I recently arrived back in Bujumbura after a productive, albeit dusty and tiring, séjour in Mboko village, South Kivu, Congo. The SOS FED field team, having come together from all corners of Fizi Territory, had some interesting things to share, and really brought me up to speed on the progress of the current campaign of rape prevention they have put into place. The journey to Mboko was remarkably free of problems, and a little bit of planning kept us moving quickly through the road blocks and security check points. Thanks very much to SOS FED’s Uvira team for that. Here is a quick recap of what went during the Mboko meeting.

First, AP and Zivik have provided much needed support for SOS FED’s community fields program, which was a key agenda for the days of meetings in Mboko. The program, in a nutshell, encourages survivors of sexual violence working with SOS FED to form cooperative cultivation teams, then rents them the necessary hectares of land and monitors their production. Money made in the fields is divided among the cooperative cultivation teams, with each woman benefiting directly from their work. This may sound basic, but the key difference from traditional cultivation in Congo lies in the ‘cooperative’ aspect of the current program. Far too many SOS FED beneficiaries have found themselves in their current place-that is, trying to recover from violent sexual violence-because of their need to cultivate fields in often remote regions of Fizi Territory, where land can be rented at the lowest price. So, AP and Zivik have begun providing fields to women once two conditions have been met. First, a field must be located near a principal route or well-traveled footpath. Second, a field must not be worked by one woman, but by her cooperative group. In this way, vulnerability is reduced in that women are cultivating together (strength in numbers) and doing so in areas of Fizi Territory that are not so isolated as to provide ideal striking grounds for the regions roving militias. This slight modification has been showing positive signs of reducing vulnerability and protecting Congolese women trying to put food on their table. We all gave a big ‘bravo’ to this program, and are currently toying with numerous ways to precisely monitor field output in order to determine which types of crops in which areas provide the most profit to SOS FED’s beneficiaries.

Amisi from SOS FED and I in Mboko village

Amisi from SOS FED and I in Mboko village

In addition, the much awaited ‘Ahadi’ program has been given wings as of this last meeting. Though the program is well underway, the AP Fellow working from Bujumbura and I will be saving details on this until a later date. The program involves art as a means for advocacy, and places SOS FED beneficiaries in the driver’s seat of their own advocacy campaign. More on that will be available later. Materials are in place and the wheels are in motion.

Finally, the SOS FED field teams and I touched base on the current situation in and around the three SOS FED reception centers in Fizi Territory. The news is bleak, in that all of the centers are currently above capacity and receiving new visitors looking for a safe space to stay daily. The current Amani Leo operation in South Kivu has not ended the rape crisis as one might think from listening to Congolese Radio. Surely, Amani Leo is forcing FDLR militias deeper into the forests, but that doesn’t stop them from raping local women. It merely moves the sites of these violations to much less traveled areas of South Kivu where the Amani Leo force ceases to hold influence. Additionally, as the Amani Leo force is formed of FARDC [Congolese soldiers-reportedly responsible for 80% of the rapes in eastern Congo] and the ex-CNDP [notoriously violent militia soldiers once commanded by war criminal Laurent Nkunda], the population is not necessarily much better off than if the FDLR roamed free in the region. Correct me if I am wrong here, but rape is rape, regardless of the militia du jour that commits it. A perfect example lies in the fact that the SOS FED Mboko center was pillaged and forced to empty not too long ago at the hands of the state-sponsored protectors of Congo, the FARDC. No militia necessary. Thus, not a jovial ending to this blog, but a hopeful one in that the work continues.

None of the SOS FED field staff in attendance at Mboko gave any signs of the weariness a life in Congo can inspire. Quite the opposite, their presence at the meeting was a testament to their strength and commitment to improving their region. This will involve making good use of scant resources, staying organized, pulling from that never-ending well of patience and resilience, and keeping SOS FED moving towards their admirable goals. This is a lot easier said than done, especially in such an ‘interesting’ zone of eastern Congo. But, like I said, the work continues.

