Business as usual in the Congo

Running a business, including a school, has to be very frustrating in the Congo. The Congo is ranked as the 3^rd most corrupt business environment of the 168 countries in the world, at least by one internet search I did before I came over.  (I had mistakenly thought #3 was a good thing, because a higher number was good on another web site of rankings. It didn’t sound right that the Congo’s business structure was that pristine, and now I know I gravely misunderstood!) As if near impassable roads, lack of good drinking water, no postal service to speak of, and a sketchy electrical supply (electricity went off early Wednesday morning and we are being told maybe power by the weekend – I am in a university office and hardwired connected to the internet to post this blog), is not discouragement enough here in Bunia, it is difficult to navigate the government rules about business matters.

Like all governments, the Congo assesses customs on imported goods. But Congo does not have a ‘Walmart’ mentality about imports – import a lot of stuff and tax it a little to raise a lot of money. Instead, it has a high customs tax on imported goods which makes the Congo not competitive for international companies to come in, and hard for local business to be able to invest in new equipment to expand, or even import parts at a reasonable cost to keep existing things working.  And because the official customs rate is very high, customs are often ‘negotiated’ at the local level and the monies collected don’t always (often?) reach the coffers of the government, reinforcing the cycle of high official tariffs and more ‘negotiated’ rates at the local level. And at the local level, the assessments may bear little relation to published rates. The University brought in some computer parts to repair existing equipment at a cost of about $300; customs assessed over $200, in large part because the local authorities decided it was worth more. I heard one story (although it was about Uganda customs) in which a German NGO (US equivalent of a humanitarian not-for-profit org) sent toothbrushes to distribute, and the ‘customs’ assessed was more than the goods were worth. These types of imports are supposed to be exempt from any duty, but local authorities use ‘discretion’ sometimes, to the harm of its own people. Right now, the university is trying to get 132 refurbished laptops through customs, and there is a fine pending because a disputed import document. (They have not started the customs discussion yet.) They are sitting at the airport, and Ted asked if the university could at least transport them to the school and keep them locked up, with customs having the key, until the customs can sort out the fine and duty.  But they said doing that would require the permission of a committee consisting of 5 people, and only 4 of the people were available to make the decision, so the laptops sit at the airport, and there is the danger that some will go missing.  Whatever the frustrations with, and poor rules of, the US government may be, they are not so onerous as to make it impossible for most of us to live and prosper. Here, almost all the people suffer.

Banks are not generally trusted, so the economy is primarily a cash and carry enterprise. A local bank failed several years back, and many people lost their money (no such thing as deposit insurance!) which added to the mistrust. Not many have bank accounts. So you have to carry money with you everywhere. (But I’m told it used to be much worse in the old days, when inflation resulted in an exchange rate of 4 million Congolese francs to the dollar, and buying anything in francs required real muscles.) Most everything here is purchased and sold in USD; even the university books are kept in USD, which is easier for me, and probably for the finance people too, as the exchange rate is 900 CF to the dollar, and that would be a lot of zeros if the books were stated in CF. But the cash economy makes robbery a more potent concern. Much of local commerce is conducted at (very!) small local stalls, called (phonetically) douka in Swahili, and the merchants carry their sales receipts home at night, and are a target of robbers. 

The government requires businesses to pay not only salary to their employees, but also pay a transport allowance, furnish a home or provide a rental allowance, and cover the health costs for their employees.  Plus, a dependence allowance if you have a wife, and an allowance for each one of your children. BUT, there is no minimum wage, so all the allowances are, for all practical purposes, taken into account first, leaving whatever is left as your salary. Only the salary is subject to income tax and the equivalent tax of our social security system. Of course, most people do not have salary jobs. There are few jobs as we think of jobs, many live on subsistence farming or subsistence selling at their douka.

