2006 April Archive at BrianJBecker.com

Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Mwangaza=A Ray of Light

Published

on April 29, 2006

. 5 Comments

It was already hot this morning before we left the apartment for work at 8:00 AM. As we sang and prayed to start the day at the office, I noticed that the fan wasn’t oscillating anywhere near my general direction. It was one of those days when you can’t help but notice the direction and general behavior of fans. But by around 10:00 AM the sky started to cloud up and the heat broke, the temperature dropping several degrees. The flowers around the office were bathed by intermittent showers.

One nice thing about my office here is that it has a great big casement window that I open up every morning and it gives me air-flow, the smell of anything burning nearby, and the occasional cool, fresh breeze. Through the window I can also see the tree on the other side of the street and occasionally my eye catches movement up in its branches. If I look long enough I can usually pick out the form of a small child slowly moving down a limb toward one of the few remaining fruits and I can hear his friends cheering him on. Sometimes a truck rumbles by and the men sitting on top cruise right along the top of our wall. Sitting atop a large truck not only provides transport, but a unique view of town. There are many big walls here for protection and privacy. Those guys are getting to peek over every wall the truck rumbles past.

Just as we were getting ready to leave and disburse a new loan to one of our community banks we got word that some tax men were here to see us. (I’m expecting each of the local government offices to arrive in turn to try to take a slice of the new guy. Still, it grates on the nerves when they turn up.) These guys were surprised to see Peter in the office with me and he quickly set them straight. The issue that they brought had been cleared up months ago and by their boss no less. They are sneaky but their arguments do not often check out in the end. We are always working to ensure that we are in compliance with all of the tax codes. But the tax codes are not always easy to find until someone is pointing out your most grave error in a photocopied book they’ve laid before you on your desk.

Finally the tax folks were gone and we got on the road to our disbursal out in a nearby rural commune. Kisangani is made up of several sectors called communes. Once we turned off the main road it was clear that we were driving into a neighborhood that didn’t often see cars. The roads are really footpaths and the area is not mapped out in gridlines like the Belgian parts of town. The houses are almost all made of stick and mud construction with banana leaf and palm frond roofs. As we passed the children playing together in their yards were waving, smiling and shouting “MONUC!” which through their accents sounds almost like your neighbor in America shouting, “Morning!”

The UN is known by it’s French acronym MONUC here. This is the first time that I have witnessed the UN in action. They rise above local laws, labor codes, traffic cops. They are effectively a global trump card. Without their presence, things would undoubtedly be much less stable. There are a lot of diamonds here and it seems that diamonds often fund political instability. So MONUC watches over the city and the nation. They keep the peace. They are also able to take very long lunch breaks. Who is to tell them not to?

The loan disbursal ceremony was a wonderful time. The members of the Mwangaza Community Bank have built their own small bamboo structure to house their meetings. The rains had brought much cooler air with a little breeze. Everyone had brought out their own chair from their living room and the group looked quite comfortable as we approached. I told the group that since I’d grown up in the country, I felt quite comfortable with this fine group in the rural area.

-Pete with one of the Mamas of Bank Mwangaza.

There were many very dignified and gracious older mamas in this group. Everyone seemed to be wearing their most colorful African dress. This group has even come up with their own songs and cheers. They sang one song about how their group is like Noah’s ark, taking them away from the flood and on to better days. It was great to share in the laughter and joy that this group exuded.

I love the little moments like these that make Congo great fun. I was delighted when I noticed pineapples growing nearby and I got to take a close look at a pineapple plant for the first time. I could hardly keep from chuckling when six or seven ducklings walked right through the gathering during the serious speeches and no one even reacted. The group’s president made a very nice speech that he’d typed on an old fashioned typewriter. And then it was wonderful to be introduced to the mama in the group who has among them all saved the most in her HOPE savings account. She was bashful when the others told us that she is saving to buy a home for her family.

In these moments of joy it is easy to look past the poverty that is pervasive here. I suppose it’s a good thing. Poverty drains the life out of people and it can get everyone, present comapany included, depressed. We must not ignore it but always respond by praying (and working) for daily bread. As we said our goodbyes and began to drive away I noticed a small child with a distended belly and that was a powerful reminder of poverty’s grip. Often when children are severely malnourished the abdomen becomes large and hard. The child may be eating but s/he is not getting adequate healthy nutrition. We continue to pray and work for daily bread. God is faithful and will hear the cry of the afflicted.

