Friday, July 19, 2013

Let there be light!

 
Power has come back to Bunia! After 7 weeks (or 49 days, but who is counting…) the electricity came on Tuesday afternoon, to great cheers throughout the campus. The area around the school was one of the first to get its electricity back, but by now, most of Bunia is back in business. (Although my French interpreter is still waiting for power at her house.) I understand that the repair is temporary, so I am going to enjoy (no, I am going to savor) the power while we have it and pray that the more permanent repairs can be made soon so that power remains uninterrupted. I celebrated Wednesday morning by taking a wantonly long hot shower, my first in 7 weeks. I didn’t even care that I used so much water. The pleasure was all mine, so I did not consider it a waste.

I have two more weeks in Bunia before I fly out on another plane where they need to know how much I weigh (and will weigh my luggage as well). I will fly into Entebbe, Uganda and then on to Yaoundé, Cameroon via Nairobi. My original flight to Cameroon was cancelled, so I will stay in Entebbe at a Tourist Guest House for two nights before getting a plane out that Sunday morning.

The accounting project is coming along on schedule, at least I think so. All the instructions for the student billing project have been translated into French and we will be practicing the various processes over the next week in a test account. A missionary wife who is a trained accountant has offered to help the finance office with student billing come October when it will need to be done for the first time, so I am spending some time training her in the process and in the accounting environment of USB. The dispensaire project is also almost done, although that project is a prototype which will wait for the new school year for implementation.

I continue to walk around and observe, learning more about Congo as I go. It has been difficult and a bit uncomfortable sometimes being in a country where I do not speak the language, but the people by and large are friendly and helpful, and it has been easier to be here as time goes on. Here are some photos I took yesterday walking around.

 A young girl saw me with my camera and ran after me, wanting me to take her picture and show it to her. After a few minutes, there was a small crowd of children, all wanting to get in the picture. Another picture is of the backyard of these children, with the jerry cans waiting to be filled with water. No running water in the student housing, and for them, it is a convenience that they have a tap right outside their houses. Most households have to walk a distance to get water and that job in many families is the responsibility of the children.
  
And I wanted to show you the coffin maker’s shop, outdoors as  all industries are, making fancy coffins. (Hmmm, maybe my 'hobby' of reading obituaries is getting to me...)

As well, it is summer and that means road repairs in America, a frustration and a bane to anyone taking a vacation/road trip by car. So I thought you might like to see a Bunia road repair project. There was a deep gully in this road, and it has been filled in with construction rubble, and now the road is wonderfully more drivable, at least Bunia style.

Wycliffe has sent me copious materials to read for my assignment in Cameroon, and it looks a bit daunting. I would appreciate prayer that I can get a good understanding of that assignment and be able to work efficiently and wisely.  I have to complete the internal audit review in three weeks, and I gather that there is no padded time in this schedule.  I have sat on the client side of the auditing process for 25 years, so the auditing process is quite familiar to me, but my direct auditing skills are not as fluent.  As well, the books and processes here in Africa are different, and a bit disorienting to an American trained accountant. But I am a bit more encouraged to dig in, as my time with this project in Bunia has given me a better understanding of the grace God gives to do the work before us.


Tuesday, July 16, 2013

African Fare

 

City view

View from the back porch

A fun part of traveling to someplace different is the chance to try different foods. Congo has rich soil for growing crops, and the mild climate around Bunia supports three crops a year.  Unlike many areas in Africa, Congo has lots of water and drought is not a pervasive problem.  Congo has the largest rain forest in Africa, and its rain forest is only surpassed in size by the rain forest of the Amazon.  (Congo’s rain forest starts due east of Bunia, so not that far away.  Even though Bunia has experienced a prolonged season of not much rain, it still has lots of vegetation and looks lush and green from a distance, as you can see from this photo.  It was not taken in the countryside, but inside the city limits, although I am not sure there are actually city borders…  As well, here is a picture from the back porch of the house I am staying at – you can get a sense of the abundant vegetation.) There are many tropical fruit trees as well – mango, avocado, papaya all in abundance. (I arrived just in time for mango season, lucky me, although mango pits are everywhere in the streets. Children shake the mangos from the trees, and eat them as a snack, dropping the pits wherever they happen to finish.  Dusty mango pits everywhere, not so pretty.)


Pineapple


Papaya growing
Bananas, lots of them!
 

