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