But ‘the way it is’ can be good for some businesses. A bar opened just over the wall of the university campus about two years ago, and they blare loud music every night starting about 8 PM and going until around 2 AM, later on weekends. The music is extremely loud, louder than I can describe. (We all sleep with ear plugs, and I was very grateful Ted gave some to me when I arrived, but the music is so loud that I can hear it quite well even with the ear plugs and this house is not even next to the bar.) The university complained; it took 22 months for the matter to come to court. The court found against the bar, agreeing that it was disturbing the peace of the entire neighborhood, and assessed a fine of $50.  So a win for the bar, which probably earns that much each night in its first hour of operations. They paid the $50, and the music blares on. That is the way it is…

But in other ways, business life just goes on.  No electricity, but schools open and businesses open and you work around it. The Witmers have a generator, and run it a bit, just enough to keep food from spoiling. (That, and they wrap their refrigerator in a blanket.)   A bigger concern is water, always water.  Without electricity, the well on campus cannot pump, and everyone is in conserve mode. Fortunately, we have the tank of rain water; most Congolese do not, and Dana said some come begging for water to drink when the electricity is off for a long time.

The Congo isn't like Hopewell

 

Ted Witmer

Here are pictures of my hosts, Ted and Dana Witmer. Ted is the director of development at the University, but he teaches as well, and wears many, many other hats. (He was a mechanical engineering major at Princeton, and that really comes in handy.  Everything here seems to be in need of fixing, and unlike America, nothing is wasted here. Even empty glass jars, if not needed by the Witmers, are taken down to the people selling in the market for their use.) Ted works closely with Martin, the IT person, on computing needs and set ups, and current projects include setting up a computer lab - 132 new computers are due to arrive today, and Ted has asked a senior person in the University with good relations with the authorities to handle the customs discussion - and exploring a self-service system for the students. This is much needed in a country that has no mail delivery, and no way of getting information to the students, including their student bills. 

 

Dana Witmer

 Dana is a pediatrician, and she is one busy lady. She works at the hospital two days a week and at the school clinic two days a week. She is also very instrumental in organizing church based support groups, something much needed after the Congolese civil war of 1997-2006, when entire villages were torn apart by the atrocities of the war. And still needed, as rebel groups are active in the eastern Congo – rape and looting still happen, with devastating consequences. (A recent example:  Three women in one village were raped recently by rebels. These women were isolated in their huts, devastated; if raped, women are always turned out by their husbands. The support group reached out to them and brought them into their care, and reached out to the husbands as well, with the result that the husbands have accepted their wives back, something simply unheard of in this culture. Praise be to God!) These support groups have also been instrumental in getting the society to come together and not ostracize those who carry the HIV virus. Dana is in the background, mentoring 2 leaders from Bunia who are developing the support group leaders.  Dana says that the biggest health issues for the children here are malaria… malaria… malaria… and tuberculosis. She is no nonsense, a vocal and focused advocate for the health needs of children here in Bunia. She comes home from the hospital with stories of sickness and malnutrition that I doubt I would ever hear in America. They are amazing people.

Rainwater tank

Things I take for granted in America are very different here in the Congo. Perhaps the thing that most affects my daily life here is water.   Ted told me never to drink any water anywhere in Africa, as one cannot be sure the water is safe.  My hosts collect their rain water to drink. They have a pipe connected to the gutters of their roof which allows the rain to flow into a 5,000 litre (~1,250 gallon) tank. From there, they fill a blue plastic 5 gallon water jug and cart it into the kitchen.  The water is then boiled and when cooled, put into a water dispenser that filters the water.  Only then is the water ready for drinking.   The primary concern is amoeba in the water which causes a particularly nasty form of dysentery, although there are general purity concerns as well.  (I learned that eating the seeds of the papaya will help kill the amoeba, although I am still glad to have a supply of Cipro…) A covered pitcher of water is always in the bathroom to use for brushing teeth. For bathing and washing dishes and clothes, rain water supplemented with water piped from the University well is used. It is not safe for drinking, but okay for other uses. Here are pictures of the water system, and the kitchen water filter, holding the water safe to drink.


