THREE WEEKS INTO OUR HUMANITARIAN MISSION TO THE DRC
January 10-12, 2014
Today
was the day we had been waiting for since the end of August—departure day for Kinshasa,
capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most people refer to the
country as the DRC although in French it is the RDC—Republique Democratique du
Congo. Our itinerary called for a flight
to Chicago and a rather lengthy layover, then a flight to Brussels where we
would have just 70 minutes to get to a different terminal for the flight to
Primarily because of the short turnaround time in Brussels we had purchased
premium coach class seats closer to the front of the airplane so we could dash out
of the airplane, clear passport control and customs, and not miss our flight to
Kinshasa.
So we were up at 5 a.m.
in order to catch our shuttle to the Salt Lake City airport at 6:30 a.m. Fortunately, we had all of our suitcases and
bags weighed and organized, so that we were all ready to go when the shuttle
arrived. There was just enough ice on
the ground to give me some concerns, but the shuttle driver handled it all
expertly. We had been anxious all week
about the weather in Chicago, as the airport had been closed for several days
due to extreme cold and icy conditions.
But the Chicago airport had reopened, which meant that our flight to
Chicago was still on! The SLC airport
was not crowded; we didn’t have to wait in line at all to check our bags. We were told that our bags were checked
through to Kinshasa, although we didn’t realize at the time that we would not
be required to retrieve them and take them through customs in Brussels. As it turned out, that was a great blessing,
because otherwise we would have missed our flight to Kinshasa.
We
breezed right through airport security even though I had forgotten I had a 4
oz. aerosol can buried in my hand luggage.
The TSA picked it up on their scanners and made me pull it out, but
after telling me that it exceeded regulations, a kind agent let me through
without confiscating it. I then
proceeded to purchase us a major breakfast because I didn’t know it we would be
given food on the plane or if we would have to pay for it. On our flight we met a professor at Southern
Virginia University who had served a mission in France years ago and had
baptized a Congolese man. We told him we
would try to find the man when we got to the Congo and to put the two in touch
with each other.
Upon
landing in Chicago we proceeded to the gate area, whereupon Gloria went off in
search of a wi-fi hotspot and I proceeded to telephone AT & T to order up
international messaging and data plans for our iPhones and iPad. Of course we were wearing our dress clothes
and sporting our missionary badges, and so several people stopped us to inquire
who we were and what we were doing. As
we were conversing with one such person, a young mother trying to get back home
from a business trip, up strode Torben Smith, son of our friends Thales and
Laura Smith from Roseburg, who is about Monique’s age. He was trying to get back to his home in
North Carolina from a business trip to Korea.
We had a nice visit; it’s great fun to run into old acquaintances in
unexpected places.
Our
flight to Chicago was delayed getting off, and so we were even more concerned
about making the connecting flight in Brussels.
Evidently the terminal lost electric power when we were on the runway
waiting for clearance to take off, so we were apparently the last flight out of
Chicago for a while. If we had been
delayed even a few more minutes, we probably would have been grounded as
well. We felt that we were being watched
over as our journey unfolded. We were
also fortunate in the seating on our flight to Brussels because the plane was
not full, giving us each an entire row of three seats to ourselves. Hence, we were actually able to stretch out
and get some sleep on the flight, something we have never enjoyed before on trips
to Europe.
As
soon as the plane landed in Brussels we bolted out of our seats and out the
door, located our terminal and gate on the monitor, and began power
walking/jogging toward our destination. All the while I kept expecting to be
shunted off to passport control or to the baggage area to pick up our
suitcases, but strangely enough we were spared that ordeal. We just took a shuttle bus to the terminal
that serves Africa and Asia, walked to the gate and right onto the plane,
almost without even breaking stride.
Again, we felt that we were being guided along, that the Lord really
wanted to make sure we got to Africa.
The
flight to Kinshasa was crowded, and I had to sit right next to a young mother
with a fussy 5-month old baby boy, but we endured it patiently. The passengers appeared to be about 90%
Africans, evidently on their way home from Europe. About two hours before our landing several
serendipitous things occurred. First, on
my way back from the WC a man stopped me in the aisle and asked me about my
missionary badge. He wanted to make sure
I knew that he was a Christian, and quoted several passages from the Bible for
me. I talked to him briefly about the
Church and then promised to try and find some literature to give to him. Second, as I made my way back to my seat I
noticed that Glo was talking to a man.
Evidently he had approached her when he saw her missionary badge and
said to her “hello, sister.” Not only
was Jean-Pierre Mguwa a member of the church, he was the bishop of a
congregation in Kinshasa that meets in the same building as the one we have
been assigned to and very charming. I
asked him to go back to the man I had talked to in the back of the plane and
give him a copy of the Liahona, a church magazine.
The
Kinshasa airport was hot and crowded, but eventually we got through passport
control, cleared the health checkpoint by providing proof of our yellow fever
immunizations, and found Antoine, the man hired by the church to help
missionaries get their luggage off the carrousel, onto a trolley and out of the
building to a waiting public or private transport. Fortunately, two missionary couples, the
Moons and the Sneddons, along with Aime Ngoy, a church employee who is also the
bishop of the congregation that we are assigned to, were waiting in a van to
drive us to our apartment. The drive was
rather intimidating, as there were so many people in the streets wearing dark
clothing and darting in and out of traffic, and portions of the roadway were
under reconstruction.
But we arrived at our
apartment building, Immeuble Commimo (Commimo Building), without incident. Our
address is 198 Ave. Isiro, Gombe, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
although there is no mail service in the DRC.
Our building is situated in the northern part of the city in a
reasonably upscale district known as Gombe, not far from the Congo River and
most of the foreign embassies. Our
apartment is on the 5th floor but the lower floors are leased to
USAID, the American foreign aid agency, and therefore the building enjoys some
serious security measures. It seems that
after the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, the American
government strengthened security at all of its facilities in dangerous parts of
the world.
