in my search for a bride. On the eve of my departure, I have come across this sighting of her. Baby, I'm a comin'!

2004-09-23T02:35:00.000-07:00

It has been my contention that I am going to the Congo to marry a gorilla. This much is for certain: I'll not leave without a kiss, at the very least.

There will be no quoting Conrad

2004-09-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

Les amis, I am still on familiar shores. But everything is falling into place. The State Department Advisory for the Congo-DRC is a roaring good read, if a little hair-raising. Be assured that I'll be safe with Jo and Lyn Lusi, their organization DOCS, and my good friend BJ Perlmutt who has already been there and back again.