The primary food is manioc (also known as cassava), a root which is dug up, peeled, and dried in the sun. Once dried, it is quite hard and chalk-like; it is then beaten into flour, using a large mortar- like wooden bowl/ trough and large round stick for a pestle. I see lots of women and girls beating the dried cassava in front of their homes as I walk around. The flour is then made into a bread like substance called fufu. Fufu is a primary food staple in much of Africa. It fills the stomach, but has virtually no nutritional value.  I had some at the lunch served to those of us who helped with the English oral exams. It was gummy in consistency and had little taste, although I have read that it can smell and taste a bit like moldy cheese.  White bread is readily available at most doukas, and is sweeter than most bread for sale in America.  I have not seen any varieties of bread for sale, just what we would call plain white bread. I am not sure where it comes from, as wheat flour is not local. But the Congolese would not make bread at home, as none of them have stoves. They cook outside, over charcoal fires, so everything is cooked in pots over a fire.

Around Bunia corn is grown as well, which is better, nutritionally, for you. With Bunia sitting on a high plain where it rarely gets hotter than 80 degrees, many crops can be grown.  The Witmers have a garden where they grow lettuce, corn, tomatoes, spinach, peppers, beets, carrots, yams and the like, although not all of those vegetables are grown and eaten locally.  Congolese around here grow corn, sugar cane, yams, potatoes, plantains, and tomatoes, along with many varieties of beans.  (And of course, manioc.) Fish is plentiful, coming from Lake Albert about 40 kilometers away, and probably from the many rivers nearby as well.  Beef and pork are readily available; one meat that is not as readily available is chicken.  Well, it is available, but chickens are not actually raised, they just sort of are.  They are all around, and in many interesting shapes and colors, but are not fed and in that sense, are not raised for eating.  They scrounge for food like scavengers, and the chicken meat is tough and stringy. The only chicken generally eaten by ex-pats comes via the UN, flown in frozen from Brazil. Kwini did buy one chicken (a rooster) to cook for me.  I came across her pouring boiling water over this dead animal with eyes just staring up at me, with N’guna ready to pluck out the feathers. That evening, I found the chicken, sans feathers and guts, cooling in the freezer/fridge, and it was on my table the next day. I confess that the picture of that dead rooster was in my head, and that definitely diminished the meal for me.

Kwini has made some typical African dishes for me. Congolese make everything over charcoal fires, so most all their meat/bean dishes are a stew of sorts and served with rice or fufu. Meat cooked in tomato paste and oil, and beans cooked with tomato paste and oil, adding perhaps some garlic and onion for flavor. It seems every meat and bean dish is cooked with tomato paste and palm oil, and all the food is in a red gravy of sorts, almost sort of Italian looking, even if not Italian tasting…  Since the UN presence in Bunia (they came after the killings in Bunia in 2004, part of the civil war in Goma and Bukavu traveling north; I understand that the UN presence  in Bunia is either the largest or one of the largest in Congo), meat has quadrupled in price, beyond the budget of most Congolese. So meat at meals for the average Congolese in Bunia is increasingly rare. Congolese eat fu-fu, fried plantains, beans, corn and greens. One greens dish that is a specialty is soumbay  (not sure how spelled) -  manioc leaves pounded fine and cooked with a small amount of ground peanut (like peanut butter) and oil.  It looks like cooked spinach and is quite tasty if eaten with rice, a bit strong just by itself.

One thing you do not see is much of anything sweet. No cookies, no cake, no pie, no baked goods of any sort anywhere, except for a fried dough ball sold on the streets. (I am curious about the taste, but wisdom dictates that I pass on this, as I have not been sick at all, praise be to God, and I do not want to risk getting sick.) Very little candy for sale. (And no chocolate!)  I often see Congolese chewing on sugar cane, which is grown all around.  (I read a novel based on life in Congo and that book said that continual chewing on sugar cane makes your teeth turn black. I am not sure how long that might take, as I have not observed that.) Fruit –bananas, passion fruit, papaya, mangos, and pineapple- is plentiful, although I was told that fruit is considered food for children, not adults. I will miss the plant ripened pineapple – the very best I have ever eaten – when I return to the states.  And avocados are in abundance as well. I think of my daughter when Kwini puts plain, peeled avocado on the table, knowing how much she would love to be here, gorging herself on guacamole.  Alas, no guacamole – I have yet to see a single chip of any kind anywhere in Congo.  Not sold as snack food, and unavailable in the stores selling imported foods.  The only snack type food I have seen at all is popcorn (both the douka and children walking around sell small amounts of it wrapped in what looks like saran wrap) and peanuts. Peanuts are found everywhere - raw, boiled, and toasted.  The peanuts are very small, as small as or smaller than Spanish peanuts in the States.  Congolese often buy them shelled and raw, and then roast them in a pan over a fire (making pop, pop, pop sounds) and when almost done, add salt water to the pan and continue cooking until the water has evaporated. Quite a yummy snack!