To illustrate, the
building is protected with a high wall with razor wire. To prohibit a suicidal terrorist from
bringing a vehicle loaded with explosives into the compound, as one approaches
the entrance concrete posts in the ground force vehicles to slow way down and
to negotiate some right angle turns. At
that point armed guards determine whether to open a steel door and to retract
steel posts in the ground so that one can enter into an enclosed garage
area. Once inside the garage, one must
turn off the motor and open the hood for guards to inspect the engine compartment
and to pass mirrors under the vehicle to ensure that there are no hidden
explosives. If one passes that test, the guards raise a second set of steel
posts and open a second steel door leading out of the garage and into the
compound. To exit the compound, one
must negotiate a third set of
retractable steel posts in the ground, as well as more gates and armed
guards. Of course the guards also keep a
log of everyone attempting to enter and exit the compound, and security cameras
are everywhere.
Our apartment has been
occupied for the past 18 months by Brent and Val Moons, who we are replacing as
Humanitarian Services Country Directors, but fortunately before our arrival
they had moved into a nearby unoccupied apartment in the same building so we
could have some privacy and an opportunity to try and overcome jet lag. Of course we were dead tired, but they
insisted on giving us a complete orientation to the apartment and the important
water filtration system before allowing us to fall into bed.
Somehow we actually
were able to get a respectable night’s sleep, and fortunately the next day was
Sunday and we didn’t have to be ready for church until 10:45 a.m. Elder Moon insisted that he coach me while I
drove to church. Although many of the
roads in Kinshasa are in marginal condition, Avenue du Trente Juin, a wide
boulevard reportedly built not too long ago by the Chinese, covers most of the
journey from our apartment building to the church. Driving in Kinshasa appears to be rather
dangerous, as pedestrians and cars alike appear to give no thought to traffic
control signs or lights. We are happy
with the Toyota diesel pickup with canopy hat has been assigned to us for our
transportation and protection.
Our church experience
was delightful. The building, known as
the GB (Grand Bazaar) building, houses two wards and the Kinshasa Stake
offices, and a temple has been announced to be built on the grounds. Priesthood and Sunday School meetings were
well attended, and the discussions were lively.
Five missionary couples and a few American and European church employees
supplement the local African members.
For example, the Gospel Doctrine teacher, Jean Delisle, is a French
Canadian from Quebec employed by the Church in the Facilities Management
department, and the High Priests Group Leader is an American working at the
Embassy. We were asked to say a few
words during Sacrament Meeting; I of course translated for Gloria. The weather was warm of course; at this time
of year (summer) it reaches about 90 degrees every day and cools down to 73
degrees at night.
After Church we got a
chance to settle in a bit but in the late afternoon the Moons came up and
together we collaborated on dinner. We
enjoyed getting acquainted with our apartment and the building and our views of
the city. We have a good view of the
train station, a large public square known as Place du 30 Juin, several tall
buildings and government offices, and the Congo River. The apartment is not new and the workmanship
is far from temple quality, but it is spacious and more than adequate for our
needs. We have two bedrooms and two
bathrooms, a living/dining room that open out onto a covered deck overlooking
the Place, and a serviceable kitchen.
The washing machine is in the kitchen and the dryer is on the deck. Because the public water is deemed of
questionable purity, we have a three filter system that at least delivers
lukewarm clean water. We must rinse all
fruits and vegetables and wash all dishes in a diluted bleach bath. We have
good air conditioning and so will be quite comfortable. Although the internet service is down much of
the time, we are grateful to have pleasant surroundings in which to plan our
work and also to relax when we have a
break.
January 13-19
Monday marked our first
official work day as humanitarian missionaries.
Elder Moon insisted that I drive the four of us to the office so I could
learn his preferred route and become comfortable with driving in Kinshasa, to
that extent that is possible. He
instructed me when to signal, which lanes to travel in, where and how to turn
and where not to stop, when to plow aggressively through pedestrians and
traffic and when to be cautious and defer to pedestrians and other drivers,
which potholes to avoid, and where to buy diesel to get the best exchange rate.
The Service Center where our office is located is a converted villa known as
the TA (Temporal Affairs) Building and is situated at 18 rue Roi Baudoin. Elder Moon instructed me how to back into the
compound and where to park in order to make a quick get away.
We were introduced to a number of Service
Center employees, but of course had trouble remembering all of the names and
faces. Everyone seemed friendly; some
even knew our names already. The Service
Center houses the Construction Department, the Real Estate Department, the
Finance Department, the Translation Department, the Member Resources
Department, the IT Department, Fleet and Supplies and a Distribution Center
that sells church supplies such as scriptures and temple clothing.
The office is small
with no windows, but there is good air conditioning and a small refrigerator
with two desks and two computers.
Unfortunately, there are no drawers or filing cabinets so the office is
in disarray and the computer files are extremely disorganized. The project
files are all in binders in an armoire.
In order to begin the
orientation process I encouraged the Moons to simply start at one corner of the
room and explain to us what we were looking it,what its purpose was, and what
we were to do with it. We had numerous
interruptions, as it seemed that everyone wanted to give their farewells to the
Moons and their greetings to us. About
noon Glo announced that she was fading fast, and so the Moons graciously agreed
to take us back to the apartment, where I fixed us an omelet for lunch and Glo
took a nap to try and make up for a poor night’s sleep last night.
We had a wonderful
dinner in the evening at the Smiths’ apartment.
The Smiths are the Perpetual Education Fund missionary couple; they
administer the program in which the church makes funds available to worthy and
needy church members, typically returned missionaries, to obtain higher or
vocational education and/or training.
The students make token payments to the Fund while they are in school,
and then are expected to pay off the loans diligently when they eventually
obtain employment—hence the “perpetual” education fund.
