Fingerprints

When the Malawian dust alongside the road fades to the Mozambican, it’s hard to notice the difference. But as soon as you pull into Mocuba, the first town on the Mozambican side of the border, the mud road widens into a dilapidated boulevard and the once-graceful Colonial Portuguese buildings lean their roofless walls into one another. Only the cathedral survived the war in-tact.

Mozambique is like a cross between Lebanon and Congo, with trees growing tall out the tops of long-abandoned buildings amongst the empty remnants of a polished town. The fingerprint of post-Colonial war is the common thread, with handicapped children playing the parts on this mock-up set of a thriving settlement.

Once you reach the coast though, all bets are off. The Mozambican character is so unbelievably unlike the Malawian. For as much as the war played a role in this place’s development -or lack thereof- the Mozambicans are full of life, music and style. Both men and women wander the streets on a night out with a background of Portuguese dance music lulling the body into a smooth glide over the customary jaunt.

The war feels farther away here though supposedly there are still landmines in the surrounding hills. There is a generation who missed school and literacy rates are staggeringly low.

That being said, Mozambique has one of the fastest growing economies in the region. With broad freshly-tarred roads expanding before the eyes, you can’t help wonder what the Malawians have against street lamps that the Mozambicans don’t.

It’s a whirlwind of cultural collision;, making it difficult to believe two places could share such a lengthy border. But Lake Malawi, the pride of the western shores, is hardly heard of in Mozambique, where the Indian Ocean glitters for over a thousand miles. It’s hard to say what has formed the diverging character of these two neighbors: the sea, the Colonial powers that occupied them (a culture of modest tea-drinking Scottish missionaries versus one of stained glass cathedrals with Mediterranean wine), or simply the innate differences that form the character of two siblings, close in age but nevertheless, far apart.

The dust of the road crossing back into Malawi obscures the lingering taste of fresh prawns and it’s not long before the smell of the sea is gone from the nostrils. It’s only the fingerprints whose touch remains, with a Cathedral standing tall, amongst the battery around it.

The Face of a Dollar a Day

Since I was little, Sally Struthers has been asking us to sponsor a child somewhere in the world who is living on less than a dollar a day. I’ve been working in Africa for the better part of the last ten years and have become accustomed to what I see in the village -where most African still live- that once made me stop and think. Six year olds taking care of two-year olds. Kids running around with swollen bellies full of parasites and orange-tinged hair – a sure sign of malnutrition.

In the countryside after the rains, the fields are full of green green crops and overripe mangoes lie rotting on the ground, and I can’t help but wonder how people here can be so poor. The soil is volcanic and fertile. But it’s malaria season, flooding has brought cholera to the surface, and bridges to health centers have washed away only to be rebuilt after an interminable period of time.

Here in Malawi, 133 of every 1000 children born dies before they turn 5. Amazingly, this figure is down from 189 deaths in 2000. Forty-six percent of children are stunted from malnutrition, and only 64% make it through enough school to considered be literate. Over half of Malawians live on less than a dollar a day.

I was in the bush last weekend, face to face with a young man speaking decent English with a good head on his shoulders. He has 2 small children, his wife has passed away. His salary comes out to a bit over a dollar a day, making him just slightly better off than many others in the village. But averaged across his small family of 3, he and his little boy and girl are each living on about 35 cents a day. Even if his kids don’t go to bed hungry, any extra cost -a minibus ride to the health center, a few secondhand clothes- will seriously set them back.

Progress is made slowly, but today out of each thousand born, 56 more children than at the beginning of the decade make it to their 5th birthday. Each step, however small a stride in keeping those most vulnerable alive, is bringing us closer to a world in which a child can grow up to earn more than a dollar a day.

Malaria makes the Big Time

For those of you who have been following along at home for some time, you probably already know that I’m a malaria geek. So when a new report hits the media with a lovely tale of how malaria is on the run in this part of the world, it’s really pretty exciting. In Rwanda, malaria deaths have dropped more than 60% in a few months, just by those in a position to do so making sure that enough mosquito nets and effective malaria treatments drugs reach the population.

Malaria has received more attention and consequent funding in the last few years than in has since the failed global eradication campaign of the 1960s and ’70s. The efforts of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, the World Bank Malaria Booster Program and the President’s Malaria Initiative have mobilized incredible resources and political support to half the burden of this disease.

Battling malaria should be a simple issue. The politics are not as controversial as with HIV/AIDS, the technical issues are less complicated than TB, and there are more resources available than clean water has. As the report says, all we need to do to get mosquito nets and treatment drugs to those who need them most: kids under 5.

I can tell you from first hand experience that this small feat is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. Even with the wealth of global funding available, there is often still not enough money to go around. It’s only recently that the mosquito net manufacturers have been gearing up their production facilities quickly enough to respond to the need for product. The new artemisinin-based antimalaria drugs need to be stored at cool temperatures - much cooler than health centers in the tropics where electricity is a constant challenge.

I spent most of my days trying to find a way to make things happen, whether it be ensuring that trucks have fuel to carry drugs to where they need to be or working with the Ministry of Health to determine which drugs to order in the first place. At the end of the day, it’s hard to believe I’ve accomplished more than a few sent emails. But reports like this one are enough to make one believe that baby steps will take you where you’re going. It just takes patience.

Who you gonna call?

It’s more than vaguely reminiscent of the 1984 classic Ghostbusters. The protective gear, the spray cans, the coveralls. Bill Murray wasn’t around to see it but this week, Malawi set off to rid herself of some demons: the female anopheles mosquito, carrier of malaria.

