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Posts Tagged ‘Congo’

Congolese Rappers Highlight Social and Political Ills

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Congo in August 2009 she told a crowd in Kinshasa, “You are the ones who have to speak out. Speak out to end the corruption, the violence, the conflict that for too long have eroded the opportunities across this country.”

One movement that is doing just that is a loose collection of rap musicians in that same city. I came across an article about them the other day by Radio Netherlands Worldwide, picked up by AllAfrica.com (a terrific source for news of Congo, by the way). Collectively known as the Generation of Politically Conscious Congolese Musicians, they are centered in the communes of Barumu and Kinshasa.

These musicians are activists for two causes: for the recognition of rap, in the face of other, more established styles, and “for political change and better living conditions” in Kinshasa and the entire country.

“Kinshasa is a big village. We must denounce the ills that plague it,” says one of the rappers. Another says, “Politics in the DRC suffers from malaria. The country urgently needs to be put on a quinine drip.”

Another center in the city’s music scene, the Ngwaka neighborhood, is shared by rap bands like Kin Mafia Style (or KMS) along with other groups, such as Staff Benda Bilili, whom we wrote about in the Paul Carlson Update in March 2011.

Rapper Alex Ndende, who uses the name Lexxus Légal, says “there are musicians, our elders, who are solely focused on love and money.” In comparison, “the Kinshasa underground movement is engaged in social issues. The people need to be defended somehow.”

You can read the full article on Radio Netherlands Worldwide here.

By the way: Staff Benda Bilili will be touring North America in October. This group has a wonderful, infectious sound and a distinctive story: they were living in the streets near the Kinshasa zoo, most with polio or other conditions, some playing homemade instruments, when they were “discovered” by Europeans. They’ve toured extensively in Europe and England and will now play nine cities on the U.S. East and West Coasts, bookmarked by Montreal on Oct. 15 and Vancouver on the 28th. To find out more about the stops on the tour, check out the listing on their website. Click on “Live Dates” in the menu across the top, then choose Staff Benda Belili in the drop-down menu.

SAJ 24 Sep 2012

Position Announcement: Director, Paul Carlson Partnership

The position description has just been released for the job of Director of the Paul Carlson Partnership. Byron Miller, our current Executive Director, will be retiring after four years of service. The initial deadline for submitting applications was October 5; however, applications were still being received as of October 30. [Note that change.]

The Paul Carlson Partnership is fighting poverty and disease in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo. We support 5 hospitals and 94 clinics serving a population of 600,000 people. Farmers to Markets, our major microfinance project in partnership with USAID, is helping 2,500 subsistence farmers (over half of them women) to earn cash from their crops. Along the way, FTM is bringing about changes in the ways Congolese husbands and wives share work and decision-making.

The organization was founded originally as the Paul Carlson Foundation in 1966, honoring the life of Congo missionary doctor Paul E. Carlson, who was killed in the Simba rebellion of 1964. The foundation received the gift of an empty hospital in the village of Loko, donated by the Congolese government, and focused its efforts on establishing and managing that hospital. Soon the leaders on site began doing agricultural development programs as well, while the medical work expanded to village clinics. Today the medical system belongs to the Communauté Évangélique de l’Ubangi-Mongala (CEUM), the Covenant Church of Congo, which is our primary on-the-ground partner. We provide operational support and pharmaceuticals to the system, supplemented by donated equipment and supplies and the work of volunteers.

A three-year grant of approximately $650,000 from USAID has made the Farmers to Markets microfinance program possible. FTM assists groups of subsistence farmers to grow more crops, and helps bicycle entrepreneurs and experienced wholesalers to purchase from the farmers and sell in Kinshasa and other cities, where the markets are stronger. Including family members, about 12,000 people are now finding their lives changed through this program.

The position description is linked here in PDF format. Interested people can also email the Paul Carlson office at pcinfo (at) paulcarlson.org. The organization is based in Chicago, with the Congo country office in Kinshasa.

SAJ 18 Sep 2012, updated 30 Oct 2012

Ebola Virus Hits Northeastern Congo

A Congolese health worker disinfects the house of a patient who died of Ebola; photo UN Multimedia

A news item posted online today by AFP (the Agence France Press) reports that 32 people have now died from the disease in the northeastern region of Orientale province. Among the 72 reported cases to date, 23 have been health workers, 5 of whom are among the dead. An article posted on the BBC website on Sept. 13 reports that an epidemic “was officially declared on 17 August.”

