Nyumbani

It was in the matatu on the was to Ol Kalau in the Central Highlands that I first saw the Great Rift Valley. I’m not quite sure what I expected – perhaps something in the nature of the Grand Canyon, maybe just an enormous crack in the surface of the Earth. It was so green and so vast and there were peaks that rose up from within the valley. Dormant volcanoes. As we descended down the road carved into the escarpment, there were baboons on the side of the road, lazily watching the Friday afternoon traffic go past. The winding road finally spread out across the floor of the valley. As we passed Lake Naivasha, I saw zebras grazing alongside cattle and trees whose branches reached out toward each other. Although the road was only barely tarmacked, thinking back I feel myself gliding along the bottom of the valley. It’s all a euphoric haze that cannot be matched.

Don’t think I haven’t been paying attention. Rafiki zangu, don’t think I haven’t been watching.

I wrote the above on the Great Rift Valley some years ago now. It was my first trip out of Nairobi on my first trip to Africa. My first zebra sighting. And the beginning of what can only be described as life-altering infatuation. In short, I fell in love the way you do when you are 20 and seeing the world beyond your doorstep for the first time.

I lived with a Kenyan family and ate ugali and tried to speak Swahili on a good day. I drank Pilsner baridi (being sure to throw a few drops from my glass to the ground for the ancestors) and stayed out at Carnivore til all hours. I tracked rhinos with the rangers in Nakuru Park. I attended NGO meetings in Kibera slums. I went down River Road.

Daniel arap Moi was in power. Kenya was a post-Embassy bombing multi-party democracy. World Bank was still trying to reform the civil service. No one had cell phones yet and internet cafes were still expensive. Raila Odinga was the main opposition leader.

Watching Kenya’s elections and stability unravel over the last five weeks has been heart-breaking. Kenya was my first home in Africa and I still consider the people I lived with there to be jamaa yangu (my family). I have sat down many times to write this blog post, combed through horrifying and depressing newspaper articles, spoken with Kenyans and I knew then and now, and wondered how to begin.

If you ask me whether I saw this coming, I could tell you that tribalism was alive and well when I was living there (I could have easily written a post similar to this on Kenyans). I could tell you that crime and corruption has shaken the credibility of what should have been a model African government. I could tell you that two years ago, I learned that the US government was watching Kenya for signs of political fragility.

But none of that really matters, because I would have told you that I did not believe Kenya would be willing to let herself collapse like this. Even now, watching the country crumble, I still can’t believe it. M, an award-winning Kenyan blogger whom I admire greatly, has seen it with his own eyes and it is well worth reading his thoughtful and sage words.

As for myself, ‘euphoric’ is no longer the word that comes to mind when I think of Kenya.

Disenfranchised!

I don’t write much about my homeland, the US, but it’s always there in the background, shaping how I have entered and how I see the world. Instead, I tend to write about where I sit and what I see around me. I spent much of last year writing about Congo’s drawn out and tumultuous elections process, hoping to draw to eyes to what was one of the most dramatic political events in Africa in the last decade.

The US elections certainly don’t need any more publicity. And I’m not going to plug any candidates here, because the truth is that I’m an undecided voter. But I do believe strongly in personal responsibility to take part in the political process.

Which is why it has been so frustrating to me that I have found myself a disenfranchised voter in the last 3 major US elections. My applications for absentee ballots have been completely botched, from receiving ballots for the wrong congressional districts to responding to my application for an absentee ballot with another absentee ballot application. A courteous letter to the state Board of Elections explaining my predicament yielded no response.

Excusing my kvetching, but I sit here, I can’t help but feeling just a wee bit disgruntled. After all, I am an eligible voter who will have to live -whether domestically or abroad- with the outcome of the next election. And since my job is funded by a federal government program, I have a decent-sized stake in the outcome of both the Presidential and Congressional elections.

I have written to my Congressional representative, whom I like very much and would certainly vote for had I the chance, in the hopes of some help in jumping on the voting bandwagon.

I’m not sure if I find it distressing or comforting that poor countries are not the only ones who have trouble running fair and transparent elections. Either way, if you happen to be in the neighborhood, don’t bother to give the NYS Board of Elections my regards.

A bit short of asylum

Mr. Bemba finally left our presence last Wednesday when he headed to Portugal for medical treatment. Bemba received permission from Parliament to travel last Monday on the condition that he returns in 60 days.