We resumed our training
Tuesday morning and did a little better, but we agreed to take a lunch break,
something the Moons only did occasionally, and after lunch the Moons took us to
two grocery stores to get some supplies, such as shampoo and hand soap, and
some staples for our pantry. They also
took us to their favorite corner fruit and vegetable vendor, Wivine, where we
spent about $30 on lettuce, carrots, leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and a
juicy pineapple. It is surprising that food costs are so high in the Congo as
the soil is productive and the climate permits food to be grown all year long. And of course the extreme poverty and
unemployment is distressing. That
evening we had another wonderful meal, this time at the Gates’s apartment. The Gates are the missionary couple whose job
is to teach young Congolese church members to learn a construction trade. Now the young men are building chapels for
the church and eventually hope to get jobs with private contractors.
On Wednesday Elder Moon
took us to visit several humanitarian projects near the airport. The Kwayunga project consists of several beautiful
latrines built adjacent to a public elementary school, but unfortunately the
project has been plagued with poor management and so the latrines are not
always functioning—hence the reason for our visit). We also visited a
demonstration garden at the Kampeseke Stake Center to show church members and
others what families can grow in their home gardens and how. Finally we visited an irrigation project
known as the RVA Gardens which is situated across the highway from the Stake
Center and adjacent to the airport. The
government has allowed a church contractor, who happens to be a bishop in one
of the Kampeseke Stake wards, to tap into a government water and to thereby
irrigate a very large community garden plot.
We were surprised to find that mostly people were planting crops to
harvest their leaves, as opposed to planting higher calorie root crops.
In the afternoon Elder Moon
and I visited a Dr. Mavaard at the Ministry of Health, who we hope will be able
to give us information on communities in the Kinshasa area that are in
especially serious need of potable water.
Dr. Mavaard seemed most interested in working with us in some
manner. While we were at the Ministry of
Health we also picked up Dr. Mousafiri’s assistant, with whom the church
collaborated last year on a wheelchair project, and took her to the government
warehouse to inspect and inventory the remaining wheelchairs that the church
had donated to the Ministry of Health last year. The ladies, meanwhile, worked on some of the
financial reports, including payment request forms that we need to complete
when we want to get approval to pay vendors, including translators and site
monitors.
Thursday was the Moons’
last day in the Congo. Although they
were very busy getting themselves packed and ready to leave for the airport in
the early evening, they did spend some time frantically trying to instruct us
on what to do with the open humanitarian projects. We discussed the status of the wheelchair
project (two new containers of wheelchairs is expected to arrive in March),
last year’s vision project (I need to pay a bill that the Maltese Embassy
charged to St. Joseph’s Hospital to get the vision equipment through customs
last month), the neo-natal resuscitation project (that apparently is scheduled
this year for Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, across the Cong River from
Kinshasa), and a sewing project in which sewing machines and supplies were
supplied to the seven stakes (major church units) in the Kinshasa area to help
people learn to how create, repair and makeover their own clothing.
However, mostly we
discussed Elder Moon’s desires with regard to water projects. The primary water
project to work on is the Sanga Mamba project which has had numerous problems
such as a broken drill in one borehole (drilled well) which ruined the well, a
broken pump, a burned up generator, and the fact that there is still no electricity
to the site to power the pump. We need
to keep our eye on the Molende project, consisting of six wells with hand pumps
and four spring impoundments in which surface water is put through a piping
system and delivered to faucets (to avoid having to drag a bucket into the nearby very shallow river itself). And we need to put to bed the Kwayung and the
Mapela latrine projects.
We also spent much time
discussing Elder Moon’s favorite project, Luputa, which is located in the
center of the DRC, actually in the Lubumbashi Mission. The church did a multi-million dollar
project there several years ago but there is interest in doing a follow up
project. The visit to Luputa takes at
least five days what with the air travel and a 6-hour drive from the airport to
the site. There is also interest in a
project in Kananga, which is in an even more remote and primitive area. It would require a major sacrifice to do
projects in those areas, and we are frankly not too keen on the idea; we can
see that we will have plenty to do in Kinshasa.
We also discussed the
fact that a major change needs to occur in how water projects including
sanitation projects are conceived and executed.
Ever since the church has been doing such projects in the DRC the
humanitarian missionaries have been approached by contractors with offers to
put in a well, and/or a spring capture, or maybe a latrine, for some community,
hospital or school. The missionaries
then pitch the project to the Southeast Africa Area humanitarian missionaries
in Johannesburg, who then pass it up through several layers of paid church
employees in Johannesburg and eventually to church headquarters in Salt Lake
City. If the project is approved, it is
funded and built, and when completed, it is donated to the community, hospital
or school with a nice closing ceremony.
After that, the contractor has the responsibility to train a “water
committee” to collect revenues from the sale of water and to put the revenues
in the bank against the day when the pump will inevitably break down or
something else happens that needs money to fix.
Way too often, however,
after much time has been spent by missionaries and contractors, the church has
rejected proposed projects because they were too expensive, or has approved and
built the projects but only greatly in excess of the originally approved
budget. So now the church is requiring
that the humanitarian missionaries (us) find projects completely independent of
any contractors, obtain plans and specifications for the projects, let the
contracts out for three bids, and then award the contract to the lowest, or at
least the best, bidder. Hopefully this
process will enable the church to fund a greater number of less expensive and
simpler projects that will have a high likelihood of success. Unfortunately, there have been way too many
projects that never succeeded, or only partially succeeded, or succeeded
initially and then failed because either the contractor did not properly set up
and train the water committee or the water committee never understood its
duties or intentionally subverted its duties by misappropriating revenues from
the sale of water.
