Eastern Congo - the trail of tears

Goma is a pit, a lava pit. There is one road that goes through town, full of holes (the joke goes, when asked which side of the road Congolese drive on they say "the one with the least amount of potholes"), on which hundreds of cars, mostly aid workers, choke their way back and forth all day long. Everything is black and grey because of the lava. The volcano, only a few kilometers away, last erupted in 2002, destroying 60% of the city, an ironic act of God in an area that has been war-torn for 20 years. People are using the stones to build walls and make bricks, which is why everything is so dark. The setting, however, is incredible, being on the edge of Lake Kivu.

I am supposed to be looking at what the health situation is like, and what is being done for women and children, including those who are victims of sexual violence, which unfortunately is a very big problem in the region right now. Hundreds of women and children are sexually assaulted very month (UNFPA documented over 250 girls under 9 raped in 2007) and those are the ones that have dared come forward and managed to find help. Up to now the majority of cases have reportedly been perpetrated by "men in uniform" (rebel army soldiers, Congolese army soldiers, police, and even some UN "peacekeepers"). Originally, rebel forces were using this as a way to de-stabilize families. Women are the main workers in the family. By attacking, and raping women, often in front of their husbands and children, they were attacking the fabric of society. The sexual violence results in a) the woman being traumatized and stigmatized, b) the husband and children being traumatized, c) the woman sometimes becoming pregnant (although if they make it to a clinic with emergency kits, they can get the "morning after pill" and an HIV prophylaxis), d) the woman getting a sexually transmitted infection (50-70% of the victims seen in clinics are infected), including HIV, e) the woman sometimes being brutalized by the soldiers resulting in f) fistulas and complications during subsequent deliveries. Unfortuately, the sexual violence is now being committed by civilian men as well (although there is uncertainty about whether or not they are demilitarized soldiers).

Women have a terrible situation in Congo anyway. They are treated like property by their hubands, as beasts of burden, do all the work int he fields, and bear on average 7 children in their lifetime. In all of my meetings (maybe 30) I met with only 2 women in positions of power. And now this. I don't envy Congolese women at all. As one older Congolese woman said to us "La femme congolaise fait tout dans la famille. Elle travail dans les champs, elle porte l'eau, elle prepare le manger, et quand elle se couche, il ya a le monsieur qui vient la deranger!"

Congo!

I have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) for 10 days now but have not had the energy, or internet connection, to write about it. There is so much to assimilate that it takes all my energy just to attend meetings and figure out what is going on. The size of Western Europe, its enormity is beyond comprehension; a sub-continent (but with only about 70 million people, although there hasn’t been a census for over 20 years so they are not really sure), it’s hard to believe it is one country.

I am on a mission with the Swedish International Development Agency (equivalent of USAID) to assess the health sector in this country in order to make recommendations about how Sweden should/could help. The health needs are overwhelming. Each of the 11 provinces has its own culture, language (250 spoken here), norms, geographic peculiarities, economic base, and problems, as they would if they were 11 countries.

Although it possesses some of the greatest natural resources in the world (including coltan, used in cell phones), it is one of the poorest. One major problem that seems to be making everything else worse is the lack of roads and modes of transportation. There used to be roads all over the country but Mobuto let them fall to pieces in order to prevent his enemies from getting to Kinshasa (one should not forget here that Mobuto was put into power by the U.S. and Europe who had the first president of the republic overthrown and then supplied Mobuto with hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons). The lack of roads and transport makes everything - education, trade, forestry, security, and health care- hundreds of times harder (although I wonder if this might be why HIV – “only” at 4.1% - might also be lower than one would think given the high level of other sexually transmitted infections). The only safe way to get around (there are commercial planes but they are notoriously the most unsafe in the world) is by missionary plane or with the UN plane, which is how I got out here to Goma, on the border with Rwanda, the epicenter of Africa’s “first world war” (involving 7 nations) and the largest humanitarian catastrophe in the world today…

Fairness Meter

The billboards are everywhere. A close-up of a woman’s face with a card against it showing a scale of skin tones from dark to light. Like a litmus test. The sign says “Fairness Meter” and is advertizing a skin lightening product. In South Asia the whiter your skin, the more beautiful you are. So skin lightening products are everywhere. Fair enough (pun intended), in the West, we buy skin darkening products (tan in a bottle) to fulfill our own bizarre beauty ideals (and some still destroy their skin by spending hundreds of hours in tanning booths and on the beach). But the way these skin whitening products are being marketed is blatantly “degrading” (my female Bangladeshi colleague’s word) to dark skinned people, women in particular.

Skin lightening product TV commercial #1: The father of a dark-skinned woman is lamenting the fact that he has no son and therefore no money. The daughter uses the skin lightening product and lands a job as an air hostess. In the last scene of the commercial she is shown taking her parents to a 5 star hotel for coffee.

Skin lightening product TV commercial #2: A dark-skinned stunt man is a nobody until he uses the skin lightening product whereupon the director suddenly “notices” him and gives him the starring role in the film.

Obviously, neither person is purported to get the job based on merit, but on the color of their skin. Unfortunately, this is probably a real reflection of existing discrimination (just as naturally dark-skinned people are in Northern societies). What I find fascinating is that the commercials naturally condone this discrimination. Their solution? Cosmetics as social equity.

The ‘Fairness meter’ is promoted to right the wrongs in society that you have no control over. It is not fair that dark-skinned persons are discriminated against but if they use this product they can control this discrimination. By becoming fairer skinned, they are being given a ‘fair shake’ in society.