In the meantime his political party, the MLC, has refused to participate in the lower house of Parliament due to harassment they claim to be receiving from Kabila’s party.

The public prosecutor has asked the Senate to remove Mr. Bemba’s immunity as a senator so he can be prosecuted for inciting last month’s violence.

Kinshasa is relatively calm these days but the question of Mr. Bemba’s post-Portugal fate remains unanswered (although this bloke has some disjointed theories that seem a bit clouded by his own experience).

While it was expected that Congo’s political situation would lighten following the elections, the violence both in Kinshasa and Matadi (and similar reports from other areas of the country) coupled with sustained reports of opposition harassment indicate we’re not in the clear quite yet.

In response, the UN Security Council has extended MONUC’s Peacekeping mandate a month further to the 15th of May, stating that “continues to pose a threat to international peace and security in the region”. It’s expected that a new resolution will be introduced in the coming month to extend the mandate farther.

But there are a few small signs of hope. The Congolese government is being held responsible for a journalist killed (one of several throughout the electoral process) in late 2005 when the court convicted two soldiers and demanded that the State pay reparations in the order of $3 million to the family and the Congolese National Press Union.

Rumblings of note

Things were starting to get back to what passes for normal around here. We hadn’t had to close the office for security reasons since November. But Bemba, the former rebel leader turned vice president, then turned away in the last election continues to keep a substantial armed force of a couple of thousands troops at Maluku (where they were ordered to retreat to last year) about 40 minutes outside of Kinshasa.

The government has issued an ultimatum that Bemba’s troops –who continue to be seen frequently around Kinshasa, particularly near Bemba’s house about a mile from mine- disarm by midnight tomorrow night. Ruberwa, another rebel leader turned VP and now back in his eastern home territory and unemployed, has also been ordered to disarm his personal security forces.

Of course I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why this didn’t all happen last week while I was on holiday in Europe and had the potential of being stuck somewhere other than my Kinshasa apartment if push does come to shove.

On the way back from the airport last night, as a friend and I were filled on the details above, a convey led by a police truck came roaring at us, going to wrong way down the ‘highway’ towards the airport. My friend’s face collapsed into an ironic smirk. I signed the forms for the Police to get driving school training.

So much for security reform.

Missing: The Real Slim Shady

Let’s say that you, the former Minister of Justice, are part of the political party l’Union Nationale des Fédéralistes which gets to nominate the new Minister of Commerce. You have been asked to submit two or three candidates to the Prime Minister, who will decide among the proposed options. Let’s say that you have a pretty good feeling in your gut that the PM doesn’t want to work with you (being that the former Minister of Justice is my landlord, I have great sympathy for the PM on this front) but you’re pretty eager to work your way back into Cabinet.

A brilliant plan flashes through you mind. Your party can propose two candidates: yourself and someone totally unknown. Someone so unknown, he might not actually exist.

And so the Phantom Minister is born.

Enter the candidate André Kasongo Ilunga, common enough surnames in Katanga province, where party support is based. His CV is submitted and low-and-behold, he gets the job!

Now the fun begins. To date, three different people have shown up for work, only to be each caught individually for different technicalities, such as failure to correctly match the first name of the person presenting with the first name listed on the CV of the Minister.

The former governor of Katanga –now head of the provincial General Assembly- cannot hide his dismay at his fellow party member’s antics or how it will reflect on his party’s national image. Ce n’est pas serious!

Ironically, in order for the Minister to resign officially and a replacement found, he must submit his resignation in person. Without doubt, a tricky matter to arrange.

In the meantime, I have located the missing traffic stand lodged on a nearby sidewalk. Apparently its utility has not been established.

The ‘new’ government, at long last

Monday night brought the announcement on national television of the new government Cabinet, including 6 ministers of state and 54 other ministers and vice-ministers. With Lumumba’s deputy Antoine Gizenga now in position as Prime Minister, and some other old hats such as Interior Minister Denis Kalume still hanging around, it’s hard to assess exactly what about this government is so new. Notably, Nzanga Mobutu, the former head of state Mobutu Sese Seko’s son who won fourth place in the national presidential election has been named Minister of Agriculture. The new Minister of Health, Dr. Victor Kaput, while not formerly of the government per say, was once the chief medical officer for Gecamines, the parastatal mining enterprise once well ‘managed’ by Mobutu’s regime.