Elder Moon also
discussed with us the concept of a site monitor. When a contractor is building a project the
church hires a site monitor to go to the site every day to observe the progress
or lack thereof, and to report to the humanitarian missionaries (us). The site monitors have contracts specific to
the project. A good site monitor will
hold the contractor’s feet to the fire and ensure that the contractor does a
good job in the construction process and also in the training of the water
committees who will be responsible for collecting the money through sales of
water to keep the equipment in repair and functioning after the contractor has
left and no longer has responsibility to make repairs. Elder Moon discussed the strengths and
weaknesses of each of the four site monitors that he has been using.
On Thursday I also met
with Eddy, the Saga Mamba site monitor.
We composed a letter in French asking the contractor, ADIR, to provide
more training to the water committee. We
also modified the contract between the Saga Mamba community and the church in
order that the 5% of the revenue from the sale of water that traditionally went
to the “chef du quartier” or community “chief,” to go instead to a longtime
resident of the quartier, ideally a mother or grandmother, to be used for
community development projects. Finally, we composed an invitation to the water
community and community leaders, including the chef du quartier and the local
police offe,r to attend a meeting scheduled for Saturday. The purpose of the meeting is to try to
reorganize the water committee, to elect pumpers in addition to officers, and
to get a representative from SNEL, the government electric utility, to take
some measurements in order to prepare a bid to bring electricity to the
site. The committee has been in
existence for a while but has not functioned because they haven’t yet been able
to pump any water since there is no electric power on site and the church is
not yet willing to donate an expensive electric generator.
On Friday we decided to
take the day off because of the anticipated work day on Saturday in Sanga
Mamba. So we walked around the compound
to get some exercise for the first time since we were at the MTC in Provo, went
to City Market to buy some groceries, and drove around for a while to get
better oriented to Gombe, the part of Kinshasa in which we live, work and
attend church. Unfortunately, at one
point we were stopped by a cadre of armed guards, as apparently we had
approached to close to the President’s compound which is not far from our
office. One guard with an automatic
rifle pounded on my window and demanded that I roll down my window and surrender
our passports and driver’s license. I
had no driver’s license and was not about to surrender my passport or roll down
the window. Things were very tense for
about five minutes, as the leader of the battalion kept shouting at me and
ordering me to open the window and give him my passport. Glo tried to call Aime
and Thierry, our Congolese friends who work for the church and who are also a
bishop and stake president, but couldn’t get the phone to work. So she pretended she was making a phone call,
and for good measure thrust a church pamphlet out the window to one of the
officers. Maybe one of those initiatives
worked, because eventually they gave up and let us drive away.
We had a delightful
dinner with the Mission President and his wife at their apartment which is
adjacent to the Mission office and not too far from our office. He served a mission in Paris in the 1970’s
and in real life is a podiatrist in Logan, Utah. We told President Cook that we were feeling
absolutely overwhelmed with the magnitude of the responsibility with which we
have been entrusted, and he made us feel a little better by essentially stating
that he felt the same way. He has been
serving for six months and said that he just recently figured out something
that he had been told during the Mission Presidents’ orientation six months
earlier.
On Saturday we met with
our translator Felix and the Sanga Mamba site monitor Eddy. We had been told that we should provide
refreshments for the meeting, so we spent over an hour trying to buy a supply
of 40 chicken sandwiches and soft drinks.
It was a comedy of errors, because I hadn’t yet acquired any Congolese
currency, the local “boulangerie,” Chez Victoire, had failed to make the
sandwiches that I had ordered the day before, and we couldn’t find any place to
buy ice to keep our purchases cold. But
at length, we got our supplies, picked up the representative from the electric
utility, and drove out to Sanga Mamba.
It was a harrowing drive with a combination of unbearable traffic (it was
a national holiday; a day of mourning to commemorate the assassination of the
former head of state), unimproved and virtually impassable narrow and muddy
pot-holed roads degenerating into trails, and unimaginable obstacles to
navigate around. I’m not sure I have
ever driven in more dangerous conditions, even in ice and snow.
We spent the first hour
just looking at the nearest available electrical transformer situated in a
Catholic church compound and discussing where the eventual on-site electric
panel should be situated. The meeting
was scheduled for 1 pm, but it wasn’t until 2 pm that enough people had dropped
by the compound where the pump was situated so we could have our meeting. But Eddy handled things very completely; he
is such a diligent and dedicated young man.
He explained to the water committee and community leaders how things had
to be organized, and then supervised the election of the pumpers. Glo passed the hat and collected the ballots
and I read off the election results. We
then broke out the refreshments; fortunately we had plenty of sandwiches and
drinks for everyone except….us. Somehow
we made it back to the office in one piece, and then, absolutely dead tired and
famished, we drove to Chez Victoire to buy some chicken sandwiches for dinner.
Sunday was delightful
again. The first meeting was the
Priesthood meeting for the men and the Relief Society meeting for the
women. I decided to skip the High
Priests meeting and to attend the Elders quorum meeting, as there were no
English speakers in the Elders meeting and therefore no distracting translation
from French to English. The Sunday
School class was taught by John Delisle, a French Canadian who is working for
the church’s Facilities Management Department.
He is an excellent teacher who apparently always uses power point to
help people follow his lesson. And of
course Sacrament Meeting is always very rewarding; the main speaker was on the
High Council and he was most motivating and inspiring. We enjoyed the music very much; the Congolese
people sing the church hymns with great gusto.
After church we enjoyed dinner at the Sneddons, the missionary couple
who run the Mission Office, and got in a walk on the 3rd floor
rooftop garden.