Congolese do drink a lot of soda, at least it seems that way to me.  Maybe just on special occasions, but it is always offered to me wherever I go.  I tried two kinds that one cannot get in the states – Stony, which is like a Jamaican ginger beer, and Nutrele (well, something like that), a pineapple malt soda.  Not too sweet, and actually quite refreshing.

I am also including a picture of a street vendor – these little boys selling roasted corn. Not too many street vendors selling food on the streets – I think it is just too dusty to be appetizing, the dust being made so much worse by the motorcycles which are everywhere. Many children do walk around selling peanuts and popcorn, and I see many women and girls with baskets of fruit on their heads, also selling. Childhood is short here.  I cannot imagine sending out my grandson (8) to sell food on the streets, and these boys are younger than that. BTW, notice the stove in the bottom of the picture. That is a typical charcoal stove found outside a person’s home, used to cook the family meals.  (Although this stove is a bit nicer than many.) Congolese do not have stoves in their homes, everything is cooked outside; charcoal for sale is plentiful and easy to find.

 

Update:  Lots of rain now, but still no electricity, day 49 and counting. I understand that the UN has gotten involved, putting a bit of pressure on the situation, although there is very little they can really do.  It is exam time at university, and a couple of years back, there was no electricity during the exam period and the students from the government university rioted, targeting anything UN and anything government. They were frustrated by the lack of power to study for exams. The UN wants to forestall that happening this time, as they suffered much damage to their property. I am not sure anything will come of it, as I have heard rumor after rumor for the past couple of weeks that it would be back by Thursday, no maybe by the weekend or, no maybe early next week.   I am doing okay right now, juggling the charging of the computers, but the lack of power does slow me down.

 
The university’s generator broke down as well, so there was no electricity to much of the campus for a few days.  They did manage to repair the generator with a jerry rigged part, not sure how long that will last, as the generator is very old. I no longer have internet access at the house, but that is the worst of it for me.  I no longer have any impatient expectation of the power returning; perhaps I am going Congolese…

I am nearing completion of the student billing project and am nearly finished with the dispensaire project as well.  The dispensaire project was actually pretty easy, once I had a handle on how the software worked. No more earthquakes, glad about that. However, as an update, the bigger earthquake last week measured 5.8 on the Richter scale, with the epicenter only 30 miles from Bunia. Yikes!

Friday, July 5, 2013

To market, to market...


Last Saturday, Marianne, a SIL translator, took me to the big market. I wanted to purchase some Congolese cloth to bring back to the states, and needed someone who spoke French/Swahili to transact business for me.


Cassava root for sale 

Peeled cassava, the primary staple
The market is open every day, but Saturday is the biggest day for shopping.  Everything for sale in Bunia is available at the market.  We walked past stall after stall, probably six or seven rows deep and at least a kilometre long, of used 

Women all in a row, selling wares
300 francs (40 cents) a bunch. Interested?
parts, nails, kitchen wares, scrap materials, unknown brands of shampoo and soap, meat and fish, sacks of cassava flour, fruit, tomato paste (which is a big seller here) and the like. Oh, and fiery orange-red palm oil, big vats of it.  
 
In a place where there are few choices for every day consumer goods (one type of toilet paper, one brand of tea, and no manufactured food stuffs like cookies, salad dressing, or peanut butter), there were dozens  of cloth stalls, literally hundreds of patterns of cloth to choose from. It was a bit overwhelming. Everything is standard measure –pieces of fabric, each 45 inches wide by 6 yards. (And sold in yardage and inches, not meters and cm.) None of it is manufactured in Congo; most comes from India, some from Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa. Colors were bold and bright, and more patterns than I could count.  A few seemed a bit odd to me, like those with giant umbrellas or cartoon like drawings of high heel shoes.  Many bore religious themes, some had the likeness of Kabila (the President), but most were simply designs, many and varied, with geometric like designs and flower like symbols. It was hard to decide. And not expensive by American standards, most pieces going for about $13-15 each.  (But a lot of money for most Congolese in Bunia, where few have regular jobs and have to get by on a few dollars a day.) I was steered away from those that were cheaper, as Marianne said the color would likely fade more quickly.  Then if you like, off to a tailor to have a dress made. (Very few women wear anything other than traditional Congolese dress.) If you want ready-made clothes, you buy them in street stalls – mostly second hand clothing or odd lots from the west. No trying on, no sizing, just lots of an odd assortment of clothes (including bras!) on display for the purchase. Most men wear western dress – tee shirts, or dress shirts, and western pants.  Not too many blue jeans, though. In my time here, I have seen less than a dozen women in pants and no one wears shorts except children.  I was told that in colonial times, the Belgian did not allow the Congolese to wear pants, they had to wear shorts, and that is probably why no one wears them now. 