In Nkhotakota, one of Malawi’s lakeshore districts, 26,000 households will be sprayed with a biodegradable insecticide that should keep mosquitoes out of people’s homes through the wet season due to start any day now. Furniture and personal belongings are cleared out so the indoor walls of the house can be sprayed with a time-release chemical based on pyrethrin (think citronella). Because the Anopheles mosquito bites predominantly at night and rests on walls after biting (we all need a little digestion time), spraying is a good way to keep mosquitoes at bay.

Malaria is still one of the biggest killers of children in the world - along with diarrhea and pneumonia, poor nutrition confounding it all - and Malawi is certainly no exception. With about 6 million cases annually, the disease detracts from work productivity and school attendance, not to mention the cost to families.

Stay tuned to find out how much spraying really does cut the transmission of malaria around here. It’s the kind of thing that might just change someone’s life.

Under contruction

It was a trap, I was sure. Lure unsuspecting traffic into the round-about and then, with no warning, block all the exits. Ah, construction.

Still being relatively new in town, with my two known routes to work blocked, I wandered out of the traffic circle in a new direction. Down the block, around the corner, and through a maze of driveways: past the BP station, around the cafe, under the bridge, past the other BP station and around the corner to the office, not totally sure I could repeat in reverse. But now it’s been like that for a few days and I’m starting to get the hang of the new bends in my road - and the dirt tracks, slightly off-road.

The icing on the cake was last night when the city’s central water main broke. While I have no idea as to what actually happened, I can guess it might have had something to do with the road maintenance drilling. To my great surprise, the water came back on only a few hours later — not at all like Congo!

It’s been like this since I arrived, constant road maintenance, particularly in City Centre near my office. I suppose I should thank the road crews since it’s forced me to learn the back way around to the supermarket. But mostly, I notice that maintenance is happening. Sure enough, there aren’t many potholes in the roads around town and the tarmac is fairly even.

For now, I’m looking forward to the next few years of smooth cruising.

Keeping abreast of Congo

While I’ve been whiling my time away in the US, life is Congo chugges along through thick and thin. Bemba is still in exile in Portugal but promises to return to DRC in time for the next legislative session in mid-September.

In more positive news, six new animal species were discovered in eastern Congo on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The expedition was carrier out earlier this year by the Wildlife Conservation Society (the Bronx Zoo), Chicago’s Field Museum, the National Centre of Research and Science in Lwiro and the World Wildlife Fund. The discoveries included a bat, a rodent, a shrew, and two frogs. Potentially new plant species collected are currently being classified.

Congo’s ongoing instability, particularly in the east, has created an incredible amount of human suffering and economically stunted the country in countless ways. Despite this, the war has also inadvertently protected vast swaths of rainforest that might otherwise have been logged, farmed and destroyed under a more stable government.

Here’s to looking at the brighter side of things.

Paradise found?

Having just spent a short but entertaining stint in Costa Rica, I have to say, I’m a bit in awe of the place. Granted that even as Africa goes, Cong’s a bit the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. But Costa Rica is downright pleasant.

Some of the more fascinating bits were

• Traffic lights! Everywhere!
• Kids riding bikes and skateboards (as opposed to playing with balls constructed from old plastic bags)
• Bee-yew-ti-ful roads
• Potable water right out of the tap
• Notable absence of pushy hawkers
• Ice in beer - this one I’m not such a fan of

Even apart from novelties such as traffic lights, the country’s tourism industry is booming with 51% of the country forested, up from only 25% a few decades back. There’s a strong national health care system in place (ranked one step above the US’s on the World Health Organization’s global list), funded partially due to the absence of a national military.

Which is not to say that the thing don’t happen slowly or ineffectively. It takes about 2 years to have a phone line installed in your house, the electricity blips on and off regularly, and the government just released 3 Colombians who were arrested for plotting the assassination of the Minister of Justice as a warning against prosecuting drug runners. Bribes are still somewhat of a necessity when dealing with bureaucracy. But all in all, it’s not a bad place to set your hat.

I’m now back on U.S soil and enjoying the northern hemisphere summer. Here’s a small clue as to what I’ve been up to:

Lights out

I was going to tell you this yesterday, but the power was out. From 8am until around 11pm. If you are in the habit of spending your Saturday night watching Congolese television, you probably heard that this was coming.

Kinshasa gets its power from the Inga Dam on the Congo River, located in the western province of Bas Congo and was a baby of the Mobutu regime. The dam was intended to provide power –via a 1700km electrical line- to the mines in Shaba (now Katanga Province) which had secessionist leanings. With one switch, Mobutu could literally turn the lights out on the entire province, thereby theoretically squelching any bad behaviour.

When the dam opened in 1982, it only functioned at 10% capacity. However, if the dam complex were rehabilitated to function at full power, including a new dam site, for a price tag of about $6 billion, it could provide up to 39,000MW of power — enough to supply Africa’s power needs and then some. That’s three times as much as any existing hydroelectric dam. And because the Congo River crosses the equator (twice), part of the river always has rains, maintaining a steady volume of water at the river mouth.

My –probably flawed- understanding of the current situation is that only one of the existing turbines is functioning, which means that if that one goes, we’re all in the dark for some time. Word on the street is that some smarty-pants up river -possibly at the World Bank who is investing in a bit of Inga-remodeling- decided to go ahead and shut down the dam yesterday for maintenance (a word that doesn’t usually exist in this country), leaving Kinshasa without power for a good 12+ hours.

While this certainly isn’t the first time or the last that we’ve been without power on any given day, it’d be nice to think that at some point in the future, more than 5% of Congolese will be able to complain about having their power cut in the first place.