DRC: My gun for a Facebook account

Goma, Nord Kivu January 24^th

We haven’t walked far from the hotel before there is a huge crash up ahead followed by a thud. A moto-taxi has just been run over and the driver and passenger are in the intersection, not far from the upturned motorcycle, one of them bleeding from a head wound. The culprit, a jeep, u-turns and accelerates away from the scene of the accident. As they approach my first reaction is to step forward and signal them to stop, but they zoom past and the fear in their faces is easily visible. But justice is swift in Congo and in seconds there is a group of moto-taxi drivers on the scene, who scope the situation and then take off in pursuit of the jeep like a righteous motorcycle gang off to avenge a fallen comrade. I would not like to be the vehicle’s driver.

“Ahh… they are from the moto-taxi driver’s union! It is a strong organisation, they will take care of this!”

With this tart comment on rough justice Dominique, who is walking at my side, offers a conclusion I can’t argue with. In seconds a car has stopped and opens its back door, through which the wounded driver and passenger are bundled by the crowd to be taken to the hospital. A policeman steps forward, an AK-47 rifle dangling across his back by a string, and takes temporary possession of the damaged motorcycle, which he wheels off toward a police station that is up ahead. All in all a just response from a community to a need and an injustice. For all the problems in Congo local systems take care of local needs.

Dominique and I are this morning responding to a local need: we are out to buy computer equipment and text books for the Kivu Reintegration Centre. We are also diving into a world I could never have anticipated I would need to know more about: the second hand computer market in conflict ridden Eastern Congo. There are many local players in this market, legal and illegal, with many varied offerings. Like all weakly developed markets, that means there is a huge variation in price for quality and it pays to research your market. In the space of hours I’ve seen ancient Gateway’s, even a Commodore, at exalted prices, but it soon becomes apparent from trolling through internet cafes, electronic goods stores and small back street shops, that a reasonable price for a second hand desk top in good condition and of a few years age, is about $400-$500. For a reference, we also go into the largest electronic goods store on the main commercial drag and address the young Indian in charge, who speaks perfect English, and is selling new HP’s with a 20” screen for $750. We now know our market.

Ferdinand and Dominique are clear that computers are a big draw for the students; it is a technology they hunger for and the symbolic transition from the gun to the computer is one they are very ready to make. If all it takes to keep a young man from drifting back to war is to teach them how to use a computer and set up a Facebook account, then let’s keep moving in that direction.

At this point our wanderings on foot have taken us deeper into one of the informal settlements, Le Cirque Sportif, where my boxing lessons are to begin this week and which I both anticipate and dread in equal measure. As we walk the dirty streets of Goma which are covered by a grimy black volcanic ash, we are passed by agency vehicle after agency vehicle: the ubiquitous UN peace keeping trucks, 4×4 Land cruisers and Land Rovers for the EU and USAID, the UN Population Fund, UN Development Programme, OxfamQuebec, Women for Women, International Rescue, and on.  Having had a previous life and career with such agencies—inside Embassies, UN organisations and NGOs—I know all they involve; it is a world of large programmes and clean offices, official cars and drivers, of being met at the border or the airport by facilitators who whisk you past unpleasantness. Of having office people to stand in lines and bring you back government documentation for signature. You are both powerful and isolated in such agencies. Odious officials cannot touch you as long as you have a whole agency standing behind you. Meetings tend to be with other donors and high ranking government people and even visits to the field tend to have the quality of that of a visiting dignitary, as local officials, or whole communities, meet you when programmes are discussed or newly built schools are handed over. And as you move further up the ladder, you move further and further away from the field, from the reality of the country, and from what may even have attracted you there to begin with.

There is no condemnation in this; such agencies could not function otherwise without these conditions and capabilities, and although it can be left to others to debate the effectiveness of international aid, it is not realistic to imagine that in a place as raw as eastern Congo that there are easy alternatives, that such a presence should simply end, however justified criticism of their effectiveness and efficiency may be or of the moral claims they make. But as I see the vehicles going by, populated by my own tribe even, full of people from western countries, development professionals I suppose, I also realise that I am not on the outside looking in, but am actively moving in another direction; deeper into the world of my Congolese counterparts, including people from very poor backgrounds. Working with the staff of the Kivu Reintegration Centre, a tiny NGO operating in a poor community and among the poorest and most desperate members of that community, street boys, demobilised soldiers and war wounded, I realise that I am entering a reality and a perspective I cannot yet fully conceive.