Ebola is spread by close contact through blood, sweat, and other substances. It causes severe internal bleeding and kills between 25 and 90 percent of its victims. The BBC article quotes an official of WHO (the World Health Organization) saying, “The epidemic is not under control. On the contrary the situation is very, very serious.”

The Congolese Ministry of Health is working together with WHO, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.), and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) to control the outbreak. It is not believed to be connected to the recent outbreak of Ebola in Uganda.

The Congolese outbreak is centered around the towns of Isiro and Viadana in Orientale, in the northeastern corner of the DRC, north and east of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve. They are about 350 miles east of Bumba or Wasolo, the two farthest eastern locations where PCP works. There has been no suggestion that the disease could spread as far as our area.

Read the full AFP article here and the BBC article here. You can learn more about Ebola here.

SAJ 18 Sep 2012

Help a Nurse Save a Life

If you are a nurse or someone in your family is, or you have a friend who is a nurse, or if you’ve ever been helped by a nurse, or you just like what nurses do on TV — take two minutes and read this. You won’t regret it!

Nurses hold health care together. At least in the medical system we support in the northwest DR Congo, they do. With fewer than a dozen doctors to serve 5 hospitals and 94 clinics, everyone depends on nurses. They care for patients, staff the clinics, teach nutrition. Some are even taught to do simple surgeries, since the doctors have to cover the whole Ubangi region. They save lives.

Some of the students at the Karawa nursing school

And where does this health care system in a remote part of Congo find enough nurses to do all this? One answer is, they train them — and the Paul Carlson Partnership has launched a new program to help them do it.

The key is a the Karawa Medical Technical Institute, which receives students from the villages of the Ubangi and trains them to be nurses. Run by the CEUM (Communauté Évangélique de l’Ubangi-Mongala, the Covenant Church of Congo), the school is located on the campus of the Karawa hospital. The four-year program is at about the same level as an American R.N. program. It averages about 60 students, most of them high school age, the majority young men. Many, though not all, go on to serve in the CEUM system.

Faculty at the Karawa nursing school

The Institute runs on a shoestring. This is Congo, after all — the poorest country on earth. In many courses there is only one textbook for all the students. In some courses there is no book at all. They can’t even afford syllabi for all students. The room for teaching practical nursing — corresponding to a nursing lab in North America — lacks basic medical equipment like thermometers and blood pressure cuffs. The students need scholarships, the building needs repairs, the staff need better salaries. You get the picture.

The Karawa Institute urgently needs friends — people who will be part of helping this school upgrade. Every gift, however small or large, will help prepare a nurse in Congo — a nurse who will go on and save lives. Even $10 can help, and more is welcome!

To learn more, take a look at the nursing school page on this website. If you’re ready to give, here is a direct link to the donation page.

We are also looking for nursing schools in the U.S. and Canada who could be interested in forming a partnership with the Karawa school. If you would like to explore the possibilities, contact Sally Johnson at the PCP office: email sally.johnson (at) paulcarlson.org, phone 773-907-3302.

SAJ 14 Sep 9012

Growing Vegetables in a Cemetery

Photo from AllAfrica: MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti

Just spotted an article carried on the Inter Press Service news service about a group of urban farmers who have turned an old, unused cemetery in the middle of Kinshasa into eight hectares (about 20 acres) of vegetables. The site, in the Kasa-Vubu commune, was turned over to the group by the local police so they could care for it. Because the soil in that area is sandy, the garden wouldn’t grow with out some kind of fertilizer. Rather than purchase and use chemical fertilizers, the group makes its own compost on-site — and it works well. Crops come up quickly and in abundance. The group has dug wells every 300 meters, assuring their own water supply. They sell to market buyers from around the city who come to the gardens to buy. They even export vegetables to Paris and Brussels!

Take a look at the full article for a great story of what is possible, even in Congo, through ingenuity and hard work. You might also like a related article, also from IPS and picked up by AllAfrica.com, on a women’s association doing a farming project out on the edge of Kinshasa.

SAJ 5 Sep 2012

Hard Work Pays Off in Farmers to Markets

Here are some recent news updates from Farmers to Markets, our agricultural microfinance program:

Farmers' Association Molende

There are currently 83 farmers’ associations: 43 at Bumba and 40 at Loko. At Loko, 9 of the associations are composed entirely of women; the rest have both men and women. These associations have a total of 2,546 members, of whom 53% are women.