Kitchen water dispenser (yellow)

 

Water system to house,
rain barrels and piped water from
well, using a gravity system
for delivery to house.

 

The nurse practitioner at Passport Health where I got my yellow fever shot (required to obtain a visa for the Congo) also went over rules about water usage in Africa, and said a common mistake for visitors from the West is not keeping their mouth shut at all times while showering. I would have never thought of the need to do that! You should try it yourself and see how hard it is.  Near impossible, but I do the best I can. The water supplied for the ~50 students (and their families) who live in University housing comes from a well on the campus property, and needs to be treated with chlorine tablets before drinking. This is true of any water anywhere. The health clinic on campus buys these tablets by the thousands, so students have ready access to treat their water. During the rainy seasons (March-May) and (Sept-Nov), one can use water pretty freely, but one must conserve during the dry seasons or you could run out. The rainy season of Mar-May has been particularly dry this year, and the ex-pats I meet are quite concerned about whether they will have enough water to get through the summer. The driest time of the year is Jan-Feb.

Electricity goes on and off, usually several times a day, and sometimes many times a day and almost always for a period during the evening.  In every room, there is a switch to turn on a 15 watt battery powered light, so one is not completely in the dark when the lights go out. Ted says the electrical supply gets particularly spotty when it rains.

Home security is a big concern because there is a lot of crime, especially after dark. My hosts keep their doors locked at all times, as do many of the homes. Many of even the more modest homes have a security wall and gate.  At night, in addition to the normal locked door, there is a metal outer door that is securely locked in place over the wood door, and bolted at the top and bottom from the inside. (And needless  to say, there are bars on the windows.) Below is a picture of the Witmer's metal outer door.

 



One of the few good roads I have encountered, although the flat smooth road only lasted for about 500 feet.

 

Homes range from a few big houses to modest homes to many, many shanties. Many of the big homes are enclosed by a wall topped with barb wire with quite a few having a guard tower on the inside wall perimeter staffed by a private guard, some just at night, but some 24 hours a day. Above is  an example of a big house with a guard tower. If you look closely, you can see a small slanted roof that looks a bit like a solar panel. That is the roof of the guard tower.

 

I took a picture of this wooden bridge over a fetid gully stream (forgetting that bridges are prohibited photography, but I am not sure it really qualified as a bridge) and saw a boy ease himself down into the stream bed and start filling up his yellow 5 gallon water containers, the kind used by most people to transport their water home. Maybe the water was not intended for drinking, but my heart ached that anyone would use that water for anything.  And yes, motorcycles and cars use this bridge to cross!

 

UN security vehicles and installations are throughout the town. Since the civil war, the UN has a large peacekeeping force here in Bunia. There is still a considerable amount of rebel activity, and many roads and areas in the outlying Orientale Province (Bunia is located in this Province) are unsafe.  If you have to go somewhere else, I am told it is best to go by plane. 

 

So yes, this does not look or feel anything like living in Hopewell. I sit here, a bit embarrassed by my riches back in America, and also sobered that I had no idea of how safe and secure my life in America has been.

 

A Far away land

I have never been to a third world county, closest I came was a week in Morocco back in 2005. From what I have seen so far, Morocco seems almost first world…  

 

Bunia is a city of between 300,000 and 500,000 people   (I doubt whether anyone knows the count with any certainty), but with virtually no infrastructure.  Not a single road is paved. Ted (my hosts are Ted and Dana) said that during the election season four years ago, the main road in town (where the market is) was graded, curbed and guttered, and the candidate (who won the election) promised to pave it. Four days after the election, workers came and sprayed a layer of oil on the road and left.  Now the road is the same hard packed and rutted road you find everywhere. When it is dry, as it has been for two weeks now, the dust is everywhere and settles on everything. When it rains, the mud can be ankle deep. The roads are not drivable, at least as I think of driving; even the motorcycles have to weave in and out to find reasonably flat areas.  The University is located in the central area of Bunia, a prime location, and these pictures were taken less than a half kilometer from the school.  I can’t even imagine what the road might look like further away from the central area of town.

