News from Congo, not mine, and not good

Things are getting worse in Congo again. In a story I co-wrote a few months ago—and in Human Rights Watch reports that came out just before that—was a fact that felt inevitable, that as delegations sat around tables talking their way through the finer points of peace, men in the fields were still fighting. According to formalities, there’s peace in eastern Congo, as of early this year. But on the ground, there’s anything but.

Especially now. One of the rebel groups is on the offensive again, and 100,000 people have fled their homes since August. Scott Baldauf, the staff writer for the Monitor in Africa, tells the story here.

I finally understand that thing I’ve read about in books, where hardened correspondents talk about the desperation they feel to return to the completely screwed places they’ve covered when things take a turn for the worse. It means something different when you know how that place looks in real life, and something gnaws at your gut, beckoning you back.

But for now, I’m here. I’m here, wishing to be there. Which is something those 100,000 people would probably think the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard.

A look at the American heartland, from a West Virginian who can’t explain it

I keep getting asked–this is a paraphrase–”Why is West Virginia still so damn racist?” Media reports on the racism in the part of the world my home town represents have made me a token Appalachian, on the hook for explaining something I really can’t.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. All my good progressive “we’ve come so far since the 1960s” friends say, People can’t really still think that stuff, can they?

Here is an excerpt from an article about the area of Ohio that borders West Virginia. Southeast Ohio is considered the “swing area” of a swing state in the upcoming election. Here’s why diners told the Columbus Dispatch they’re not voting Dem:

“[A]n uneasiness with Obama prevails in Appalachia, and for many it comes down to race.

“I’ll be voting for a Republican for the first time in my life,” Jeff Justice, a 46-year-old ironworker, said as he finished his lunch at Hickie’s.

Asked why, Justice, a white former Wheelersburg resident now living in Florida, didn’t hesitate.

“He’s black.”

Waitress Mary Walters, 45, of New Boston, said Obama, a first-term U.S. senator, doesn’t have enough experience and she’s concerned about his name.

“I don’t know if he is truly an American,” said Walters, who hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan.”

Don’t ask me to explain. I’m not surprised to read it, because of where I grew up, but I don’t understand it any more than you.

Yes, they can

It’s the political season here, and so I have to admire the chutzpah of Paul Collier, who had an op-ed in today’s NYT.

Let’s just say Collier, for those of you who didn’t have to suffer through international relations courses, is not known as a fuzzy-wuzzy pro-aid guy. His tome Beyond Greed and Grievance is like a narrative statistics report: numbers, numbers, numbers illustrating what is (statistically) true about conflict, poverty and the like, rather than what seems to be the case from theories and anecdotes. There are no aid-cheering conclusions in his work (and nor are their aid-bashing ones).

The point is, he’s pretty a-polemical, if not a-political, and either is a welcome but rare thing as soon as you start talking about aid. So for a guy as understated as Collier, this came as a shock:

The big difference between a poor Asian household and an equally poor African one is hope, not necessarily for the present generation of adults but for their children.

I have to assume it’s not a tacit endorsement of Barack Obama for president, but in this season, language like that stands out. So does the argument. In discrete numbers, he writes, China and India have more poor people than Africa. But their incomes are rising faster and with more certainty, so getting African incomes up should still be the focus of aid conversations, and of the UN General Assembly, which opens today.

What we need to achieve that, he says, is not necessarily more aid dollars (there’s a critique of the Millennium Development project in here, for the interested, and of the “American biofuels scam”). We need–theyneed–a little…hope.

Hope makes a difference in people’s ability to tolerate poverty; parents are willing to sacrifice as long as their children have a future. Our top priority should be to provide credible hope where it has been lacking.

There’s something about the wonky language of that sentence, but its utterly poetic object: provide credible hope. top priority. Hope doesn’t usually get much play in conversations that sound like that.

Collier continues with important policy points–where was the UN after the Mauritania coup? Why has it let Africa imitate the folly of some European and American agriculture policies? What happens to market access now that Doha talks have collapsed? Etc.

All great points. But the most interesting one may be, how will our answers to those questions change if we start the conversation by saying, “Above all, the outcome must give the people hope?” I’m not sure, but I like the idea.

Women in Rwanda are all the rage

I seem to always miss the proper news. In the parliamentary elections held earlier this week–only the second election in the country since the genocide–52 percent of the newly elected were women, making Rwanda the first country in the world to have a majority female parliament.

In his speech at MIT on Thursday, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said the success of women was due largely to an active effort to engage them. They are, he pointed out, more than 50 percent of Rwandan society, so they should participate at least in so equal a proportion in politics. More interesting even than the point was the president’s tone, which seemed to say, Isn’t it obvious? How could you possibly make any other argument?