I am left to wonder how well I really know my counterparts, what their worlds really are, if our thoughts and thinking really match, or even how they regard me. Europeans do not have a positive track record in Africa and the brief, roughly 100 year long, colonial period was a wrenching experience whose scars have not receded. No where else in Africa was that more wrenching and more brutal than here in Congo, where the sheer exploitiveness of resource extraction and the other abuses and suffering of pacification and colonial administration were shocking enough even by the standards of the time to have helped launch the modern human rights movement near the end of the 19^th Century. The country’s post-independence period is hardly more positive, in terms of rapaciousness and greed, and while it is the Congolese who must take responsibility for the quality of their own governments over the past 50 years, most still tend to regard outsiders with suspicion. Colonists, missionaries, aid workers, the UN—do Congolese on some buried, almost primal, level of historical consciousness not regard them all as part of a continuity? The one word a visitor in Congo will hear more than any other as they walk the streets is “muzungu” (white foreigner) and it is whispered by pedestrians passing and shouted out of car windows at you. A simple declarative statement: “white man”. It isn’t necessarily hostile but it does not speak to an entirely positive association either.

Foreign aid workers in countries such as this, however much they regard themselves to represent some kind of value-free benevolent intervention, still wield power, albeit benign power for the most part, over the lives of other people. And that is also how they are locally regarded: a source of resources, whether by the locals who work for them or benefit from their programmes. That may be inevitable, and it is not necessarily a bad thing either, as long as the objectives and quality of the work are good, although in reality many of the organisations tend to have weak accountability in the quality of the work in relation to the claims made about them. A private company that loses money will go out of business; a bad aid organisation can continue for a very long time. People receiving something for free will not complain and those making donations rarely scrutinise or have real ability to  determine the validity of claims about qualitatively complex objectives such as “participation”, “empowering the poor”, “changing gender relations” or achieving “environmental sustainability”, all within a two year project time frame. Being seen to be helping is often enough, even an end in itself. Ok. If you can do no good then at least do no harm. I will make an admission: I left the aid business years ago because of this. Nearly every project seemed to be a failure or had mediocre results and no one wanted to admit what was completely obvious: it was like living a lie. It is a lesson I have not forgotten and keep in mind now as I embark on what will be a process whose results I cannot fully anticipate or control. I can only be aware the risks and do all I can to control them.

KRC is, from all I’ve seen since arriving, a good organization and measures up to what I’d been told in advance, in fact exceeds it. It is doing far more than Ferdinand had let on. This is not an organisation with false claims. The quality and legitimacy of its participation is good: students have to want to be there, its teachers and staff have to volunteer their time. Ferdinand tells me he lays awake at night worrying how he is going to keep the centre open, keep his staff motivated and keep his promises to his students. This is a man who is an educator, a former school headmaster, and someone who has watched his beloved region in flames for the past 15 years in a conflict that, by any measure, may have been, and probably still is, the very worst in the world for humanitarian consequences, human rights abuses and any other quantitative or qualitative scale of human suffering. He has responded in a real way. When I first met him over a year ago, was in trouble with the authorities in Goma and was within an inch of being thrown in jail, he stepped forward to help me out, even put himself at risk.

Ferdinand and his staff may or may not regard me as a source of resources: as the external consultant who is going to unlock the access to donor funding and bigger assistance. I am not sure it matters if they do. Their vision is a good one, the needs are real; young men who are only months from having born arms are living like beggars in this city and have shown a commitment to better themselves by enrolling in a training course. The resources KRC currently has to address this are more than basic and the addition of relatively little external assistance can definitely make a large impact. They are also doing the job of bigger actors: the government and the UN. If it is within my gift to do something about this, then good outcomes are being served. “I change something by regarding it” is the traditional dilemma about getting involved. That is something I can live with.

My internal dialogue is interrupted by a shout. We are in the middle of a muddy informal settlement by now, far from the concrete city, and are walking past the entrance of a dark pool hall with some hard looking youths inside. They shout again to Dominique, who laughs and says these are his students. We enter and a group of rangy young men of military age are playing pool around an ancient table. We buy a soda and begin a game of pool, teams of two each side. This is now my community.