The associations are now planting community fields, working together, using the new agricultural methods they have learned, and planting good, certified seed that we obtained from the regional INERA office (the National Institute for Agronomic Study and Research). A total of 78 community fields have been planted. As our Congo Country Manager, Texa Dembele, explains, “The Community Fields phase not only strengthens the ties between Association members but also allows the Associations to have money that they can manage according to their need. Also, at the harvest, a portion of the seeds will be set aside for season B.” In addition, association members have planted 1,986 fields of their own.

The “new agricultural methods” that the farmers are learning include planting in rows, spacing the seeds appropriately, and keeping the field weeded. FTM farmers have demonstrated that, using these methods alone, without any fertilizer or special seed, they can increase their crop yields — and their income — by 2 to 3 times.

Certified seeds distributed to the two regions include 5 tons of peanuts, 1.1 tons of corn, and 330 pounds of rice (rice at Bumba only).

A training program titled “Essentially for Women” was presented at Bumba by one of the Loko animatrices, Mme. Patience Kaya. Focusing on how works gets done at home, this module includes an emphasis on husband and wife sharing the work as well as the decision-making about money. Most of the men in the associations led by Mme. Patience at Loko have begun sharing the farm work with their wives.

Bicycle Entrepreneur with His Load

A total of 76 bicycle entrepreneurs are at work in the two regions, 23 of them women. They buy farm products from association members and take them into a town, either to sell to a wholesaler or to market there themselves. Many are developing other kinds of business with their bicycles as well.

There are currently 23 active wholesalers, 11 at Loko and 12 at Bumba. These men and women receive loans of $1,000-$5,000 to buy farm products and take them either to Kinshasa or to another larger city.

In addition, there are 30 “small wholesalers,” who receive loans of up to $100. The Loko office reports that this particular activity has “at least an 80% success rate.” They are planning to give loans to 50 people in the near future. The two regional offices are now considering additional training for both levels of wholesalers, to focus on their critical role in linking FTM farmers with city markets.

One example of a hard-working small wholesaler, from Texa Dembele: “Mr. Nyikoli Jacques does his business by buying crops around Loko and uses his bicycle to sell them at Lisala (a distance of 240 km. [149 mi.]). He makes this trip of 480 km. [298 mi.] with his bicycle. He is in his third operation with a loan of $100. His beautiful story is that with his entry into the Farmers to Markets program, he has been able to pay the school fees for his son, something he was unable to do before. He is very attached to the project and hopes to continue until he can open his own shop.”

SAJ 31 Aug 2012

What Is a Sustainable Community?

Every once in awhile you’ve got to step back and ask yourself what you mean by what you say. Byron had a moment like that not long ago, and he got me thinking too. We say, in our tagline, that we are “Investing for Sustainable Communities.” What does that mean? What is “sustainable”? And in particular, what is sustainable in sub-Saharan Africa in general and the DR Congo in particular? I’ll get to Byron’s answer in a minute. First a couple of possible perspectives.

Village in Equateur province, DR Congo

One way to respond could be by looking at un-sustainability, and that leads us to the Failed States Index, published each year cooperatively by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. The 12 indicators here include demographic pressures (pressures on the people, such as hunger), uneven economic development, questions of state legitimacy, and others. The article in Foreign Policy introducing the 2012 list puts it bluntly, saying that most countries that fail are “ruled by what we call ‘extractive’ economic institutions, which destroy incentives, discourage innovation, and sap the talent of their citizens by creating a tilted playing field and robbing them of opportunities. These institutions are not in place by mistake but on purpose. They’re there for the benefit of elites who gain much from the extraction — whether in the form of valuable minerals, forced labor, or protected monopolies — at the expense of society.” The DRC could be the poster child. Actually, it is — it’s #2, right behind Somalia.

Another perspective is measured in the annual “Human Development Report,” published by the UN Development Programme. The 2011 report defines human development as “the expansion of people’s freedoms to live long, healthy and creative lives; to advance other goals they have reason to value; and to engage actively in shaping development equitably and sustainably on a shared planet. People are both the beneficiaries and the drivers of human development, as individuals and in groups.” This year’s report emphasizes environmental sustainability along with equity: “questions of fairness and social justice and of greater access to a better quality of life.”