Worth nothing, before we return to women, is that Rwanda also reserves two seats in the parliament for youth (one of which may have gone to a woman, as well). Details here.

Meanwhile, everyone wants to talk about women, and not in that nasty catty way: Maria Hinojosa, a familiar voice for NPR listeners, is doing a segment for PBS’s “Now” called “Women, Politics and Power” which includes a spot from Rwanda (details here), and the Guardian Weekly published a piece on women’s role in development recently (anyone have the link? I lost it!). It’s unfair to call it a rip off of the Washington Post’s earlier piece, but it’s also true that the Post came first…

Interesting to see the role women, especially genocide survivors, are playing in society. No doubt the promotion of women Kagame talked about is having influence, as is help, from the Rwandan government and from outside, aimed at helping survivors rebuild.

A note not technically from, but in light of, Central Africa

New York City

Ever a woman of geographical ADHD, I’ve been in three cities since returning to the U.S. about 10 days ago. A few days in New York, a few days in DC, a few days in Chicago, a few weddings… but now we’re settling back into the City that, at some point in this silly exercise that is adult life, became my home.

Eight million people live here–2 million less than Kinshasa, but in New York, they all seem to be on the same part of the sidewalk as me, all of the time. This works fine most of the time, when we practice our sidewalk waltz, each person dodging to the next bit of open space on the concrete. Somehow, we all know where the other person is dodging, and where we belong, and we manage to weave seamlessly past each other, most of the time.

This city, then, feels less like 8 million people and more like 8 million discrete little worlds, each one just grazing the next, in an accident that counts as human contact, as we whizz past each other. Within our own orbits, we dictate everything: we do and say what we want to do when we want to do and say it; we spend what we want to spend–you can swipe even the teensiest denominations on your Visa card, and deal with the consequences later; we go anywhere we want, almost immediately, and go home when and with whomever we want; and we avoid each other, sending texts and leaving voicemails, for as long as we want.

And so I miss the slow “dysfunction” of East Africa, where whatever it is you want to do is going to take you twice as long as you’d wish, so you might as well talk to the guy next to you. I miss feeling connected, instead of wedged into a wrongly shaped slot in someone else’s day. I miss the idea that if I miss an appointment, or disappear traveling for a few months, people will notice, and even be a little pissed off. Because that’s just not what people do, there.

I miss, I guess, all the things I was so bad at. But I can sidewalk waltz with the best of them, which will get you farther here than being good at all those things I was bad at. But it’s still not the kind of person I want to be.

What to ride, where to go in Congo

Well, sort of.

You won’t probably make it very far on a chikudu unless you’re a local. It’s a rough-looking hand-made road warrior, part scooter, part bicycle, though I’m pretty sure it’s a lot harder to learn than riding a bike. You can read about it in my new article here.

And here’s my review of All Things Must Fight to Live, former AP correspondent Bryan Mealer’s book on his time in Congo’s cities–and on its rivers and through its forests… He’s a mad adventurer of sorts, and as much as I enjoyed taking a few risks in the bush, I’m not about to use the Congo River as a mode of transport.

The new thing in resource-fueled conflict: cows

Here’s a story I reported during my trip to Goma, about which I know I owe you all lusciously interesting tidbits. I’ll try to oblige soon.

In Congo, a new twist on ‘blood diamonds

Warring rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are stealing and selling livestock to finance a conflict sparked by spillover from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 were killed.

Of palettes and poverty

My colleague and I could think of very few things in the world that could possibly be as interesting as the National Museum of Kinshasa. What would the exhibit text say? How colonial would it be? What would be on display, and whose narrative would it serve?

We never found out. We went to the Academie des Beaux Arts, where the National Museum of Kinshasa is supposed to be. It was closed—unclear whether for the afternoon or forever. But we did see some artwork for sale, presumably by the students there. I wondered, looking at some of it, whether it was the expression of an artistic imagination, or an imitation of what tourists are supposed to buy. Some pieces were beautifully original, others seemed like a vague guess made with the faith that, maybe, I or someone like me might show up.

But this was an art school, not a crafts market, and that in itself made it stand out. In Goma, on the other side of the DRC, and in so many other towns I’ve visited in Rwanda, crafts are everywhere. Well-meaning NGOs who serve women—widowed women, victims of sexual violence, single mothers, whomever—almost without exception teach them to sew. The Intrepid Journalist, who has spent a year reporting around Africa, says this is the continent’s biggest problem—so much supply, so little demand. One NGO had a tailor’s workshop stacked full of probably useless finished goods: Purses, aprons, laptop bags, you name it. But they can’t figure out how to sell them, and the materials cost too much, so they’ve taken a sewing hiatus.

Who decided, the Intrepid Journalist and I wonder, that Africa could sew its way out of poverty? Where’s the market for this stuff? How do you ship it there? And who pays for that? Maybe there’s a reason those Macy’s baskets are $70 after all.