Laying a Foundation

Published

Brian

on April 24, 2006

in Africa and Congo

. 2 Comments

I told Pete (my predecessor) that I felt very tired one afternoon last week. Or, rather he saw my eyelids drooping low as he was explaining the asset depreciation schedule. He told me that it’s normal to be tired for the first month or so in a new place like this. It happened to him. There are many stresses that aren’t always on the surface but they are there. There’s the stress of adjusting to the culture, the languages, the climate, the living situation, etc. He told me not to take things too fast, but to allow myself some time to adjust, time to rest. It will take some time to build a foundation, to regain full strength. That’s about the wisest advice that I have heard in awhile.

For the first week that I was here the electricity and internet at the house and at the office were nearly perfectly functional. Now that Pete has left for Kinshasa, some things have gone south. The electricity in the apartment cut out a few nights ago for about two hours. We lit some candles and fortunately our meal was warm enough to eat. The lights were out in the surrounding city so it appeared to be a widespread blackout – not uncommon. Then the following night it happened again. I quickly noticed that the nearby buildings were still lit. Every time I ask someone what is going on I get a different story. “The cable has broken underground in a place it hasn’t broken for 40 years.” “The electric company has cut it off until everyone pays them something.” “They’ve located the break and dug down to it but now it will take two or three weeks to fix.” “They still don’t know where the problem is.” Apparently it’s big news around town that our building is out and the stories vary by the hour.

Fellow HOPE expatriate staff say that there are good weeks and there are not so good weeks living here in Congo. I am not sure how this one classifies yet, but I think it’s somewhere in the middle. Food is expensive here and so anytime the power is out long enough to cause the food to rot… that’s not going to be a banner day. In whole though, I am still doing very well.

The building that I live in now was built by the Belgians who used to live here. They built most of the city, or at least they designed it and supervised Congolese workers. This building had to be quite magnificent for it’s time. The Belgian School is also located in the building complex. The elevator doesn’t work (doesn’t appear to have worked since shortly after the Belgians left) and from the small parking garage it’s about 16 half flights of stairs up to the apartment door. Then once you’re in the apartment it’s an immediate flight down to the main living area and another flight down into the kitchen. It’s a unique design, one that you can spend an hour contemplating and still not quite understand how it all fits together. It’s like having a stairmaster built into your life and it makes for a good work out.

The Belgians also built large houses all around town. Some are still inhabited, some are in disrepair, and some have been reclaimed by the jungle. This was apparently quite a cosmopolitan place into the 1950’s. John Huston filmed part of “The African Queen” with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart here. There is a fair amount of now crumbling art deco architecture, including our office building which had to be a pretty stylish house in its day. The entire city is a colonial relic in varying states of decay.

It feels like a good place to build something new. I’m a coach for this team of local leaders who are building a microfinance lending institution. Thanks to their efforts, there are about 1,000 people so far who are working to build their small businesses, their families, homes and churches. Foreigners have been the ones who have had the resources to build here in the past. Now with peace and with the help of HOPE it is a season for local people to build their livelihoods from the foundation up.

UPDATE: As of Saturday evening the power is back on. The main line is not yet fixed, but some tenants got together and bought an 80 foot cable that they connected to a light pole in front of the building. The strung it into the front door and down the stairs into the electrical room. The building is now plugged in, ever so feebly. The power dips and bows around mealtimes as people are using electric cooking appliances. We’re back to boiling our own water and eating hot meals at home!

The Phone’s For You

Published

Brian

on April 22, 2006

in Africa and Congo

. 2 Comments

Since the land-based telephone system here is nearly non-existent, the cell phone business is in full swing. There are two competing companies that are all over town. VodaCom offers their signature color of blue paint to seemingly anybody who will take it. Even the airport is Voda-Blue and says VodaCom across both the front and the back of the building. Celtel favors a striking red tint and they are actively working to paint the town red. There are also billboards plastered around town promoting the two companies. Until recently most advertising showed upwardly mobile Congolese businessmen and women in haute couture. VodaCom’s new advertising campaign shows a man working down in a pit mining diamonds with a cell phone to one ear and his free hand clenched in a fist raised to the sky. He must have just set down his pickaxe to answer the call. Maybe his wife just told him she’s serving his favorite meal tonight.

Perhaps because it costs money to check voicemail here, people don’t use it. All African cell phones that I’ve seen are on a prepaid system. You buy little cards and then you enter a pin number from the card into the phone. I had a prepay phone similar to this in the states, but I paid for every call incoming or outgoing. Here you only pay for calls that you make, not calls that you receive. So if the phone rings – you pick it up. Minutes aren’t cheap so you don’t want to be compelled to call that person back. Hey, they are paying! I was in a meeting at the United Nations yesterday and people’s phones kept ringing, playing everything from Pat Benatar to the 1812 Overture. Then someone slides back from the table, pops up and steps into the next room with a phone on their ear.