Photos from Sanga Mamba:
January 20-26
With the Moons gone, we
turned ourselves to the task of actually sitting down at our desks and trying
to figure out the email messages that have accumulated over the last few weeks,
and thinking about how the office should be reorganized to make it work more
efficiently for us. We ordered new
telephones, since our iPhones are too expensive to work in the DRC and we
cannot abide the old-fashioned phones that the Moons had been using and had
left with us. We asked for some office
supplies, such as filing cabinets, paper, envelopes, etc. We submitted photos for a driver’s license,
made arrangements to get our visas extended beyond six months, met with Pascal
at the Mission Office to ask for help in getting some of our building problems
fixed (we need to caulk around our kitchen sink and to get some electrical
outlets and switches fixed), purchased French-language scriptures, asked the
Finance Department to help us figure out how to get money into and out of their
systems, and tried to work with the IT people to get us into the church’s Humanitarian System
and Financial System software.
The pressing issue,
however, was that we learned just on Monday that Elder and Sister Lee, the
Southeast Africa Area humanitarian specialists, are planning on coming to
Kinshasa on Wednesday to give us training, that they intend to stay with us in
our apartment, and that they will not be leaving until Sunday. We decided that with our ongoing difficulties
in getting a good night’s sleep, and with our desire for privacy and our lack
of enthusiasm for houseguests, I would email them and ask them to consider
staying in a hotel. They were very good
about it, and so we were able to confirm their hotel arrangements and airport
transportation.
We are starting to get
to know people better in the Service Center.
Several people, especially Musa the custodian and David the official
translator, insist on trying to teach us a few
basic expressions in Lingala, one of the four native national
languages. Many people in the Service
Center are very fluent in English, which shouldn’t be too surprising since the
church really encourages its leaders to learn English and many of the people
who work at the Service Center are church leaders.
On Tuesday Felix went
with us to examine the RVA Irrigation project, as the site monitor, Jordao, had
advised us that the contractor had connected to the government water supply and
had installed the primary irrigation line.
We were to inspect it and pick up the contractor’s invoices so we could
make payment. Unfortunately we were stopped twice on the way to the site by the
traffic police. The first time I
foolishly handed the officer the vehicle insurance card, and he refused to give
it back until I gave him 2,000 francs.
The police are notoriously crooked and are always stopping people, especially
non-Congolese, and shaking them down for money.
The second time the police let us go when we showed them some church
literature and our missionary. Despite
the intense heat and our failure to bring hats, we were quite pleased with our
examination of the irrigation project.
We also intended to
examine the nearby Mapela school latrine project, as we learned that the
contractor had made some necessary repairs on the flexible tubing to the sinks
and was anxious to get his 6-month contract payment. However, the roads were so narrow and abysmal
that we finally had to give up without reaching the school. The site monitor indicated that he would go
there on his own and report back to us on the repairs. We took off early on Tuesday in order to do
some shopping, prepare food in advance, and work on our apartment.
On Wednesday morning we
had a major meeting with our four site monitors and two translators. We spent some time getting acquainted with
them personally. We then carefully went over
every project that they had any responsibility for. Jordao reported on Mapela and on the RVA
irrigation projects with which we are familiar, and on the failed N’Sele
project, which unfortunately has resulted in litigation between the contractor,
one of his employees, and the water committee.
The church is not taking a position on this distressing
development. Eric reported on three
projects that we have not yet visited, the Laloux, Lutendele and Camp Luka
projects, all of whom have failed to some degree or another. Fortunately the church is going to spend some
more money to fix the water system at Laloux, but the water committee at
Lutendele is evidently dishonest and since the project is closed, probably
there is nothing that we can do about it.
The Camp Luka project is a spring capture project, and the heavy rains
have fouled the source. But again, the
project is closed and so there is likely nothing that we will be able to do
about it. Eddy reported on the Kwayungu
latrine project that we had visited with Elder Moon, the Sanga Mamba project
that we had just visited on Saturday, and on the successful Molende
project. He asked us to visit the
project with him on February 1 and to be
prepared to speak.
We also had the site
monitors fill out their time sheets from mid-December through mid-January so
that we could process their payments as instructed by the Lees.
Wednesday afternoon we
picked up the Lees at their hotel, drove them to the Mission Home so they could
meet their old friends, the office couple Elder and Sister Sneddon, and
then to our office for an introductory
meeting. About 7 p.m. I insisted that we
really needed to get some dinner, so we drove to Patachoux for dinner at the
Lees expense, and then dropped them off at their hotel.
We then spent the rest
of the week, all day long Thursday through Saturday, in training.
The Lees discussed in
detail the legal status of the site monitors and translators, the idea of
requiring them to get licensed by the government as independent contractors,
when and how they should get paid and how to handle the administration of their
site monitoring agreements. It became
apparent that there were some major problems with the way site monitors had
been used in the past, and that we were not going to have as much need for site
monitors in the future. We decided that
we needed to meet ASAP with the site monitors, so I called Felix and asked him
to have the site monitors meet with us next Tuesday and to bring their detailed
reports to the meeting so we could see what they had been doing during the past
month. We also asked Felix to meet with
us on Monday so he could help us make our presentation to the site monitors.
The Lees explained the
hierarchy or bureaucracy involved at the Area level and church headquarters
level with respect to humanitarian work, and also with respect to church
finances. They covered CFIS, the
church’s financial information system, and CHAS, the church’s humanitarian
reporting system. We discussed
budgeting, what expenses we may incur that the church will reimburse us for,
the use of contractors, opening and closing humanitarian projects, and how to
run a humanitarian project from start to finish, both from a church welfare
principles standpoint and also from a practical standpoint. We reviewed project development worksheets
and spent hours working our way through the church’s computer software and the
numerous reports. Unfortunately, it
became increasingly apparent to them that the books and records of the office
were in very poor shape; that things had not been handled correctly in the past
and so there were numerous corrections and changes that needed to be made.
They discussed in
detail the SE Africa area plan for the DRC, encouraging us to do as many small
projects as we could instead of fewer large projects. We must keep in mind that our partner in
every project must be a community and not a contractor. They gave numerous examples of possible
projects and how to talk with a potential partner, such as a school or
hospital, to determine their needs, whether their needs are compatible with
church humanitarian principles, and whether we can work with them. We went over the Neo-natal projects, the
immunization projects, the food initiative projects, and literacy and
self-reliance projects. And of course we
carefully went through all existing projects to see what errors had been
committed and what could be done to fix them.