Absent from the line-up are Jean Pierre Bemba, Kabila’s main electoral competition and Azarias Ruberwa, both former rebel leaders turned vice presidents under the transitional government. Certainly among the 60 heads now facing an impatient country of 60+ million, there are some new personalities among those more worn. We are in their hands.

When to breathe easy

It must be time already to breathe a sigh of relief for the Congo. This country has survived one colonial power, one home-grown dictator, a coup, a war and a wobbly transitional government. And now that the elections have come and gone, we should get the all-clear that this country’s on its way to all-better, right?

But with riots today in Matadi, the capital of Congo’s most western province, it might still be a little soon to get one’s hopes up.

The protesters claim that the newly-elected governor of the province is a foreigner and that the ballot must be re-done. Per usual around here, the voicing of public opinion got a bit carried away when the crowd attacked a UN vehicle. Five police officers have also been killed.

Word has it that storms are brewing in Kinshasa as Kabila’s government prepares to announce Cabinet members for the coming term. There are 10 or 12 so-called foreigners purported to be nominated. The vocal minority is supposedly waiting with baited breath and possibly stones in hand in the vicinity of the Supreme Court. In a lucky Congolese-style twist of fate, the repairs on the Court have not yet been completed (or really begun for that matter).

Meanwhile one of my colleagues, newly arrived in the country and on her first trip out of Kinshasa, is now trapped in her Matadi hotel room under curfew for at least the near future. Her comment? I can’t believe I didn’t bring a book.

Wanted: one traffic cop

When I returned from holidays this month, the newly sworn-in government was not the only change in Kinshasa. There was a new traffic police stand in the middle of the 5-way intersection I pass through on the way to work. It is not the intersection of major boulevards but it is an artery for mini-buses bringing Congolese into town from la cité. And it does have some nasty blind spots. So the idea of placing a traffic stand in the intersection seems like a good one.

However in the two weeks since I have been back, I have not once seen a traffic cop in the booth directing traffic. And because the intersection is not a major one, the stand itself occupies enough of the available space that all drivers are forced to careen around it, increasing the likelihood of their slamming into another vehicle (which let me tell you is not an uncommon occurrence in Kin).

At this point, it’s still difficult to tell whether the new government’s traffic stand is occupied or vacant. Antoine Gizenga, once Patrice Lumumba’s Deputy Prime Minister and now in his ‘80s, has been named President Kabila’s Prime Minister, taking over the post that many Congolese feel is rightfully his.

Meanwhile our old buddy Jean-Pierre Bemba was back in Kinshasa in time for Cardinal Etsou’s memorial service this past Monday. You may remember the controversial Cardinal’s outspoken opposition to the way the elections were run last year, criticizing the West’s involvement and encouraging Catholics to boycott results if they did not meet his personal standards. Bemba managed to create a scene at the Mass, when his late arrival barred him from entry.

Bemba’s role as opposition leader without a formal position is still amorphous. He has since returned to Equateur, his home province, to campaign for the senatorial elections which will be held tomorrow. I wonder what other resources he is mobilising as he sits in the middle of his own tropical fiefdom of old-growth timber forests.

Meanwhile as the senatorial elections approach and Kinshasa remains quiet, life in the East descends back into what it is known best for: its violence. Soldiers from the national army in Bunia went on a looting and raping spree when the new mechanism to ensure they got paid –namely not giving all their salary money to the generals to distribute trickle down style- failed.

It’s hard to imagine how the national disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programme CONADER will be able to convince militias to demobilise when the national army is not getting paid. But then CONADER seems to have lost both its funding and its governmental mandate as of the end of 2006.

That being said, plans are being put into place to integrate the troops of Laurent Nkunda, the rebel leader who seized Bukavu in 2004 continues to stir up trouble in the Kivus, into the national army. Nkunda himself has agreed to go into exile in exchange for not being pursued for war crimes. While Nkunda is remaining in Congo for the moment to aid in the reintegration of his troops, no one has mentioned where the rebel leader plans to seek his exile or what nation will agree to take the man in. The esoteric battle between the search for justice and the reality of peace-building in a country such as this one does little in terms of reparations for those who have lived through it.

As we wait to see how the new government’s traffic stand will be filled, hopefully the players involved will recognise the novel structure now existing and adjust their actions accordingly to manoeuvre the situation without catastrophe.