Sometimes people will “beep”, meaning that they call you and before you can answer they hang up. That way they’ve let you know that they need to speak with you but not enough to pay for it and they are hoping that you will call them back and foot the bill. …If you call them back.

Some months ago I was listening to a panel of local development leaders from three continents speak at Point Loma. People’s phones kept going off and disrupting the speeches. I decided then that a law should be passed requiring everyone’s cell phone to loudly pronounce the owner’s full name. After three or four times reading the person’s legal name it would go into a brief telling of the owner’s most embarrassing moment. I think that might prevent loud cell phone disruptions in meetings, church, libraries, etc.

I’ve read recently that the FAA is considering allowing cell phone usage on airliners. The cell phone companies would expand their coverage area to cover everything up to 40,000 feet. I pray that this will never happen. This job I’ve got requires long airplane journeys. The only thing I can think of that would be worse than someone sitting next to me telling me their life story for eight hours would be that same person telling it to someone else on the phone.

There’s a guy in New England somewhere who has gotten the idea to try to sell advertising space on the roofs of people’s homes and businesses. He knows that Google satellite maps are popular and that eventually these ads would be frequently viewed online. They would also be visible from aircraft. It’s probably a selling point in his scheme. This guy is an average citizen and now he’s brokering deals to try to make this happen.

I recently took a midday flight on a small commuter jet from Pensacola to Tampa. No one was talking on the phone, I didn’t even here one ring –the cabin was peaceful. The white sands and emerald blue water were spectacularly pure and beautiful from 30,000 feet.

Moving to Kisangani

Published

Brian

on April 12, 2006

in Africa and Congo

. 2 Comments

Last Thursday afternoon I went home early from work to pack up one suitcase to bring out to Kisangani. Our electricity at Nate’s house in Kinshasa has been fairly unreliable in the last week. I’ve come to believe that there is something to learn from experiencing the powerlessness and frustration that comes with buying perishable food items only to have the refrigerator fall silent ten minutes after you’ve loaded it. Then it sleeps for a day or two with no electricity and questions start to arise about what is still safe to eat and what may not be prudent.

So I was packing and sweating and packing some more (no electricity to turn the fan). I put together a suitcase of necessary clothing items and I picked out a few books to stuff in as well. I still have a suitcase full of books and one more with clothing at Nate’s place. The UN flights only allow one suitcase but they seem to be lenient on the weight of it, and that’s a bonus. As I and my colleagues travel back and forth to Kinshasa, we will ferry out the rest of my stuff in time. At Point Loma, they taught us about delay of gratification in Freshman Psychology 101. I’ve slowly learned to embrace it over the years since then and it comes in handy here. I’m glad that I can’t have all of my things here now because I know that it will make a nice event down the road when I receive those suitcases. Another example: I can’t just sit down and watch all of Seinfeld Season 4 on one Saturday afternoon because there will be many Saturday afternoons.

Like any big city, Kinshasa does wear on the nerves. Nobody seems to know for sure but there are somewhere between eight and twelve million people there. There are no freeways and there are scarcely any four lane roads. There are European style turning circles and they give the right of way to the people entering the circle, which means that people get stuck in the circle, they can’t get back out. Essentially this law creates traffic jams. While I was in town the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan came to make a brief visit. When he showed up a couple of traffic lights started working (a nice fountain was cranked up just in time as well). I was looking for someone hiding in the bushes with some wires to change the red lights to green, but it seems it is computer controlled. Most people don’t obey the red lights anyway. Apparently the traffic was in rare form over the weekend as my boss Nate waited four hours to move about two miles. Imagine that.

The HOPE driver Flory picked me up at 6AM on Friday. Just then I discovered that an early morning drive through the city is the perfect remedy for Kinshasa-fatigue. The air was crisp and cool, the streets were nearly empty. The people milling about appeared relatively happy to be early birds, as if they were anticipating the advantage their jump on the day would earn. It may have helped that I was filled with the excitement of going to the airport to take my first UN flight and to come to the city where I will be living and working for some time. Yet even if I wasn’t going to the airport, a little early morning driving would have lifted my spirits.

The United Nations has its own “terminal” at the airport. The regular rigmarole of air travel here does not suit the UN. They need to have at least semi-autonomous transit for their personnel. Fortunately for HOPE, they extend their transit service on an space-available basis to international NGO’s that are working to help the people of Congo. This means that we can travel with the UN for free as long as we are OK with getting bumped if they need the seat.

