Further notes 03 April 2004

After a lot of hustle on the part of my supervisor, I was able to overcome the international bureaucracy of the MONUC (the United Nations’ mission in the Congo) and get on a flight to my next destination. The budget they must have for transport, among other things, has to be greater than the GNP of even some developed nations. When I first left Kinshasa for Bunia, I was on a Boeing 727 (I think) that was as nice as or nicer than the South African Airways flight I had been on the day before. But that was the last I was to see of that luxury. We had a stopover in Entebbe, Uganda, where we got on a plane of a more appropriate size for the dirt runway in Bunia, an old Russian Antonov. (you know, where they have to light a little vodka in the engine to get it started.) For the flight from Bunia to Bukavu, I had to take a commercial flight on a Twin Otter, which seats about 19 people, but I was the only passenger on board for the first leg of it. To get from Bukavu to Kindu, I had a one-night layover in Kisangani, but I was back on the Antonov for that portion, and then used a Russian cargo plane to fly from Kisangani to Kindu. A cargo plane, where you walk up the ramp at the rear end where the forklifts bring in the large crates, and the only seats are padded benches along the sides of the fuselage with seatbelts hanging off them. There were only four of us on that flight.

The stopover in Kisangani was really pleasant, and therefore much too short. I stayed with two French guys who work with another international NGO. They have a pasha’s type of house with a swimming pool. The security situation there was so good that they did not even carry radio handsets around. We went out at night on motorcycles, had a dinner and a few beers, and went home around 11 PM (once again, due to how long it takes to get food in restaurants here). Everything was calm, and no one was on alert status.

Now, in Kindu, the project is “demobilizing” child soldiers and reintegrating them into communities, ideally by finding their real families, so you can imagine that the security situation is a bit tense. This is a completely new domain for me, and extremely complex. For example, if you look at the news about this situation, they’ll say that the children were forcibly recruited, and it is true in most cases. But in others, the parents may have supported the cause of the particular militia group, or the economic circumstances of the household were so bad that the “better” choice was to send the boy to fight. Girls, in all cases I have heard so far, were all recruited by force. One of the worst parts of this is that in addition to being expected to fight, the girls are also often raped and sometimes forced to marry a soldier. Then, when it comes time to go back home, maybe the folks in the village are against the politics of the husband, and so the girl is no longer accepted.

To make matters worse, in some cases the children soldiers participated in (sometimes atrocious) acts against their own villages: destruction of houses and schools, killing people and even cannibalism. So their reintegration into communities is the source of another conflict, as the victims’ families often want retribution. To add a little more complication, the local authorities sometimes encourage that the children go back into the militia to minimize the conflict.

The attitudes and psychological states of these children pose a huge challenge. A colleague related a story that when he was newly arrived, he was trying to be approachable, and a nine-year-old came up, looked at the computer bag on his shoulder, and acted as if he just wanted to joke around and try it on. Well, it took some 45 minutes to negotiate it back, and this “child” apparently had developed this all-powerful attitude from his time in the militia. It has been reported that one experience that creates the sense of invulnerability is eating the flesh of the victims: cannibalism. I wonder what kind of mental terrorism is performed on the children to bring them to this point. Not that I am interested, but this knowledge will come as part of the job, a job I never imagined I would have.

Of course, in the midst of all this, I have once again picked up a Stephen Covey book on how to glean the best out of life’s experiences for one’s personal / professional / moral development. Pretty cold, huh? He has a spiritual side to his writing, and relates a lot of it to real-life experiences. Many would recommend that I pick up a Bible (or counterpart instrument, depending on the religion). But I have not gleaned much from my readings, though I have seen some people put a lot of effort into it and come out “converted,” for lack of a better term. I can extrapolate some things to the situation at hand, but I am more interested in understanding it than addressing it in a spiritual manner. While spirituality may inspire kind thoughts, things like food security, shelter, safety, economic opportunities and the like often are more immediate priorities that could reduce the incidence of conflict if administered “correctly.” I have to go back to the principles of sustainable development, even though this is an emergency situation. People need to participate from the beginning and be held responsible for their actions. Holding individuals responsible needs to be a participatory as well as reciprocal activity, too. An educational base needs to be put in place, with a lot of communication and exchanges in order to break down some barriers.