FT Hunger Action Diaries

Spreading awareness about cholera

In Bukavu and Goma, in eastern DR Congo, most of the talk recently has been about football and politics. Football because TP Mazembe, a Congolese team from Katanga Province, just south of here, amazingly made it to the final of the World Club Cup. The build-up to the final was massive, particularly since Mazembe beat the South American champions, though in the end a comfortable 3-0 win for Internationale of Milan meant the atmosphere watching the game was not the best.

Political talk has been around Vital Kamerhe, a major political figure who was born in South Kivu. After creating a new political party and declaring he would run in next year’s presidential elections, Kamerhe immediately came to visit eastern DRC and attracted major crowds in both Goma and Bukavu this last week.

The point is that everything in the DRC is not death and destruction – yes, even in the eastern part of the county. There are major humanitarian problems and massive challenges for the government, but it is also easy to lose sight of the fact that fleeing from conflict and disease is not the daily experience for a growing majority of people, even in this part of the country.

Even so, conflict, hunger and disease do affect a lot of people here and are more than familiar to the people Action Against Hunger works with. I met with UNICEF last week to discuss how we could deal with the cholera epidemics we tend to see at this time of year in the Kivus (bacteria gets washed into the lake each rainy season.)

At the end of a busy week I tried to take a boat to Goma, the main town North Kivu in eastern DRC, for some meetings. It’s always a beautiful boat trip but this time the boat broke down half way across the very large Lake Kivu and we floated for an hour or so, before another boat heading in the same direction stopped to help. We managed to transfer to them the majority of people who were on our boat to continue the trip.

Having missed my meetings, and not really fancying joining an already quite overloaded boat, I stuck around and eventually, with a few repairs, we limped our way back to Bukavu a few hours later. Luckily I bought a new battery for my laptop the last time I was in Europe, so I managed to put the floating time to good use. There was even a spot on the lake where I found some mobile phone network to call our office in Goma and get someone else to go to the meetings I’d been planning. If nothing else this work teaches you to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in – c’est la vie au Congo!

The kids of Makuta village

The last few weeks have been really busy for me here in eastern DR Congo. This week started with a trip to visit some of our project areas, taking institutional donors out to some of the most dangerous parts of South Kivu province. It’s always interesting seeing the projects and talking to people in the areas where we work, but as Country Director sometimes it’s hard to find the time to escape the office. Recently I’ve been lucky. I’ve gotten out three times in as many weeks to our field bases. The downside is the 5:00am starts on the other days; when I’m back in the office trying to keep up with the work that piles up.

This week we got out to a little village called Makuta. It’s towards the end of the only road that heads east from the main road, up into the hills that are mostly accessible by foot only. It’s a place that feels a bit like a Wild West frontier town.