Ned Meerdink

This evening, I returned home from my most recent series of planning meetings with AP’s DRC partner, SOS Femmes en Danger (SOS FED). This time, our meetings were logistical in nature, as we are currently organizing a large meeting/training session/organizational update for the SOS FED staff and have to figure out how exactly to get the staff from each SOS FED reception center to Mboko village in South Kivu to rendez-vous. SOS FED currently has 3 reception centers for survivors of sexual violence in South Kivu spread throughout the province in the villages of Mboko, Kikonde, and Kazimia.

300 kilometers of no roads and questionable security conditions through numerous rebel-held villages separate Center Kazimia, the southernmost from the SOS FED installation, from the northernmost Center Mboko. The SOS FED village field workers are preparing to arrive by a confusing combination of motorcycles, boats, and transport lorries normally reserved for corn and manioc in order to get to our meeting on the 2nd of August to speak face-to-face and truly begin putting the ‘Combating Sexual Violence in Eastern Congo’ campaign into action.

So, next time you are considering the horrible inconvenience of your two hour layover in Indianapolis or even your ten hour wait in Addis Ababa en route to somewhere else, consider the following itinerary for our SOS FED representative working in Kazimia, South Kivu:

1. Take the dugout pirogue from Kazimia towards Yungu. Estimated time of travel is anywhere between 5 hours and 2 days, depending on the load of fish being ferried and the availability of gas in Kazimia to power an unpredictable outboard motor. The captain of the ship has failed to sympathize with our plea to get our colleague to Yungu in time to meet and thus can’t even guarantee the day he might be on his way. Quote: ‘When gas costs $3/liter, we can’t really move without the boat being full of fish to sell to pay our way back. So, I’ll send a message once we get enough fish.’ This is more than understood by everyone on our end, but there are no cell phone networks in Kazimia, so we are unsure how the message will reach us.

2. Arrive at Yungu whenever, and get moving on foot towards Kikonde. Believe me, a 35 km walk is a lot slower when navigating around shady road blocks in mid-day Congo sun. In the event of a nighttime arrival our colleague will have to sleep at the port, because at night the road blocks get drunker.

3. Now, hitch a ride to Baraka, which is a city center in South Kivu, on board a motorcycle making the trip without a passenger. We’ve gotten lucky in the past with drivers from larger aid organizations on the lookout for an extra passenger or two and the ‘pocket money’ that service generates for them. And make haste, because real delays are to be expected at road blocks at Kikonde and on the outskirts of Baraka.

4. Finally, get yourself on a bus for the remaining 150km towards Mboko on any truck in sight moving north. Riding on top of bean sacks with 50 other passengers here is not to be ruled out, but don’t plan on a very cushy ride or even a seat for that matter. Also, everybody out on hills and on river crossings…

After all this, our colleague will be in Mboko with us, following between 2 days and a week of traveling. And, as I’ve seen with my own eyes many times, she’ll arrive in nice clean pagne (fabric), not a hair out of place, looking like she’s on the way to a wedding—at the same time mentally poised and ready to sort out a pretty complex program. It defies all logic, but then again the Congolese women are the toughest and most resilient I’ve ever been lucky enough to work with.

Ned Meerdink

[Rather than write three separate entries concerning three recent items of note in Uvira, I decided to combine them for the sake of ease in posting considering an increasingly rare internet connection as of late.]

Vesta Co-op party to benefit Tunza Mazingira

Vesta Co-op party to benefit Tunza Mazingira

First, thanks to Vesta Cooperative House in East Lansing, Michigan for ‘partying with a purpose’ on behalf of an AP partner in eastern Congo. Vesta Co-op opened their doors to MSU students and community members last Friday from 9 pm to the wee hours of the morning in order to benefit AP partner Tunza Mazingira (‘Protect the Environment’ in Swahili) and the alternative cooking fuel program which was started this last year by Tunza field worker Clément Kitambala. As Tunza believes that environmental protection equates with civilian protection in the eastern Congolese context, alternative cooking fuel has become a major focus of Tunza’s work. Congolese women regularly risk their personal safety to go into the forests to collect firewood (making them increasingly vulnerable to violence and rape at the hands of the ever-present active armed groups), or sacrifice their stressed family budgets to purchase expensive traditional ‘makala’ in town to cook, which rises weekly in price in response to growing insecurity in the zones where it is produced and increasing scarcity of eucalyptus, which is used to produce makala and is being rampantly deforested.

