something to cheer you up.. thanks Arnaud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aximuI4q1X0

Crazy Crazy Demographics

Yesterday.....

We left Goma early to try out the landcruiser on some very bad roads in Masisi Province. After talking to the big league emergency response actors, in North Kivu we identified a community in North Kivu in need of emergency assistance following the latest fighting in the province.

By a magical stroke of serendipity we found what we were looking just under our noses: Rubaya, a small town that over the last few weeks has astonishingly doubled its population size.

Before the latest war, Rubaya had a population of 13,400 people. This population deserted the town in October 2007 following heavy fighting between the government and the CNDP. CNDP fell back from Masisi and established their front line not very far from here and started to run their own administration in Rubaya, and in that remarkable, humbling Congolese way, the communities started to come back. The thinking is now that 60% of the population has returned to get back to their agriculture, trading and mining the cassieirite and coltan that is found in abundance nearby.

It’s a tidy little place, wooden houses with tin roves that sparkle in the brilliant high altitude sunlight. Rubaya has a vibrant market and the usual quota for motorbike taxis, cheap and shiny Chinese radios and bad taste Congolese bling wide boys.

The thing that strikes you is the children. Hoards and hoards of snotty nosed toddlers are to be seen around every corner, and the most of them were very exited to see me! With my demographer’s glasses I was struggling to understand how the mothers of this little town could be so fecund? The administrator explained to me that although only sixty percent of the community had returned to Rubaya, the town is now home to approximately 20,000 more IDPs who have been fleeing fighting that started up again in September and continues to the present day. This migration would confuse even the world’s leading demographers, and for us the task of identifying the people with most needs is going to be complicated; and complicated by yet another factor: all of the IDPs are hidden. There is no camp, no distribution centre. We visited houses built for a family containing not one but three households; the pressure that this population is putting on the carrying capacity of Rubaya is immense. At the moment, the host families are apparently extending hospitality to the IDPs, but we know that IDPs are being forced to labour for the host families in return for shelter and, even though the authorities have denied it, that the IDPs are being forced to contribute five dollars monthly to the hosting families.

So Rubaya is buzzing; the feeling of relative prosperity is most likely attributable to the productive artisanal extraction of minerals from open cast mines near the town. Mining towns always have their dark side: an extremely wealthy commercial elite, and a dirt poor majority population. The violence that exists around similar cultures in Congo is in evidence here, people making money, getting drunk, and taking out their drunkenness on their wives and children. I would be very interested to look at HIV rates in Rubaya.


Its not very surprising then that CNDP control has been beefed up: if you control Rubaya I would guess you control some of the most productive mines in Masisi territory. CNDP foot soldiers were volubly in evidence around the town, faces hardened to the elements, sincerely lacking in any warmth, and armed to the teeth. Reminded me of Sri Lanka, Sudan, you name the internal armed, conflict: a disciplined motivated armed group ready to make war with a national army which is not committed to the cause, and would really rather be at home watching the football with a can of beer. What makes the whole thing a little bit spiceier in Rubaya is that it’s fairly obvious that some of the CNDP’s plain clothed colleagues, only speak Kinyarwanda and English. Is this a resource war with an ethnic tinge, or an ethnic war with a resource tinge, or is it a plain old international resource based conflict?

I didn’t really have time to think about these imponderables today, Brid and Me spent most of the day measuring MUAC’s. And the good news is that the grand melee of under fives in Rubaya are not malnourished. The suffering of these people is a lot less difficult to measure than the mean upper arm circumference of a sick kid. In our protection monitoring yesterday we understood that this community had been systematically pillaged and the prevalence of gender violence in our sample indicated that its not just the FARDC and the Mai Mai who violate in this town.

Some important information about Sloths

Not my Own work, thanks to my goregeous researcher/best friend for pulling this information from various Sloth databases.....

Sloth fur exhibits specialized functions: the outer hairs grow in a direction opposite from that of other mammals. In most mammals, hairs grow toward the extremities, but because sloths spend so much time with their legs above their bodies, their hairs grow away from the extremities in order to provide protection from the elements while the sloth hangs upside down. In moist conditions, the fur hosts two species of symbiotic cyanobacteria, which provide camouflage. The bacteria provide nutrients to the sloth when licked during grooming.Sloth fur is also host to algae; this algae colors the coat green and acts as camouflage. Because of this algae, sloth fur is a small ecosystem of its own, hosting many species of non-parasitic insects. Sloths have short, flat heads; big eyes; a short snout; long legs; and tiny ears. They also have stubby tails, usually 6-7cm long. Altogether, sloths' bodies usually are anywhere between 50 and 60 cm long.

Despite their adaptation to living in trees, sloths make competent swimmers. Their claws also provide a further unexpected deterrent to human hunters - when hanging upside-down in a tree they are held in place by the claws themselves and often do not fall down even if shot from below.

