Tonight I have to tell a little story from another far off part of the world where life is so different and often so much more vulnerable.
I am still in Markounda, Central African Republic, this little – not so little really, but so unknown – country lost between Chad, Congo, Sudan and some more countries, mostly not very renown for high living standards and good human rights records.
Everything here in our project has been turned a bit upside down in the last couple of days, once more.
On Thursday night our night guards woke me at 3 in the morning, from a sound sleep. “The people are leaving the village” they told me. Getting up, dressing, I walked to the entrance of our compound to join them there. In front of the gate villagers passed, with pots and pans, blankets and mats and food on their heads, leaving the village for the bush. “Why are these villagers leaving town” I asked. Nobody knew. The villagers themselves didn’t know. “They say they leave because they saw other people from the village packing their stuff and leaving too” my guards tell me. We ask the people walking out of town questions, but get the same answers. Nobody seems to know really why… A panic chain reaction…?
Only half an hour later, Jeff, who works for another NGO here, and got woken up too, and walked through the village to our compound, tells me, that he heard that a group of rebels passed in a village 5 kilometers south from here, and that people were fearing they might attack the village, better the army base here in the village.
This picture was stunning, shocking, unbelievable, seeing all these people in the middle of the might leaving town for the bush, not really knowing why, because of some rumors and suspicions, out of fear still deeply entrenched in their memories from 18 months ago when the village got attacked by the rebels too.
In the end we went back to bed in the early morning hours for a few hours of restless sleep, to find most people back in the village, children playing in the roads again, life nearly back to normal. And life for resumed back to normal as well, doing our day-to-day work, organizing this and that, running the tiny bush hospital we have in our back jard.
Yesterday, Sunday morning, after a nice brunch with oranges and scrambled eggs and nice cheese just sent to us from the capital, I was sitting in our paillotte in the garden, reading a book, having some quiet tunes grooving along, looking over our veggie garden where tomatoes, pumpkin, eggplants and red very hot chilies are growing, enjoying the Sunday relaxation celebration.
I heard some voices on the road, got up to have a closer look… and again see people with pots and pans and blankets on their heads leaving the village. A couple of minutes later we get the information from our nurse Yvon, working the hospital, that there was a fight this morning between the militaries and the rebels less that 30 kilometers away in Bele, a small village, a place we visit once every 3 weeks to do one our mobile clinics. In the houses surrounding our compound I see people packing things, barricading the doors, grabbing their childs, and leaving. Very shortly after the whole village seems deserted, no voices of children sounding, no pounding of millet and manioc by the woman, no drumming and singing of the woman after the church. Stillness, waiting for doom…?
Another half hour later we have two injured soldiers in our hospital, with some bullet stuck in them. Luckily they came without weapons, without uniforms, according to our rules… One has a bullet stuck on the side of his throat, we have a car ready for transfer to next hospital, our neighbor project and referral hospital, to transfer the two patients to there. Nothing we can do here for them, without a surgeon and an operation room. Ingrid, our nurse from Holland, goes in the car, we have to do a couple of phone calls to get the green light from our head of mission in the capital to do the movement. “Only if its life saving “she says. It is. We go. Ingrid will not come back today, as we have to limit movements as much as possible in such an outbreak of violence.
IN the evening we sit at our table under the solar-powered light bulbs, enjoy a nice meal, have Jeff and Fulvio from that other NGO over for dinner and a glass of wine. Half of our local stuff is sitting with their families somewhere in the bush without shelter light and food. It’s raining. It seems unbelievable, unimaginable, that all those people, like Mozia, my assistant, who is sitting in our office next to me every day, is now there in the bush somewhere with his wife and newborn baby. In the rain. So close. and yet so far away and distant. We are going to see a lot of pneumonia in the next days, we guess. We go and watch a movie on our TV with DVD player before sleeping…
We just had a big interruption of our activities two months ago, when I was happily traveling on my old crappy bicycle through the gorgeous hills of Cameroon in my holidays, far away from the project and the work and life here.
One of our colleagues working with the French section of our NGO about 150 km west of here got shot while doing an exploratory mission. Sitting in the car, a couple of shots out of the bush, one went straight in her head. An accident, so silly, so unnecessary. It was some rebels, but they took the car as an army vehicle, were very sorry for the incident, assured that they didn’t want to hurt our organisation, that they are happy that we work here and treat the population, which are of course also their families, as well as soldiers and their families. Everybody wants us to be here, cause without us there is no health care whatsoever in this whole northern region of the country.
But of course it put all our activities and movements on hold for a while, time to assures that it really wasn’t aimed at us, to get confirmation from the rebel commanders that we can travel again, time also to review our security management… It took a bit over three weeks before we started doing mobile clinics again, and then only on a little bit a smaller scale, visiting the nine villages stretched out over 150 kilometers only every 3 weeks instead of every 2 , thereby limiting our exposure on the road and in the field by nearly 40%. But of course also limiting our presence. In the meantime we built up local health workers in the villagers we work, give tem some basic medication so they can work and treat at least malaria till we come back 3 weeks later.
Now again everything is on hold, we canceled the first mobile clinic today, and will probably not move whole week, time to try to get into contact with the rebels, confirm security for our movements, and see how the situation is evolving.
It s all so bizarre and crazy. The people every day ready to flee into the bush, the rebels and soldiers killing each other for the interests of a far away government and selfish president – or an ex-president, now rebel leader in exile. And the world looks upon, France gives its diplomatic and military support to the government, as they have their own interests. There are diamonds in this country, good earning and easy to export. And weapons to import too, that earns double….
A wife delivered in our hospital that morning, an hour before we got the news of the fight. She is Chadian. She grabs her baby, one hour old, and walks off, towards the river, towards Chad, back home. Perhaps 30, perhaps 40 kilometers. Still in pain from birth, but better to head for security than to stay here.
Today everything is calm, and life nearly back to normal, with the construction of a new health care waste management area proceeding, the annex of our hospital for sleeping sickness patients getting finished, a stock count of the medical stock being done by my storekeeper and my administrative assistant….
What a miraculously bizarre world we are living in.
Is there any point in trying to do sth that helps, if its all getting fucked up far too easily again ???
Your German correspondent in a forgotten nightmare
swen