The terminal in Kinshasa is a small camp of temporary buildings. The airplanes are painted white with giant black letters UN on the side, just like every UN car. We boarded the 727-100 from a built in stair in the tail. There were people on the plane from just about every continent (I didn’t see any Australians or New Zealanders). They decided to give me the last open seat in the “first class” section and I wasn’t going to refuse that offer. I sat next to a man from Sri Lanka who works in UN logistics. We had a good talk about the size of UN operations here (18,000 troops and 4,000 civilians). We also talked about how UN civilian staff get to go back to visit their home country four times a year! (There are incredible amounts of seemingly frivolous expenses made by international relief and development organizations. I am thankful to be working for HOPE and to have leaders who are focused on getting as much of our resources into the lives of the poor as possible.) We talked about the political situation in Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. Then we stopped to laugh at the fire patrol on duty at Kinshasa Airport.

The flight was nice and uneventful. I was picked up here by Peter (my predecessor), Curtis (the current intern), Stanis (the HOPE driver here), and Tony (our MIS, or data management officer). It’s a 20 minute drive through some rural villages to the city and then Stanis gave me a driving tour of the town. I’m starting to figure out where things are. It’s not a very big city.

We went to a loan disbursal and I was introduced to some of the mamas and the papas. Out here they make a big deal of any loan disbursal. In community bank groups they save together for a social guarantee fund. The groups out here tend to do a really good job of repayment and when they get their new loan they like to organize a small feast for the entire bank group. They also love it when the office staff come out and attend the loan disbursal. Peter tells me that they enjoy watching us eat the food that they have prepared. There have been many foreigners who have been here and refused to touch the food that was offered in hospitality.

After the disbursal we came back to the office and had an informal time of staff introductions. We currently have a staff of nine here and they are a great group of people. I am privileged to work with them.

The weekend was great. Saturday afternoon we went to the Greek Community Center to watch some basketball. On Sunday we went to Palm Sunday service at the Anglican Church. The French speaking service there is not widely attended; there were twenty or thirty of us there including neighborhood kids. They gathered us outside the church and marched us in with palm branches waving. It felt a little like home at Mid-City Church in San Diego. I thought I was pretty cool last year when I made a cross out of a palm frond. Out here they weave their palm branches into elaborate works of art.

Invaluable

Published

Brian

on April 6, 2006

in Congo

. 1 Comment

Congo is in a prolonged economic crisis and in the last several years her people have suffered from hyper-inflation. Imagine a loaf of bread at the supermarket going from $1.50 to $5 overnight and up to $18 next month. People get hungry, then currency becomes irrelevant and the black market really takes over. I’d quit my day job and start baking bread full time. What they’ve done here (as well as in several other nations with similar problems) is link the local currency to the dollar in an effort to stop the bleeding. Moreover, in Congo they accept dollars just about anywhere. If you pay in dollars you may likely get change back in both US and Congolese francs. It makes it a little tricky to ensure that you are getting correct change (francs are about 440 to the dollar).

But here’s where it gets wacky. First, they don’t take US one dollar bills. Sometimes they try to give them out as change, but they generally don’t take them. Before I came over here I was told to bring only crisp, new bills. As most of you know I only had a month or so to pack up the possessions I wanted to keep and take them to my grandparents’ house, sell everything else, and resign from two jobs. Money was tricky during that time as I was selling things and buying essentials for life out here. My credit union couldn’t provide new bills but they gave me the pick of what they had and so I spent some time with the teller just looking over their stock of bills avoiding rips and discolorations and goodness gracious, nothing with a little presidential head.

Fast forward to last Saturday. I’m in the grocery store check out lane. I hand a large bill to the cashier. She gives it a good look and starts passing her finger over a tiny hairline rip where the bill has been folded. We’re talking about a whole millimeter of rip. I’m standing there watching her double or triple the size of the rip by playing with it before I realize what is going on! She hands it back and says she can’t take it, it’s defective. “That one is no good.”

Tonight we went to the pharmacy so I could buy a cache of medicines to cure the most common Central African ailments. They’re undoubtedly much cheaper here in Kinshasa than they’ll be in Kisangani and more likely to be adequately potent. I thought I’d be slick and give my bill another try. The pharmacy technician opened the cash drawer and I thought I was home free. I felt like a real winner. Then she suddenly handed it back and said casually, “this one is ripped”. Strike two.