It had been thought that sloths were among the most somnolent animals, sleeping from 15 to 18 hours each day. Recently, however, Dr. Neil Rattenborg and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, published a study testing sloth sleep-patterns in the wild; this is the first study of its kind. The study indicated that sloths sleep just under 10 hours a day.They go to the ground to urinate and defecate about once a week. They go to the same spot each time and are vulnerable while doing so. The reason for this risky behaviour is unknown.

Living sloths have in fact three toes; the "two-toed" sloths, however, have only two fingers. Two-toed sloths are generally faster moving than three-toed sloths. Both types tend to occupy the same forests: in most areas, one species of three-toed sloth and one species of the larger two-toed type will jointly predominate.

Besides the fact that one has two toes on its forelimbs and the other three, they have different numbers of vertebrae (three-toed ones have nine; two-toed ones have six or seven). Also, Three-toed sloths have a small tail and its forelegs are substantially longer than the rear ones. The two-toed sloths do not have tails and its front and back legs are closer to the same size.. The two-toed variety also has a shorter neck, larger eyes and move more between trees. (sloths switch trees for new leaves to eat).

They eat leaves and buds. The two-toed species also eat twigs, fruits, and small prey. Their low rate of metabolism enables them to live on relatively little food. They do not have incisors and crop leaves with their hard lips. Their teeth grow continuously, as they are worn down by the grinding of their food. They don't drink but get their water from eating juicy leaves & licking dewdrops

They do most things upside down: eat, sleep (an average of 15 hours per day), mate, and give birth. Because of their upside down life, many of their internal organs (liver, stomach, spleen, pancreas) are in different positions from other mammals. Sloths sometimes let out a cry or hissing sound.

Masisi, Thursday 13 November 2008

Concern’s first day back to full implementation activities, the day started at five am, with the sounds of a child’s deathlike wailing just outside my window, someone banging nails into a piece of corrugated iron, and a very fervent Pentecostal prayer meeting within a range of less than ten meters.

Life is pretty normal in Masisi !

To my astonishment, my lean mean logistician was already up, bristling with enthusiasm and pride in the fact that he had just taken a cold water bath, he hit the ground running an hour later and spent the day in the most masculine of pursuits: washing and drying clothes which the next day are to distributed to the IDPs. It seems one of the warehouses sprung a leak during our absence and some of the cloths got a bit grungy. What is remarkable about our recent evacuation(s) is that none of the stocks of supplies which we were about to distribute were robbed, and none of our warehouses pillaged; maybe an indicator of the long term relationship that we have built with the people in Masisi.

My first job of the day was to sit down with Olivier, our chief security guard, and have him teach how to get by in KiHunde. The Hunde make up the majority of the population in Masisi. I was well pleased with the results, which made nearly everyone grin at my very poor pronunciation. After a brief intensive language session I set off to spend most of the day with Robert, Concern’s wonderful, pacific one legged agricultural technical advisor. We drove back down the dirt track (which is, in fact a leg of the Route Nationale 1 of the DRC), to Katale, the last town held by FARDC before you enter CNDP country.

Along the way, we were greeted by groups of women digging and pounding the road. Despite the insecurity, in the last month, Concern has worked with IDPs living the camps and in the communities to rehabilitate fifteen kilometers of road, the leg from Katale to the village of Mashake being one of them. Then as suddenly as the good road had started it stopped, and the road to Mashake resumed its previous long suffering identity as a dirt track, barley wide enough for a motorbike, let alone a 4x 4. We walked for about 2km, greeted occasionally by passing Mamas carrying heavy sacks of coal and beans, often with a baby tied around their backs as well with a Pagne.

Finally we arrived at Mashake were we took a look at a vegetable garden which had been supported by Concern, Leeks, Onions, Cabbage all revelling in the fertile soil. I very excitedly brought out my new KiHunde phrase book and greeted the people. They responded with smiles:

“You are speaking in KiHunde? Sorry, here we speak KinyaRwanda!”

Just five miles away from Masisi and I find myself with a totally different language group. No wonder the Kivus are so complicated!

We spoke with a group of ten women who had been selected by Concern with the communities as beneficiaries, they had all been displaced from their homes, many of them were widows. A woman explained that with the money that she would make by cultivating seeds given to her in the project, she would be able to rent some more land and plant more.

We ended the day in Lushebere IDP camp, very tired I listened to the camp committee, who told me about new IDPs fleeing the CNDP to Masisi, they gave me lots of new ideas about how we can work to support them better. I met a woman in the camp who was involved with the Cash for Work on the roads. She told me that she had used the money to pay the school fees for her children. A small step for her, a great leap for Concern as we win victories in the lives of very poor people. Just as I was leaving the camp a man sneered at me:

“Look at these children! They need new clothes! Will you look at the state of them?!”

I smiled to myself and said,

“Give us a couple of days, my Logistician is just doing the laundry!”

On Saturday, November 15th, Concern distributed clean underwear and sanitary towels for women and second hand clothing, for the 13,000 residents of the four IDP camps in Masisi and Lushebere.