Occasionally we would
be interrupted by various people, including Rigo and Hugh, two attorneys who do
contract work for the church, and the Bybees, the missionary couple that
handles public affairs, but who had been in Pointe Noire (Republic of Congo)
for a few months waiting for the arrival of a missionary couple who had been in
our group at the MTC. I also kept
getting phone calls from various contractors wanting to introduce themselves
and to welcome us to the DRC. Obviously
they want us to hire them to do a job.
Rather than tell them over the phone that it would be useless to meet
with them until I had a project in hand to ask them to bid on, I agreed to set
up appointments with them so I could discuss the new approach to projects that
our supervisors from Johannesburg have requested.
Every day for lunch Elder
Lee and I went out and brought back sandwiches, and Friday evening the Lees
took the Sneddons and us out to dinner.
We had visited a bakery/restaurant, Eric Kayser the week before to get
some good bread and cake for our initial meeting with our site monitors, and so
recommended the place for dinner. I was
very happy with my pasta a la carbonara, and everyone seemed to enjoy their
sandwiches and gelato.
On Sunday we had the
Lees over for one of my super breakfast omelets, and we helped them get off in
the taxi to take them to the airport for their flight back to
Johannesburg. We then took the Bybees
with us to church. However, we opted to
attend Sacrament Meeting in the other ward that meets in the GB building so we
could visit with the bishop, whom we had met on the plane from Brussels. But we attended our own ward Sunday School
and Sacrament Meetings. I then spent most of Sunday afternoon and evening
preparing a written statement for the site monitors in English so Gloria could
understand it and for Felix to present to them in French.
January 27-February 2
Felix came over as
planned on Monday and we asked him to read and digest my statement to the site
monitors. He understood and accepted it
well, although he insisted that site monitors were already independent
contractors and didn’t need to register with the government. He also said that it could cost $300 to
register, since he had already done so for other businesses. We spent the balance of the day just trying
to go through emails, create electronic and paper file folders in which to put
emails and documents, go through our notes to try to implement all of the
ideas, suggestions and directives that we had received from the Lees, and in
short to attempt to deal with the mass of paper in the office.
On Tuesday morning,
just prior to the arrival of the site monitors, I got a phone call from Elder
Lee announcing that the site monitors would be considered church employees
under Congolese law, since they had worked over 20 hours per week for a six-month
period without independent contractor
agreements backed up by registration with the Congolese government as
independent contractors. Therefore, the
Area’s attorney said that we could not cut their hours, let alone lay any of
them off, and that if we did so we would have to pay them a severance package
as if they were employees. I was tasked
with determining how many hours they had worked and how much money they had
been paid over the last few years.
Elder Lee’s phone call
threw me a major curve as it forced me to instantaneously modify a major
portion of my presentation to the site monitors. Instead of telling them that their incomes
were going to decrease, probably drastically, over the next few months, I had to
tell them that even though there was going to be less work for them to do, the
church was not going to drastically reduce their incomes. Of course, I didn’t really know what that
meant or how I was going to be able to administer such a program.
But the meetings with
the site monitors went relatively well.
We met with Eric and Jordao first, and then with Walter and Eddy. We stated that there will be less work for
site monitors in the coming months for several reasons: we have no new water projects to do because
in the last 18 months all the projects the Moons had tried to get approved were
rejected as too expensive; the process for proposing new projects has changed
drastically and it will take some time to put any new projects together; we
would rather put our energy into completing open projects and perhaps fixing
failed projects instead of starting new projects; we anticipate it will take us
1-2 months before we will have our office organized the way we want it and we
do not want to start a project as difficult as a water project before we are
properly organized; and we have numerous other non-water projects to accomplish
such as neo-natal resuscitation, wheelchairs, vision, food, immunizations,
etc.
But, in a masterful
stroke of total confusion, we stated that even though there would apparently be
less work, the church was not going to cut them off and radically deprive them
of income, and that while we don’t know how it will be worked out, we hoped
that they would be patient as we wait further instructions from Johannesburg. However, we emphasized that they may need to
be registered with the government to work on any open projects with which they
don’t have a current site monitoring contract.
I encouraged them to give me a report detailing when they began working
as site monitors and what projects they had worked on.
Because we will be
working on Saturday again this week, we decided to take Wednesday off. We did a full 60 minutes of the P90X
“stretch” workout, and then went with the Bybees to check out some stores: American Eagle for household/office supplies,
Extra for groceries, especially meet and cheese (for meat we bought chicken
breasts, a mixture of pork and beef burger, sausages and lardons, and for
cheese we picked up feta, gouda, brie and romano), Hassan and Freres for a little
of everything, and of course City Market for bread. American dollars are widely accepted in place
of the Congolese Francs (CF). $1 is
worth about 920 CF. When we got back to
the apartment I decided to make some risotto for dinner, and we also took some
time to do some housecleaning.
On Thursday morning we
had a meeting with Eustache Ilunga, the director of the Service Center, to
explain to him what was going on with Johannesburg and our site monitors and
why we were in such a dilemma. He agreed
with us in every particular, but did indicate that the site monitors could
probably register with the government for under $100. We then met with the Finance Department and
decided that beginning next month we will require that the site monitors have
checking accounts so they can be paid by electronic deposit. I actually felt that I got much accomplished
on Thursday; I know I got my desk and papers much more organized.
