(Ce n’est pas un bâton, c’est un serpent!)
Parlant de bestioles, on nous a ramené de Kisele, à 30 km d’ici, un être étrange dénommé pangolin. Un expat quelconque de Shamwana en aurait réquisitionné un, et on lui en a ramené deux. C’est une forme de tapir ou de fourmilier, ou aardvark en anglais – le premier mot du dictionnaire, me dit l’infirmière de Nouvelle-Ecosse. Ça se roule en boule défensivement, c’est couvert d’écailles mais c’est un mammifère, ça se nourrit de fourmis et de termites, et ça se mange ici au Congo. Probablement de la famille des porcs-épics. “En tout cas vraiment”, comme ils disent si bien ici, ce n’est pas un de nous qui a demandé la bête puisque j’ai fait le tour de la base avec la question; de toute façon, c’eût été clairement contre les règles strictes de MSF-Hollande. Sans doute une idée étrange de nos voisins, les gens de Concern. Hmm... après réflexion, pas si étrange que ça. La famille Pangolin aurait pu remédier à notre problème de termites – deux pangolins familiers au lieu de la vague odeur d’huile de vidange qui flotte encore dans la maison et dans ma chambre...
Pangolin = a kind of aardvark = kibembe en kiluba
Pauvre petits pangolins – j’ai bien peur qu’il ne finissent dans les estomacs des gardiens de Concern. En tout cas, ils ne reviendront pas chez eux à Kisele...
C’est à Kisele que j’ai trouvé la maison la plus poétique qu’il m’est venu de voir:
C’est la maison de notre agent focal, toute neuve, avec une belle bâche. J’irai lui demander un jour quelle inspiration l’a piqué d’inscrire ces jolis vers libres sur son mur.
* * *
There isn’t much free water in this area, or in the region in general; we are not near the Congo river at all. In most villages, to obey MSF standards, the drilling and watsan teams have dug handpumps such as this one behind the health centre in Kisele.
The Congo is a poor old man sitting on a mound of gold. I had heard that expression about Peru when I was there for a project in 1994, but this country takes the saying to a different, exponential level. DRC is incredibly rich in mineral resources, well ahead of most African countries. This arises the concupiscence of neighbouring countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Angola, which all have informally encouraged guerillas on Congolese soil. The mineral wealth has contributed to the foreign-supported strife that has been plaguing this land and impoverished it. The current conflict with the renegade Laurent Nkunda in the Eastern provinces, the Kivus, is said to be supported by Rwanda – although that has been officially denied. The simmering conflicts allow the neighbours to regularly raid the mineral riches of this underdeveloped country without any infrastructures to defend itself; and they create the vicious cycle of worsening poverty and violence that has been the history of the Congo of the last few decades. The movie Blood Diamonds was about Sierra Leone, but it could have been about DRC. Many external interests, and not the least, companies from rich countries such as Australia, the States, China and... Canada, exploit mines with minimal labor law. In the Southwestern part of Katanga, there is copper. The uranium used for the American nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the Belgian Gécamine mines in South Katanga. The South African soldiers of the MONUC UN forces are known to seek out mining opportunities as a sideline in the Kivus. In conflicted North Kivu, there are diamonds and gold. Lately, the rage is all about this Coltan metal alloy, used in microchips and Sony Playstation machines, which is found in the Kivus and probably here in Katanga as well.
Possessing such rich soil also has consequences on the water tables. I’ve had interesting conversations with our British drilling officer. His team and the watsan team have analyzed the water from the handpumps. The mineral water contents include lithium, cadmium, manganese, copper and other metals. Twice or more the 500 ppm acceptable for human consumption by WHO standards. “Maybe we should make batteries out of the water”, he said jokingly... So much that the water from the hospital handpump has been deemed too minerally rich for expat use.
Hence, our domestic water comes from the small river that runs behind Shamwana. Two days ago, I walked over there for the first time. It was a nice half-hour walk through the bush, with a few green hills as backdrop, strange bird sounds and crickets all around. At the river, people were doing their wash and kids were going for a swim, in an altogether muddy water. Young girls were carrying back clean dishes to the village.
Three times a day, local ladies are hired to hike down to the river to supply our washbasins, our shower and our cooking water (twice filtered and boiled). Here they are, crossing past the expat tukuls to fill our shower bucket on a Sunday afternoon:
Seeing so many people work for us at a minimal wages sits uncomfortably with my conscience. I realize how much energy and financial resources we expats use just to live and work here, compared to the locals. Even if by Western standards, we are leading a Spartan life. The water for our daily usage has to be brought from the river. The petrol feeding our vehicles and our generator, thus supplying the electricity to our computers, as well as the kerosene for our refrigerator and our lanterns – all must be driven here from Lubumbashi. At the same time, we are bringing health care and basic infrastructures to a region long forgotten and scarred by conflict. Children have not been vaccinated for over a decade. People are accustomed to use the services of the traditional healers and birth attendants, with disastrous consequences on morbidity and neonatal mortality. Moreover, the NGO’s are kickstarting the local economy by bringing employment and locally trading goods. It is a two-way street, this development business.
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