The DR Congo came in last on this scale of human development — not surprising when you look carefully at the definition above. Most people in Congo are still at a survival level, living in extreme poverty. The United Nations defines extreme poverty as an income of less than $1 a day; the World Bank says “average daily consumption of $125 or less.” Goal number one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals is “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.” According to the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind on this goal: “The largest reduction [in extreme poverty] has occurred in East Asia and Pacific, where China has made great improvement. Sub-Saharan Africa, which stagnated through most of the 1990s, has begun to reduce the number of people in extreme poverty.”

Secondary school students in Equateur; poverty keeps many girls from reaching this level

So how do you think about sustainability for people and communities that are in extreme poverty, located in a failed state where human development is the slowest in the world? Here we come back to Byron’s reflections (I told you we’d get here):

“A sustainable community is one where nearly all families can send all of their children to school, pay for basic health care at the local clinic, raise a surplus of food every year, and support their church at a level where the pastor need not be a subsistence farmer.” A surplus of food will allow a family to earn income by selling part of what they grow, without taking anything away from the family’s own nutritional needs.

When Byron included this in a report he sent to our board of directors, board member Doug Morton wrote back that he would add the phrase “without outside assistance.” Point well taken. So do we have here an appropriate and feasible definition of a sustainable community in Congo?

I’ve invited Byron to add his own further comments (he has some good references to a couple of current books), either by adding a comment to this post or by writing a follow-up post of his own.

What do you think? The comment function is open to all, and I’ll promise to check for responses periodically.

SAJ 30 Aug 2012

“this hospital would die…”

Just as I left for vacation at the end of July, I received this email message from Tom Christy. Tom has served the people of Congo for years, first as an ECC short-term missionary in the remote village of Wasolo (where Dr. Paul Carlson served), and since then as a volunteer going back periodically at his own expense. He is also a good friend of ours at PCP, and we’ve partnered on some projects over the years. You should also know that PCP provides $125,000 a year to the CEUM medical system to buy pharmaceuticals. We occasionally supplement that when we can, as when we partnered to help Tom purchase and deliver an extra $10,000 worth of medicines to Wasolo in April.

Dear Sally,

I am in Congo just now. I came down to Kinshasa a couple days ago after working in the up in the Ubangui for a few weeks. I opened my email to find the PCP newsletter. Your news reminded me of some good news I learned along the way that I should share.

We traveled up to the Wasolo hospital, it’s the place I tend to focus my attention when I come out. I can report that things are working okay there. They have many difficulties and the lack many supplies, but they are working at it and many people are coming to the hospital.

Truck with medicines to Wasolo

One very real asset for the Wasolo hospital right now are the medicines that have been provided with support from PCP. I stood in the pharmacy and looked at the shelves and discussed these medicines with the hospital staff. Everyone stresses the importance of these medicines. Without them, this hospital would die. Even people out in nearby villages will mention the medicines that have come to the Wasolo hospital. What they don’t know is that PCP made those medicines possible.

Dr. Eddy Yangakele toured me through the wards, including the maternity ward where I can remember his mother working many years ago. In one ward he showed me a woman recovering from removal of a huge abscess on her breast. He said she had languished in the village for far too long and by the time she came to the hospital the open wound extended from high on her neck to far down on her breast. It gave off a foul odor. The woman was poor. Even the Congolese around me described her as being poor. She said she had no money and if you saw her clothes you understood in a glance that was true.

They removed the abscess, cleaned the wound, and gave her medicine. Against all expectations, she recovered. In fact during my sojourn at Wasolo she was released from the hospital.

Patients waiting at Wasolo hospital

One evening at Wasolo I read once again the words from Matthew 25. Verse 36 reads:

“ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”

What a privilege we had! This woman came with no money and little hope, and we were part of taking care of her, right there at the Wasolo hospital. Jesus promised that whatever we did for the least of these, we did for him. Surely we have done that and just to know we have served Jesus in this way is enough, in fact it exceeds reward and spills over into joy.

Please convey to PCP donors the thanks of the Wasolo hospital staff and the Wasolo church and community. There are people being healed there that absolutely would have died were it not for your help.

On my way rejoicing,
Tom Christy

SAJ 28 Aug 2012

Patience the Animator Shakes Things Up

One young mother named Patience Kaya is helping to make women’s lives better in the region around Loko. She is doing it by breaking through longstanding assumptions about gender roles.