Friday I had my first
experience at a Congolese bank. I
thought it might take 30 minutes to withdraw some money from the church account
so I could pay the site monitors and translators, but it took 90 minutes. Fortunately I took Serge from the Finance
Department with me; otherwise it probably would have taken longer because at
least he knew the process: present my
passport to the guards; present my passport to one window; then go outside and
across the courtyard to a different office and present my passport again; then
wait 45 minutes for them to do their paperwork; then write my name, address,
phone number and put my signature on six different forms; then work out with
the banker the denominations of cash that I want before finally getting my
cash. I will be relieved to do this
electronically next month.
On Friday I also
exchanged correspondence with the Area’s attorneys and their local Congolese
contractor. It is still not at all clear
how we are expected to handle payment next month to site contractors for the
work they will do, or more accurately, the work that they probably won’t
do.
We also took off in the
afternoon with Fils, the other translator that the Moons had been using. We needed to go to Limete to deliver payment
of $1,020 in cash to BDOM, the arm of the Archdiocese of the Catholic Church
that runs St. Joseph’s hospital, to reimburse them for the payment they made to
the Maltese Ambassador for the Ambassor’s fee for facilitating the importation
through customs of the medical equipment that the church donated to BDOM for
last year’s humanitarian vision project.
We then paid a social call on Dr. Arthur Ngoy, the pediatrician with
whom the church has partnered on the neo-natal resuscitation projects. Our next stop was to the Kimbanseke stake
center to pick up a sewing machine, and then to deliver it and another sewing
machine to Relief Society President at the Mokali stake center. We then took a tour of the building, which is
affectionately called the Nauvoo Temple for the obvious reason that it really
does resemble the old Nauvoo Temple.
Since Fils lives nearby,we dropped him off there and somehow drove back
to the office on our own.
Our last stop of the
day was the home of John and Megan Collins, an American couple and members of
the church, who live right on the Congo River adjacent to the Congolese Prime
Minister’s office. John works for USAID
and actually works in the building where our apartment is located. The Collins family had invited all of the
missionary couples, including President and Sister Cook, over for dinner, and
we had a wonderful evening together.
Saturday was our
excursion to the Molende quartier with Felix to meet with site monitor Eddy and
the Molende water committee. But first
we met the other missionary couples at 6:15 a.m. and drove over to what the
missionaries refer to as Embassy Row which borders the Congo River. Because there are so many foreign embassies
concentrated there it is a very upscale and safe area and so the missionaries
like to walk there for exercise on Saturday mornings. They apparently do a 1.5 mile loop but; we
did two loops. We passed numerous other
walkers and joggers including a coterie of about ten bodyguards surrounding one
man who obviously was an ambassador or dignitary of some sort out for his
morning constitutional.
Although the ride to
Molende took us through some rather distressed areas, we had a great experience
there. The project consists of six wells
with hand pumps and four spring impoundments.
We enjoyed walking down the sandy paths through the lush forest to the
water committee chairman’s home, and then meeting with him, his secretary,
treasurer and pumpers. They were all so
friendly and grateful for our visit. The
chairman called the meeting to order and then surprised us by offering a
prayer. He then had the minutes of the
December meeting read, took the treasurer’s report. It seems that between June 1 and December 31
last year the water committee took in revenues of 2,253,900 CF, spent
1,407,000, and deposited 831,900 in the bank.
As of January 7 they had 877,548,000 CF in the bank, and deposited
another 41,650 on January 15. They
discussed the fact that sometimes the well water smells or looks bad but
acknowledged that the problem can usually be remedied with chorine. The chairman reminded the pumpers that they
are to bring their notebooks to the next meeting of the water committee so
their water sales figures can be verified.
There were some moments of levity; the chairman praised one pumper for
selling the most water that month, but then the sole female pumper expostulated
that she had sold the most water the previous month and demanded equal praise.
The chairman then asked
me to say a few words. I took about five
minutes commenting on the great importance of water to the community, why the
mission of the church includes helping people in a very obscure part of the
world have clean water, and why we had come to the DRC. Of course I also omplimented the committee
for its work and enjoined them to keep up the good work. They seemed quite
pleased that I could converse with them and even joke with them in French. Gloria then spoke to the committee,
faithfully translated into French and/or Lingala by Felix. She told the female pumper that she loved her
dress and the fact that she stood up for women’s rights. This is clearly a
successful water project, a very refreshing experience after hearing so much
about projects that have foundered usually due to some kind of equipment
failure compounded by an ineffective and/or dishonest water committee that
didn’t collect and deposit money in the bank to deal with the inevitable
equipment failure.
The contractor for the
project is Eloi, who is a member of the church and who attends the ward that we
attend in Gombe. We were told that some
journalists recently read about Molende on Eloi’s website, and so came out to
talk to people, take pictures and write a story. It was very nice that Eloi was there to
personally support the water committee, even though he had no obligation or
financial benefit to attend the meeting.
The committee then
served us all some rolls with a pudding filling of some sort and a soft
drink—in contrast to the Sanga Mamba experience two weeks earlier when we
brought refreshments to the water committee!
When I expressed interest in the tree we were sitting under, the
committee chairman smiled, referred to it as a “pomme rouge” (red apple) tree,
then took his pole and knocked down some fruit for us to take home.
We then took a tour of
most of the wells and spring impoundments.
Everywhere we went, all of the children and many of the adults called
out to us “mundele,” meaning white persons. Sometimes they would say “bonjour
mundele” since they clearly had no malice in calling us mundele. For some of the children it was probably the
first time they had seen white people.
Gloria charmed them with her burgeoning knowledge of Lingala. They really like it when we say to them
“mbote” which means hello, or when we toss out other simple greetings in
Lingala. I had to chuckle to myself
wondering what they would think if we called out “noirs” (black people) to them
as we passed them by.
Sunday we attended our
meetings from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. As I sat
there listening to the discussion in Priesthood meeting and the testimonies
offered in the Sacrament Meeting it just struck me that, except for the racial
composition and the French language, there would be very little difference
between these meetings and any other LDS church meetings taking place anywhere
in the USA that day. These Congolese
members of the church have thoughts, concerns, interests and testimonies
similar to their American counterparts; they are alike in many more ways than
they are different. We enjoyed a
peaceful afternoon; we did some reading and writing and Gloria even decided to
tackle our Turkish oven and bake some bread.