Now I have to be fair. The reason no one will take such bills is that the banks also refuse them. The banks here are extremely difficult to deal with. In our work we deal with this every day. Another exercise in imagination: There are no automatic tellers, no online banking, no drive through, and it takes two hours on average in line to make a simple deposit. Oh yeah, and slightly ripped money is worthless, they won’t put it into your account. In their defense they are afraid of counterfeit US currency and it must be a legitimate concern. When they took a more crisp bill at the pharmacy, they wrote the serial number down in a log book. That seemed a little obsessive-compulsive.

Ironically the Congolese currency is the dirtiest stuff on earth. I think it’s the dirt on it that holds it together. Its really brown. Apparently when they count it in the bank they wear gloves and face masks. But as long as they can read the number on its shades of brown, it’s good as gold.

OK, I am a little frustrated by this wackiness, and a little eager to put the rest of my cash under a magnifier to see how much is legal tender here (I think I am fine, by the way). I’ll be able to spend my defective money in most other parts of the world or I’ll trade it with visiting colleagues when they are going back to the USA. Ultimately my frustration over silly little rips in money more than pales in comparison to the plight of the Congolese poor and the poor everywhere. I can’t complain. I’m blessed to be where I am and getting to do the work that I am doing. But if someone tries to give me dollar bills as change, I am going to quickly look them over and say, “sorry, I don’t accept those!”

If anyone knows how I can glue up the cracks in my money, let me know. If anyone wants to join me in lobbying congress to add more elastic to the recipe for dollars, I’ll pass the petition.

How is the weather?

Published

Brian

on April 3, 2006

in Congo

. 2 Comments

It’s late afternoon summertime circa 1989 in the Valley of the Sun, southeast of Phoenix proper and I am swimming with one of my brothers in the pool. Off in the eastern sky a tinge of light brown begins to develop. Ten minutes later the entire world east of our yard is dark brown and we know that at any moment the dust storm will hit with full force. It’s time to get out of the pool.

The dust will blow for awhile and then most often follow up with some cool rain. I’m convinced the Arizona desert loves nothing more than the cool monsoon rains that punctuate the searing summer sun. There may be a lightning show and even a power outage if we are lucky and the family gathers on the patio to watch the sky.

Then in 1997 I moved to San Diego. Storms are rare and at least 90% of the time they are uneventful and boring. No lightning, little wind. The big news is when the waves are large and they crash over the piers, but that doesn’t really affect anyone except the old men who fish on the piers and the surfers. A couple of years there, the El Nino effect did come in and shake us up with some real tropical rainstorms and a bit of flooding. (San Diego is built without good drainage since it doesn’t rain a whole lot and people don’t think about bad weather there. For a long time all of the rainwater went into the ocean untreated and washed all of the motor oil off the streets and onto the beaches.)

Now El Nino is my next door neighbor. Welcome to the tropics. This is about as far as you can get ecologically from the Arizona Sonoran Desert. It rains here just about anytime it wants to. There is no Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall. It’s only the rainy season and the dry season. The dry season is shorter the closer you are to the equator. I’m a little south of it here in Kinshasa and the dry season is only about 3 or 4 months starting in May. I remember lessons in earth science about the Coriolis Effect. As the earth rotates, weather is set spinning and it throws more weather toward the warm tropics and toward the equator. In Kisangani, I will be living virtually on the equator.

Last night we had some sprinkles throughout the evening. Then in the middle of the night the heavens opened and dumped insane amounts of water for a good while. It’s hard to understand the level of difficulty that the poor face living in shanties in the tropics. A Tsunami is devastating, but two storms a week with heavy rains on a feeble tin roof over a mud floor, and trying to keep children dry, that’s a lifetime of difficulty.

In Arizona a river is anything that flows (or trickles) year round. We use up most of the rivers before they meet the sea. We put signs on bridges over streams and creeks that don’t really flow. The Congo River is the second largest river in the world. Only the Amazon carries more water. There are countless large tributaries that feed it and the entire Congo basin is on of the world’s largest watersheds. Weather shapes our daily lives and the patterns we create for ourselves. It nourishes and it devastates.

Just like my childhood, when those really good storms could knock out the electric power. That happens here often. The electricity has been going out a couple of times a week lately. Sometimes it seems weather related, other times it’s just out. It was out for 24 hours this weekend. The current also varies considerably in strength. It’s ok, a little annoying at times, but not a big problem. It is quite a paradigm shift away from the world of consistent 110v power.

I can’t complain. But if you think of it, say a brief prayer of thanksgiving next time you plug something in and it works. I will.