Most people do not have electricity or running water in their homes. Cooking is done outside on charcoal fires (the smell of charcoal is everywhere in the early evening) and you see women pounding food and washing clothes outside, for outside is where life happens. Children are everywhere, with over half the population under 15 years of age.  Outhouses are the primary sanitation. People gather outside in the early evening; there is no electricity, so television is out.  (Some homes have short wave radios.) Here is a pretty typical picture of evening life in town, women sitting under a thatched structure called a (phonetically) pay-yat (French, spelled paillote). 

 

A picture of children on their way home from school, which goes until ~ 5 PM. School children wear crisp uniforms, white shirts (which are very white – I don’t know how without washing machines and bleach, given all the red dust!) and blue pants or skirts.  By the way, the children are walking in front of University apartment housing for married students, which is far more substantial than most homes around the University.  This is a three apartment building and they have electricity, and a water tap and outhouses shared with other apartment buildings.  Ted told me that the apartments were built with a cook area in the apartments (you can see the chimneys), but the women do not want to cook inside, preferring to cook outside over open fires in the back.  It does not get too hot or too cold here in Bunia (elevation 4,400 feet), so outdoor life is year round.  

 

One has to be cautious about taking pictures in the Congo.  Photo taking of any public building is strictly prohibited (hence no picture of the airport on my arrival) and one cannot even take pictures of bridges, as they are considered military installations. One is supposed to ask permission to photograph people, and my feeble French allowed me to point to my camera and say, S’il vous plait? As I walk down the roads near the University (Je marche pour mon curatif), some stare at me and others call out in French, asking me things I do not understand (I am getting pretty good at saying ‘Non comprendre pas’), or engage me in conversation to practice their English.  By and large, they are friendly to a stranger like me, very often saying bonjour as they pass. I am getting better at saying bonjour the way the Congolese do, which is quite lyrical.

I have not been given a tour yet, but Ted tells me there are no grocery stores, most everything is bought in the market place, which is very large. (I saw the market coming into Bunia on the plane, and there were hundreds and hundreds of people shopping in what looked like a mile long string of stalls.) Ted & Dana have a garden, and with three crops a year, it supplies much of their produce. And for what they do not grow, people come around to their house to sell produce.  This family came to the door Saturday morning, selling passion fruit, oranges (all oranges are green here, and quite sour, I’m told) and rhubarb. 

Their little baby boy was so cute – five months old, named Solomon.

 

And while I was visiting Martin the IT person this afternoon, a man came knocking on the door, with bags of produce in his hands, asking if Martin wanted to buy anything. So this is how it works here

 

 

Maybe next time, a missive on domestic life… 

Bientôt

Ready, Set, Go...

I really didn’t expect retirement to be this busy.  With 27 papers to do, 16 books to read, and many other assignments for a semester at school, I had little time to think ahead to my summer and the accounting assignment I volunteered to do in the Congo. I did manage some ‘Congo’ prep among writing all my school papers – shots mostly: yellow fever, typhoid, polio, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and meningitis, plus getting scripts filled for malaria pills and Cipro tablets.  (Fortunately, I was up to date on more ordinary shots like tetanus and pneumonia and influenza and shingles, or my arm would have been really sore.)  I began to get the idea that one does not go to the Congo for a casual visit…

I was headed to Bunia, DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire) to assist a university with changes to their accounting processes.  Asked if I was willing to bring supplies with me, things that were very difficult to obtain in the Congo, I said yes, and offered two of my three suitcase allowance on British Airways.  So as I was typing away in my office, paper after paper for school, package after package arrived at my home - via USPS mail, by UPS, by FedEx… I lost count. The packages contained mostly computer related equipment, including 9 laptops, Ethernet devices, flash drives, computer batteries and a lot of ram, plus a photo ID printer, which felt like it weighed a ton. Packing used a lot (!) of bubble wrap and I felt like a computer (vs. a drug) mule… Altogether, 105 kilos came with me to the Congo.  It was hard to know how to plan for 14 weeks in Africa, not knowing what was available here, but I fit in whatever I could manage in the remaining available suitcase space, which ended up being not so much.