Patience started out to be a teacher, and earned a secondary school diploma in 2005. Then she got married, and soon she had a little son. In late 2009 she heard about a new program called Farmers to Markets that was opening an office in Loko and hiring staff. She applied and was hired as an animatrice (in French; animateur for a man). At first her husband had reservations about Patience taking the job, but she went ahead.

Patience Kaya

The animateurs and animatrices are a key to the success of Farmers to Markets. They create and guide the local groups of farmers, meet with them regularly, and teach the members a wide range of skills and knowledge from saving money to family nutrition to gender roles. (A typical association has about 30 members, both men and women.) They bring these groups to life — they animate them. And that is in gender roles that Patience is really making her mark.

By tradition in Congo, the man of the family clears the fields and then the woman does all the rest of the work: she plants, tends, and harvests the crops. When the crops are sold, the man takes all the money and spends it as he chooses. But one of the goals of Farmers to Markets from the beginning has been to begin changing traditional gender roles. This is not just symbolic — it affects the good of the whole family. When men get the money, they spend much of it on objects they want to buy, such as radios, and sometimes on drink. When women are given money, they spend it on food and other needs of their families.

Patience understood that and caught the vision. She began teaching the women in her associations about best ways to care for their families, but soon she was talking to the men as well, urging them to work in the fields along with their wives. She did it by explaining that a wife’s “energy budget” limited the amount of work that could be done, and therefore the money that could be earned. At first just a few men “got it” and began helping their wives. When other men in the groups saw the results, they too began helping in the fields.

Today almost all the men in Patience’s associations are working alongside their wives — and the Bumba office of FTM asked her to come and teach the Bumba animateurs and animatrices about what she was doing.

Remember, this is not just symbolic. It’s a huge change in the real lives of women and their families. As men share what used to be “women’s work” and women begin to share in decisions about spending the income, the whole system of assumptions about gender roles begins to shift. Women share some of the power in the family and are held in a little bit higher respect. Children in the family grow up in this changed system and go out to live their lives this way. Patience herself now has two little boys — and a husband who is happy with what she is doing.

Patience has turned out to be a very good teacher, and more than that: she is bringing groups of women and men alive in new ways and beginning to change the culture in that process.

See the earlier article about one couple who learned Patience’s lesson: “Women’s Lives Are Changing through Farmers to Markets.”

SAJ 25 Jul 2012

News and Thanks from Congo

Rev. Jules Mboka is the new president of the CEUM (Covenant Church in Congo). Installed in March of this year, he is already providing strong leadership in his church’s mission to live out Christ’s love for the people of the Ubangi through helping them make their lives better. Last week we received an email from him that was so encouraging and exciting to us on the PCP staff that we wanted to share it with you. Here it is, with his permission.

Pres. and Mrs. Jules Mboka

Two pieces of good news: the maintenance of the water at Mbudi has been completed and water is already running at Karawa. The installation of solar panels with batteries for power at Karawa hospital is going well. My desire is that this project be completed, the essential work is done. The equipment is functioning well now: laboratory, operating room, maternity… The amazing thing is that everything was tested and the x-ray equipment actually worked! We used $20,000 for this project. If the [remaining budgeted] $25,000 of said project will be granted, all the hospital wings will have electricity and all the hospital equipment will be functional and the administrative office will be able to work well. Thank you for all you are doing for the CEUM.

For me, most recently, I have been very busy with meetings at Karawa: the Committee of Ordination and discipline, the Administrative Council. At Gemena, last Sunday, there was the installation of the Heads of departments and services, then the new leadership followed a two-day seminar. We also received Mr. Tom Christy this Wednesday. After meeting [with us], he went today to Karawa and will continue on to Wasolo. Tomorrow, we will go [meet] with the Heads of the project CAMENE at Karawa to explore the possibility of opening a depot for restocking medicines at Karawa. Pray for us.

May the Lord bless you all.

Rev. Jules Mboka, President
Communauté Évangélique de l’Ubangi-Mongala

Tom Christy, whom Pres. Mboka mentions, is a former short-term ECC missionary at Wasolo who continues to assist that remote hospital as a volunteer. He is also a friend and occasional partner with PCP. The CAMENE project, mentioned near the end, is the pharmacy at Bwamanda where CEUM and PCP medical leaders recently decided to shift our pharmaceutical purchases. (Photo ECC.)

SAJ 20 Jul 2012