 
Ted had given me a quick tour of the market before he left for the states, so I had meandered through many of the food stalls on my earlier visit. I confess that I prefer Shoprite.  The food may be fresher – farm to market-  but just looking at the meat covered in flies (with the seller using a rag to fan them away) and the smell of the dried fish, and the open sacks of ground flour sitting on the dirt alley ways and vats of palm oil in large dented tin tubs… I decided that I simply will not  think about the market when Kwini puts dinner in front of me, sort of like not wanting to know what the kitchen looks like when eating at a restaurant… Lots of smells, lots of sounds, and many things I did not recognize.  I was allowed to take a picture of this woman, selling what Ted called the Congolese equivalent of 7-11’s grab and go sandwich. It is a stick of ground and cooked manioc, wrapped in a leaf, which you peel and eat. Ted said it is passable if still warm, but not generally something for Western consumption.  I chose not to buy and see for myself.

Parenthetically, there are no grocery stores in Bunia.  A few basic foodstuffs can be purchased at the douka, and there are literally dozens and dozens of them, all selling virtually the same things. All the food doukas are enclosed stalls on the street measuring about 8 feet by 6 feet, and sell things like juice, bottled water, coffee, tea, mayonnaise, powered milk (the one food item where there is actually a large selection, relatively speaking), tomato paste, soap, toilet paper and matches. Not too much else. Oh yes – they all sell air time minutes. And when you go in to buy, they take the item off the shelf, and before giving it to you, take a rag and dust it off!  Not that the inventory is old stock; the streets are very dusty, and the dust covers everything with a fine coat.

After leaving the market, we walked along, and Marianne spotted the house of a Congolese woman she knows. So we stopped in to see her, which is very Congolese. Rachelle is widowed, having lost her husband last November (effects of high blood pressure, or something like that). She is responsible for rearing 10 children, several not her own, they being kin of some sort. (I have noticed that this is common. You do not say no to kin, and many send their children from the villages to kin in the city, where educational opportunities are better. You simply take them in, and rear them among an extended family structure.) She is an accountant and works for the electric company, although she has not been paid for over seven months now. (Also not that uncommon, and you live by borrowing, with everyone more or less in debt to everyone else, so you lend when you have and borrow when you need – this is very African, I am told.) Yet she was a generous hostess, offering us coffee and bread. I felt bad eating the bread, as I felt like I was taking from her children.  Yet, you would never know there was any sacrifice at all on her part, and she thanked us over and over for stopping in to visit and invited us to come back anytime.  Her four daughters all came into the living room to greet us, and I was glad for my lesson in Swahili greeting my first Sunday in Congo, for all four of them walked by us and bent their shoulder low so we could grab it with our hand.

I asked if Rachelle knew the real story behind the power outage. I figure maybe she would know if anyone would, given that she works for the power company. But no, she did not know, nor did she have any idea of when power might be restored. So I figure if someone who works for the power company doesn’t have any idea, there is no point even asking around anymore. I was told later that the word around town is ‘don’t bother asking and don’t hold your breath’.   So I am assuming I will leave Bunia before it comes back. Thankfully the airport has generators, or I wouldn’t be able to leave. There are always things to be thankful for!

Update: Well, no electricity, but it has rained quite a bit, for which I am thankful.  Water worries are receding.  Two earthquakes though.  Neither was anything even approaching danger or concern, but since an earthquake, however small, is a new experience for me, a bit scary. I was generally unfazed by the first one Tuesday afternoon, but the one Wednesday night was stronger and lasted longer, and came after dark in the middle of a huge thunderstorm with lots of lightening, which made the whole experience that much more unsettling. The missionary couple down the road called me after to see if I was okay, and I was grateful for their call.  It let me know that while I am here in this house by myself, I am not  alone.

And I am continuing to pick up a few more Swahili words.  I am even starting to surprise myself!