Security through the Philly airport was a breeze, but I was grateful Rachel hung around until I and my carry-on cleared security.  The photo ID printer was expensive, and I packed it in my carry-on to protect it. I wanted to hand it off to Rachel to take back to Hopewell if they bounced it as too suspicious at the airport. I was grateful for a very beefy guy who kindly hoisted my ~40 pound carry-on into the overhead bin on the plane.  The airplane left Philly at 10 PM Saturday night and I arrived at Entebbe, Uganda at 7 AM Monday morning to wait for the MAF flight over to Bunia. The airport was small and stuffy, but not as hot as I expected. It looked more or less like a bus station, no fans,  and of course, no air conditioning. There was a cafeteria, but I was leery of eating anything.  I had a cappuccino, figuring the water had been boiled and therefore safe. (And no worry that I only had US dollars, as that seems to be the currency of choice everywhere in this part of Africa.) I was probably overly cautious about the food, but I didn’t want to get sick the first day. Mostly I sat reading my Kindle, dosing off occasionally, but I figured I was well protected by all the UN peacekeeping soldiers milling about waiting for flights.  Seems Bunia is a UN base, who knew? I did find the Ugandan soldier toting a semi-automatic rifle over his shoulder a bit disconcerting, though...

The MAF plane was a 10 seater, and it looked way too small to carry me and the other folks (there were 5 passengers altogether) AND my 105 kilos, let alone their baggage.  The pilot seemed unflappable, a Type B personality, which made me feel safer. I sat in a seat behind the pilot off to his right. I could see all the controls, and once in the air, wasn’t sure I had the best seat in the house. A bit TMI for me.  The pilot pulled in the steps from his cockpit seat and closed his door, said a prayer, started the engine and looked both ways before turning onto the runway.  I am sure pilots in big planes look both ways as they approach the runway too, but I don’t see that, so this felt a bit like we were in a car, and that fleeting feeling did not feel so good. But the takeoff was very smooth and soon we were flying over the verdant hills of Uganda.  I really did not expect it to be so green.  Probably the only uncomfortable part of the trip was my ears, as we climbed to well over 10,000 feet, and there isn’t any such thing as a pressurized cabin in a plane like that.  We flew over Lake Albert and over the mountains to land on the high plains of Bunia. I was a bit concerned about the landing, seeing that I could see it all passing in front of me, but the pilot landed the plane as smooth as any airliner I have taken.  It was actually pretty amazing to come down ever so gently onto that lone short runway.

My contact was waiting for me at the gate, and he was a very welcome sight. With five suitcases, there was no way to escape ‘customs’ and I knew I could not face that process by myself. Besides practically everything was their stuff anyway.  The officials opened every suitcase, rummaging through them for things of value.  Fortunately, my contact was able to protect my stuff from customs! In the end, they charged the school $30 for each laptop and let the rest go. There was no receipt given for the customs payment, which means the funds were probably kept local, perhaps very personally so.

Then into a 4X4 for the ride to the university and my home for the next 11 weeks. We traveled down a hard packed red dirt road, with people walking all around and motorcycles zipping past very fast, as well as a few lone 4x4’s. I don’t think a car would even attempt these roads. The dust filled the air, actually creating a visibility problem at times.  And the roads, ach, I have never ridden over roads like these – mounds and hills and gullies and big rocks all about. I don’t think we ever got above 5-10 miles per hour, and even at that speed, I thought we would break the axle. Later than night as I lay in bed (under a mosquito net, of course), I thought about that jarring ride - perhaps the officials need to collect personal, local customs. After all, they could never depend on speeding tickets as a source of revenue… 

Leaving on a jet plane...