There’s probably even less of a market for the work of the students at the Academie, but they didn’t seem to care. The art school was full of students—young people smacking wooden tools together in the sculpture studio, and a few guys slicing through metal with saws. The buildings had fresh paint—a bright aqua green, just a tone more green than bright turquoise so ubiquitous in villages that it has become, in my mind, the color of poverty. The building seemed to me bold and full of self-assurance, even a little self-impressed, with its gleaming white windows. The lawn was full of plaster sculptures (and a goat, tied with a rope to a tuft of grass, was ‘mowing’ the lawn), which is to say, there was a sculpture garden.

It felt like a proud and industrious place, where the market for things being produced is irrelevant; it is, after all, an art school. An administrator told us it costs $100 a year to go to school ($200 if you’re a foreigner), and the materials are free. I wondered how much the materials in these workshops cost the school; I wanted to know whether studying art in Kinshasa is the privilege of the very rich, or whether there are kids in slums somewhere doodling who might one day find themselves etching a fine arabesque into a piece of copper with a nail, and think there’s nothing better in the world to be doing.

The thing is, in Kinshasa, there probably isn’t. Unless you are born into a family of politicians or businessmen, painting and sculpture makes as much sense as anything else, which is to say that if you’re making no money you might as well make art. $11.11.

What Congo has that America doesn’t

On my taxi ride to the border, my Congolese driver asked me how the Democratic Republic of Congo compares to America. The dichotomy struck me as absurd, but I tried to think of something polite to say.

“Well, there’s more music on the streets in Congo,” I said. He smiled. “And there’s more dancing. Definitely more dancing.”

“Ah, yes, we love to dance,” he said in a tone that convinced me if he didn’t have to drive me to the border at 10:00 am on a Saturday morning, he’d be able to find a club somewhere and strut his stuff.

“There are more motorcycles,” I said, reaching.

“And also more genocidaires,” he said.

Sweat equity

Near Kinshasa’s biggest airport, I happened to catch sight of what might be its only train. It makes the blue metal boxes clanking through India look advanced. These could’ve been rusting shipping containers with windows cut in the sides. I have no idea how the “cars” were strung together, let alone with so many people on it. I have even greater difficulty imaging that it actually moved.

Which seems to be the theme of the cultural adventure that is Kinshasa. The only thing that makes this city work is will power. Sheer will power. I came here to tag-team some reporting with Another More Hotshot Journalist. He got his shoes polished (with kerosene) as I was buying cokes, and another guy tried to get business out of me. I was wearing my utterly grayed out hiking boots, which is to say shoes that are mostly variations on cloth. I said no several times, trying to indicate they were unpolishable, and he disappeared.

Then I look down and see he’s trying to polish the rubber sole. He wanted business, and I think it was more a refusal to acknowledge than an inability to understand that I had none to give, and eventually I paid him 250 francs to stop trying to polish my shoes. At which point, the guy who made 500 francs—a price so high the would-be-hiking-boot polisher had laughed at the More Hotshot Journalist for paying it—and he said, clutching his 500 franc bill, “And what about me, Madame? What about me?”

The whole city rides on that combination of beyond-Jacksonian work ethic and outside-market-economics logic. We met a guy at the hotel who took us to the central market in Gombe, and the More Hotshot Journalist asked him if things were better since Mobutu. “Some things,” he said. “Security. But we work hard for very little money.”

He’s not kidding. There’s commerce everywhere, but I can’t figure out where the profit is. It’s so minimal it’s almost curious people work at all.

In the biggest market in Gombe, Kinshasa’s busy business district, people sit all day long in the sun hoping passers-by will want notebooks or used clothes or sandals, and at the end of the day, when they don’t, the goods are piled back into the chariot , a big metal box with two fat tires in the center and metal handlebars in the front and back, like a double-sided wheelbarrow. They’re tarped and tied, and then drug through the streets back to someone’s home. Twelve hours later, they’ll be drug back to the market, where maybe the next day fewer of them will come home.

The More Hotshot Journalist told me that some sources for a banking story he did in Nairobi made picture books to explain banking and savings to Kenyans. With savings, the pictures explained, you can purchase a CD (the investment kind, not the music kind), a this, a that, and the money ever increases.

What stood out to him was a little scene where a single mother is learning that if she denies herself a new mattress or a nice dress or any of the other things she’d like to treat herself to, over the course of a year and a half, she can save $200.

We didn’t actually do the math then, but that’s $11 and 11 cents a month.

It can’t be much different in Kinshasa, except that maybe people can’t save quite as much. This city swells with willing (and in our experience, honest) labor, but the only thing that trickles down is the sweat of the people trying to save $11.11 a month.