Vesta Co-op raised over $800 for further development of Clément’s program with alternative cooking briquettes, which are composed of organic waste and offer a multitude of environmental, economic, and security-related benefits for Congolese civilians, which you can read about in greater detail here. The money will go directly to Tunza Mazingira, and will allow us to 1) build three new briquette presses, 2) offer small loans to women cooking and selling road-side food using alternative cooking fuel, 3) give work to 12 demobilized girls coming out of armed groups (which decreases the likeliness of their rejoining militias due to lack of income), who are making and selling alternative briquettes and will do so on a larger scale in the coming weeks with the new presses, and 4) spread awareness throughout Uvira on the benefits of using the briquettes in place of wood or makala-based cooking fires. Vesta Co-op’s generosity (and that of all the party goers) has jump-started Clément’s work in Uvira, and everyone from Tunza’s staff sends their sincere thanks to the co-opers and everyone responsible for organizing the party, making food, buying/drinking booze, and collecting money. All this sort of makes me wish I was still in college…To check out what an East Lansing paper wrote about the benefit, look here.

Watu wenge sana

Watu wenge sana

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Secondly, and completely unrelated, is the status of the Kimya II operation to ‘throw out or kill’ thousands of FDLR rebels in South Kivu. I could merely quote the pro-government propaganda aired each night on national radio which says that all is going well and that the FDLR are on their way to extinction, but instead I’d like to offer you a linguistic clue as to what the status of the operation is.

Currently, if you have severe diarrhea in Uvira, you will say (if you are up on local slang), ‘Nasikia Kimya II kabisa.’ [literally, ‘I have serious Kimya II’]. This uncomfortable, dangerous, and frequent killer of civilians used to be called ‘kuhara’ (the literal translation of ‘diarrhea’ into Swahili), but is now simply called ‘Kimya II’. This pretty much sums the operation up. N.B. According to the 2008 IRC mortality report for Congo, diarrhea is one of the primary contributors to the 30,000 or so civilians dying each month due to ‘war related’ causes in eastern Congo, which include lack of housing and clean water due to populations fleeing combat, ruined clinics and lack of medical care, and a variety of other problems intensified and unaddressed in light of the insecurity here. Thus, the sense of this recent addition to the ‘Uvira dictionary’ seems pretty clear. The people have spoken and offered a pretty candid approximation on Kimya II’s recent results. Having had no running water in three weeks, everyone in Uvira is starting to feel a bit of ‘Kimya II’ one way or another.

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Thirdly, AP partner SOS Femmes en Danger and I were finally able to arrange the much awaited arrival of the uniforms and school supplies so kindly donated by Diane Von Furstenburg in the villages of Kazimia, Kikonde, and Mboko. The uniforms and supplies benefited children of single mothers, widows, and victims of sexual violence. A small gap in fighting opened up the roads for movement South from Uvira, and now lots of kids are back in class, albeit a bit late. A bad omen for the immediate future emerged when combat resumed as the trip was coming to an end, with Mai-Mai vs. FARDC battles in Kikonde and Mboko (even in heavily populated Baraka town), and FDLR occupation and partial burning of a village 4 km from Kazimia.

One of over 200 DVF sponsored students in her school's office in Kikonde

One of over 200 DVF sponsored students in her school's office in Kikonde

Nevertheless, thanks very much to Diana Von Furstenburg for making it possible for so many kids in Fizi to continue their studies. The regulations at schools in Congo are fairly draconian concerning the requirement of new uniforms for incoming students, so ‘le rentre’ would have been impossible for a lot of kids without the DVF support. Now, if only security can improve a bit to create an atmosphere where studying can happen without fear and without firefights drowning out recitations and lessons.

Ned Meerdink