There are many ironies in this campaign, but the cruelest is that the products are actually extremely harmful to one’s skin, eventually degrading the elasticity to the point that if one required surgery on the face, it would be impossible to carry it out. So the dark-skinned are being convinced to buy a product that will supposedly give them opportunities in life, but the price they pay (in addition to the product) is destroyed skin.

Dallywood

My Bangladeshi colleagues have recounted to me two popular themes for movies in Bangladesh:

1. Young man has all of the right qualities of perfect husband: handsome, educated, refined, brave, etc. But he has no money. Daughter of rich man falls in love with perfect poor man. Father of rich man will have nothing to do with him. Daughter falls into the clutches of evil man (kidnaps her, leads her astray, etc). Father is helpless. Perfect poor man saves the girl and the day and convinces helpless father that he is worth daughter. Mother-in-law, who supported her daughter all the time, is vindicated. The whole drama is performed to singing and dancing. Apparently, all movies are variations on the same theme.

2. The recounting of the story of the Bangladesh revolution in 1971. People never get tired of hearing patriotic stories about the “freedom fighters,” those who fought and lost their lives (est. 3 million) in the independence from Pakistan.

Maybe there is a connection between the two genres. Bangladeshis do not accept fate. They continue to fight to improve their situation. Everywhere you look you see industrious people (mostly men; women are not encouraged in visible workplaces), driving rickshaws, making bricks, pounding iron, selling wares. It is rare to see someone idle. I guess that is why Bangladesh has made such advances in the last 30 years despite being located in a hurricane zone, and starting out as a nation with very poor circumstances.

NB: In the interest of fairness, my host, a film producer himself, has pointed out that a handful of Bangladeshi filmmakers have won international critique for their work at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film (nomination) and the Cannes, Montreal, Marrakesh film festivals. Most notable is Tarik Masud The Clay Bird, which I plan to watch while here.

Hazardous to Your Health

Traveling by road in Bangladesh is not for the faint-hearted. There are no more than two lanes and a hell of a lot of cars, buses, trucks, and rickshaws (in the urban areas) to share them. Driving long-distance consists of 90% passing, accompanied by beeping horns. As the shoulders are always occupied by rickshaws or other pedaled modes of transportation, the cars, busses, and trucks conduct a constant game of “Chicken,” waiting to see who will swerve first. This is usually decided by whoever honks the longest and loudest. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the size of the vehicle. Small cars will stare down 2 ton trucks. It is harrowing, to say the least. On our way out to Shirzgaz, we came upon a recent head-on collision between a truck and a bus. Ten people were killed.

I claimed the only seat in the car with a three-point seat belt, claiming my status of a single mother as a reason. The downside is that it is in the front of the car, which means I see everything. Probably would have been better to sit in the back with the others. I can’t imagine anyone surviving a collision with one of these busses or trucks, seat belt or not…

Dhaka!

I’m in Dhaka, Bangladesh. My first trip to South Asia, I was experiencing more culture shock. But from the beginning the town reminded me of Nairobi: lots of buildings, terrible traffic, and crowds of people. Except the traffic is worse here than I have ever experienced. My hotel is 7 kilometers from City Hall, where we have our meetings, and it takes us an hour and a half to get there and the same time (or more) to get back in the evening. The air is so polluted that your chest is constantly scratchy and you find yourself coughing even though you are not sick. My friend Robin, who has lived here for 18 months, says she and her family are sick every 3 months. So I guess it is a good thing that I have spent every minute of the last 3 days inside or in the car. Tomorrow we are going to visit health clinics.

I am here with a team of experts conducting a mid-term review of a $90 million urban public health project funded mostly by Asian Development Bank (and the Brits, the Swedes, and UNFPA). It is extremely ambitious, and designed to serve the most needy in the urban slums – of which there are currently 30 million people in Bangladesh. At the current growth rate, 50% of Bangladesh will be living in urban areas in 25 years. So this is a highly relevant project, and exciting to be here.

Popular kid on the block

I've lived overseas off and on for 20 years now and I can honestly say that this is the first time in my life that I am popular because I'm American. After Obama won my friend Carla said "I can finally hold my head high overseas and say I'm American." And I agreed. I have spent the last 20 years trying to hold my voice down in supermarkets, in shops, and on the subway so noone would know where I was from (particularly difficult when one's daughter, who at 5 was still innocent about speaking English in public and the secular nature of this country, would remark loudly once in awhile, "MOMMY, TELL ME THE STORY ABOUT BABY JESUS!"). As any American expat will know, this isn't because I was ashamed to be American. I just was sick of the stares and the sometimes unpleasant remarks people feel obliged to make to you as if you represented the government or the whole population (and sometimes because of the security risk).

When Obama was elected I received numerous e-mails, text messages, and phone calls from all kinds of Swedish friends and acquaintances who simply wanted to share in the wonder of his election. And I was gratified. I was only thrown once when my next-door neighbor called me (no, she didn't come and knock on my apartment door and say it in person) to congratulate me about "my man." Now, "man" in Swedish could either be husband or just man and I was totally thrown for a minute because I had no idea who she was talking about. I haven't been married for over 2 years. Did she know something I didn't? But then I realized she was talking about Obama, because she had seen the poster on the inside of my door.

Its weird suddenly being the popular kid on the block when you are used to being bullied, though. I don't quite know how to react. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I just know something is going to happen and everyone is going to say "We always knew you were a bunch of idiots!" I got a taste of this at a Democrats Abroad inauguration event last week where some Swedish guests were disparaging about the prayers before and after the speech, and disapproving of Obama's emphasis on national security. I felt like saying "if you don't understand the role of religion/spirituality in American culture or the importance of national security post 9-11 then you haven't understood why Obama won or what he is facing."

I have been saving up some more pithy observations but am trying to be better about being concise so I'll stop here. Comments welcome!