In the evening all of the missionaries including the Mission President
and his wife were summoned to the Gates’s apartment for brownies, ice cream and
stimulating conversation.
The Mission President
leaves soon for his monthly tour of Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo
(formerly part of French Equatorial Africa; the Bybees leave soon for Burundi
as part of their Public Affairs assignment; and the Gates are returning to
California for two weeks for the remarriage of their daughter, who lost her
husband last year due to a traffic accident.
The Johnsons are doing their best to stay in Kinshasa and to avoid
traveling except we will be crossing the Congo River to Brazzaville in the
Republic of Congo sometime this spring, as we are expected to do neo-natal
resuscitation and immunization projects there later this year, and in May we
will be traveling to Johannesburg to train with all of the other humanitarian
missionaries in the Southeast Africa Area.
We have been in the
Congo three weeks now, so maybe I should discuss the country itself and not
just as the venue for our humanitarian work.
I have been interested in this area since 1961 when I was in the 9th
grade and we were studying the African decolonization movement that was then in
full sway.
King Leopold of Belgium
succeeded in claiming the Congo for Belgium in the 1880’s when the entire
African continent was being carved up by various European powers. As Belgium was dominated by its Francophone
component during those days, French became the language of government, education
and industry. The country gained its
independence in 1961, along with most of the British and French African
colonies. The capital of Leopoldville
was renamed Kinshasa and the second largest city, Stanleyville, became
Lubumbashi. The country itself went
through several name changes, including Zaire, before settling on the DRC. It is the third largest country in Africa by
size and the fourth largest by population.
I asked our chief translator, Felix, if the name “Zaire” meant anything
and he said it did not; it was just a name created by the previous dictator,
Mobutu, who believed in magic and fetishes and thought the name invested the
country in something magical.
Kinshasa has a
population of 7 to 8 million people spread over a large metropolitan area. I’ve seen only part of the city of Kinshasa
and will likely only see bits and pieces of the entire city during our stay
here. It is the largest French-speaking
city in the world, although probably most people use their native language of
Lingala in casual conversations among themselves and especially at home in a
family setting. But as we have observed,
the Lingala is spiced with a healthy dose of French. Sometimes it sounds like the typical
conversational mixture is about 50/50 French and Lingala. We could probably not get by in the villages
without a translator to sift through the Lingala for us. I spend my day going back and forth
constantly between French and English, since many people in the Service Center
wish to speak English and whenever Gloria and I need to meet with others we
need to either attempt to do it in English or I or Felix have to translate for
her. Our strategy for dealing with
traffic police, who have stopped us five times already just to harass us
because we are white, is to pretend we don’t understand their demands and just
wait for them to give up and let us go away.
They clearly just want money, and frequently the missionaries do give
them some money or water or something they can use.
Although I am trying to
make it my rule not to give too much thought to some of the negative aspects of
life in the DRC, full disclosure compels me to state that before anyone makes
plans to vacation in the DRC they should know that the roads are in really
terrible condition (the great majority in the city are unpaved and impassable
without 4WD and even then…), the trash on the ground is extraordinary even by
third world standards, and driving in traffic is relentlessly exasperating and
just plain frightening.
I don’t think we Americans
appreciate how good it is to have traffic laws that people actually obey and
that are actually enforced fairly. The
traffic police here allow local people to run red lights flagrantly, to turn
right across traffic from the inside lane, to turn left across traffic from the
outside lane, to drive on the wrong side of the road, to back up in heavy
traffic, to recklessly barrel into a busy street from a side street, and to
park anywhere at any time. However, when
recently I had to slam on the brakes while approaching an intersection because
someone ran a red light and turned head on right into, forcing me to come to a
stop partially into the crosswalk, that is all the pretext the traffic police
needed to stop me and try to shake me down for money, while the offending
driver of course was ignored. We also
don’t appreciate what it is like not to have hordes of pedestrians walking (or
pushing overloaded carts) in the middle of the roads or darting over barriers
into six lanes of heavy traffic in total disregard of traffic lights and crosswalks, or not to have
vendors and beggars weaving constantly in and out of moving traffic trying to
get some money or make a sale. On the
other hand, while I have not yet seen a posted speed limit in the DRC,
generally the drivers do not seem to drive too fast. Accidents are happening constantly all around
us, so it is only a matter of time for our turn to come. Maybe it is that sense of fate—what can
happen will happen--that encourages everyone here to take such enormous risks
in traffic.
But all that aside, it
is a great opportunity for us to be in Africa at this time. We are learning about the culture, appreciating
the industriousness and kindness of the people, and seeing things we could
scarcely imagine without being here. In
America we really do tend to believe that the world revolves around us and that
everyone else in the world should just do things our way. After being abroad for a while one begins to
understand that others have their own agendas and interests to pursue.
The church is
prospering greatly here, with new chapels being built constantly and new wards
and stakes being created regularly. We
have met three representatives from the construction company that have been
hired to build the temple, although it probably won’t be started for another
year or more. When it is completed,
however, it will be a wonderful gift to the good people in this part of
Africa. We are particularly excited
about the prospects for success in our humanitarian work. We have seen enough
challenges to experience some discouragement, but we realize that we are just
barely getting started and that we should expect some great things to
happen. We have been sent here for a
reason, perhaps primarily to solve some problems that have been brewing for a
while, and to put the program on a course for future success. And even if we might not undertake as many
new water and/or latrine projects as did our predecessors, there may well be
other important humanitarian projects that we will think of or which will fall
into place while we are here that will be exciting for us and a blessing to the
people we have been called to serve.
Pictures from
Molende:
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