On the Road to Nowhere ....

We travelled in a convoy with NRC to Masisi today, seven cars leaving Goma on a spectacularly brilliant morning, marching 'as to war' with flags flying and hazard warning lights turning heads as we slowly made our way through the populous suburbs of Goma town. Travelling in a convoy is one of those occasions when you are pumping a bit of adrenaline and you feel for once that what you do is somehow noble and elevated: logisticians get very excited and show off how savvy they are about security management, and I try to hide myself in the back of the last car in the convoy to avoid the embarrassment of being spotted by my friends.
Travelling in well organised convoys around North Kivu has proved to be essential for security for humanitarian actors: with more than ten attacks on NGOs just on the Masisi road, short of an armed escort, the convoy system has provided a safe and effective way to mitigate against armed attacks.
Little seems to have changed on the Masisi road, gregarious FARDC troops give way to the gaunt and smileless CNDP soldiers in their signature black wellington boots and state of the art Khalshnikovs,- surrounded by countryside that would make Connemara or Donegal look a bit tame.

The journey was normal and uneventful for Masisi road in the rainy season. We saw encouraging signs of life in Bihambwe, with families returning to their abandoned homes, cattle grazing the lush high pasturelands and a steady flow of people moving on foot to the regional markets. We stopped at the last MONUC base in the CNDP-controlled area to greet the captain there and to check up on security on the road - apparently no shooting since Saturday so we continue from the MONUC baptised 'gates of hell' into the no man's land between CNDP and Government control. We emerged from the 2.5 km stretch of no man’s land five and a half hours later, having had to pull four trucks out of the metre deep mud-infested, barely recognisable road. Thankfully we were jollied along in our endeavours to cross the red zone by a patrol of South African MONUC soldiers who encouraged us in our desperate efforts to de-blob ourselves out of the quagmire. I think they should change the name of the red zone to something more appropriate, like the light brown zone.

We finally turned the last corner to see Masisi twinkling before us; in almost biblical proportions the dark clouds rolled away to reveal a cluster of IDP camps, glittering white with the brand new plastic roofing sheets we had distributed a matter of days ago. The changes in Masisi town are imperceptible, but if you look carefully in the dark corners along the main street, you can see some fairly heavily armed soldiers sporting Light Machine Guns and Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers. If you really strain your eyes as you scan the hills behind the Concern base you can see troops moving like ants across the ridge of the high hills; moving artillery, preparing to defend Masisi town in what is universally recognised to be potentially the most bloody battle for the Kivus so far.

Goma, Yesterday

Goma, Monday 10th November 2008

Yesterday, I went to visit my friends at Don Bosco vocational training centre; out on the edge of Goma town on the Rutshuru road. Mount Niriyagongo towers over the large compound which provides a home to Goma’s orphan’s, Mai Bobos, and handicapped kids. The centre has also become Goma’s newest Internally displaced people camp in the last 72 hours: 1, 250 women and children are now calling the training centre home.

Fleeing violence between the Mai Mai militias and CNDP, these people have walked 60kms from Kiwanja in Rutshuru territory seeking the protection of Goma town. On the way to Goma, many of the people fell sick, with diaharroea, malaria and vommiting.

Yesterday moring, the centre became not only Goma’s newest IDP camp but possibly the fastest set up Cholera treatment unit ever. MSF- France worked swiftly with the Bosco team to set up an isolation unit, to treat thirty patients with Cholera, and to assist in the hosing down of all of the other newly arrived people. After that the Bosco team spent the rest of the day disenfecting the large warehouses which had been used as temporary shower rooms for the IDPs and distributing new (second hand) clothes.

I went to visist these people following an early morning SMS message from Chloé, BOSCO’s administrator, in her somewhat clipped english :

We have alot of needs cause we have more than 900 idp’s. We need NFI and food. What do you need, lists, lists of needs ?

The noise of 1250 people crammed into a courtyard is fantastic, people laughing, crying, eating, sleeping. Curious children run towards me, crying ‘Muzungu !’ eager to make friends : inspite of terrible hardship they maintain a smile. Cholé walks me to the back of the compound where beyond a gate controlled by a secuirty guard, well an ex-child soldier about 16 years old, beyond the gate there more people arriving : another 220 in the few hours that I was there. Journalists mingled with the crowd an in an iconic moment, I shed a tear as I watched a white female journalist photograph and abandoned raggedy toddler, the camera lens about double the size of the child.

Humanitairans watching the voyers who will fill the worlds websites and news reports with grotesque images of these beautiful people.

There are currently 1,250 women and children inside the centre, and 220 waiting outside. The ones inside will enjoy the protection of the high compound walls, the ones outside will be targeted by drunken soldiers and thieves. Amoung this group there are 798 children under the age of five, and 99 unaccompanied children.

Concern was able to immediately hand over 1,500 blankets for the IDPs and is working to find other means of providing food and non food assistance to this community.