Karawa-Businga Bridges Project

The road from Karawa to Businga is an important and much-traveled route. The trip, however, is a tough one. The road is deeply rutted dirt, and the bridges along the way are in poor condition.

Businga is a major port on the Mongala River, and Karawa's access to river transport depends on being able to get to it. That means carrying not only people but loads of goods over the rugged course. In addition, the town of Loko, just north of Businga, has a hospital run by the CEUM (Covenant Church of Congo, our primary on-the-ground partner) and aided by Paul Carlson Partnership funds and volunteers. Karawa itself has the largest hospital in the CEUM system, so there is added traffic along this route between the two.

Last spring a friend of ours in Tulsa, who had already been generous in his support of our work, offered to build some bridges in the Ubangi area where we work.  Long story short, he sent an engineer to Congo while PCP executive director Byron Miller was there in September, to check out routes and bridges. They decided on the Karawa-Businga road, focusing on three bridges to be rebuilt.

The three are, from west to east, at Gbagbau, Lumba, and Songbolo (circled on map - click to expand). The bridge at Lumba is the one that partially collapsed earlier last spring as a truck carrying medical supplies donated by the Paul Carlson Partnership tried to cross it. Two women were killed in the accident. The truck was on its way from the central pharmacy at Karawa to deliver supplies to the hospital at Loko. The bridge at that time consisted of several long logs laid next to each other, and as the truck moved across, an outer log shifted and gave way, sending the truck upside down into the river. A temporary bridge has been in place since shortly after that accident.

The plans for these three bridges call for maximizing the use of local materials and local labor and minimizing the use of heavy equipment. Instead of concrete abutments, the plans call for gabions -- a flexible fence-like web -- filled with rocks, then stacked two deep. The lumber we will use is a particularly hard wood, and we will be selecting the trees carefully, respecting the natural environment. (The alternative, a totally concrete bridge, would be prohibitively expensive.) Beams will be cut about a foot square and 23 feet long, and will be bolted together with long bolts.

Watch this site for further news as this project takes shape. If you are not already receiving our emailed newsletter, the PC Update, see the upper right corner of this page to sign up. And if you would like to contribute to help us do further bridges, click the link to give online or send a check to the Paul Carlson Partnership, 5101 N. Francisco Ave., Chicago, IL 60625.