I intend to write several blogs about my EMI project trip in
the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), but to summarize, it was a wonderful week. As I’ve been telling many people, “Great
ministry. Great team. Amazing trip.”
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| Lise & I in the front seat looking sleepy |
We all met up at the EMI office at 5am on Monday February 13
to load up a large safari van. Our team
of 10 took up all 10 of the passenger seats, including a middle seat in the
front, squished between the driver and passenger. This is where I sat, sandwiched between our
friendly driver, Bharuku, and Lise – architectural intern, my mentee, and my
roommate for the trip – while trying to keep my knee from getting in the way of
the gear shift. This seat was obviously
not designed for long-distance travel, as it had very limited padding and zero
lumbar support. Pat was gracious enough
to lend me his inflatable back pillow, which made a huge difference. This one seat’s back also didn’t come up high
enough to rest your head on, so sleeping was out of the question (although I
think I may have actually dozed off a bit because I was so tired). I figured Lise & I would rather cuddle in
the front seat than most other people on our team, and we weren’t suffering
from jet lag like our volunteers were.
=) Lise was also kind enough to
trade off with me part-way through the trip.
Thanks to Bob & Eileen, the married couple, who took the front seat
on the way back.
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| Robert, Erland, and Pat bright-eyed at the beginning of the trip |
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| And in the middle of the trip... (honestly not a posed photo!) |
One of our volunteers from the US, Tim, did not get his
suitcase before we left Kampala, so Pat loaned him some clothes and we made a
quick shopping stop part-way through our drive for some essentials. Other than that and a couple bathroom breaks,
it was straight on through to the Congo border (about 9 hours). We were all very thankful to our volunteers
who brought lots of snacks to pass around the van. A 2-pound bag of Twizzlers “makes mouths
happy!”
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| Ugandan Border |
The border crossing is right next to an amazing snow-covered
mountain range that juts out of the land and creates part of the border between
Uganda and Congo. Unfortunately, it’s
almost always blocked by clouds and haze, so we only got to see enough to grasp
how impressive it must be when it’s clear.
We spent about 2 hours at the border – it didn’t seem to take a long
time, there were just several stops to make.
First, we all got out and greeted the two Congo Initiative
representatives who had come to meet us.
Then we unloaded all of our things out of our van into their van and
sedan, which would take us on to Beni, where the ministry was located. While we were repacking the vans, everyone’s
passports had to first be taken to Ugandan police office #1 and then Ugandan
police office #2 (no idea why there were 2).
I went into office #2 as the team representative and told the police
officer the profession of each person on the team as she wrote by hand all of
the passport information for each person.
(Three different offices had to write by hand the information about each
of 10 passports…and that was just for the Ugandan side!) This “office” was actually a very small room
built out of scrap boards sitting on the dirt, barely tall enough to stand up
in, with two tables and a bench crammed inside, and the walls of which were
plastered with various calendars advertising guest houses, displaying pictures
of East African presidents and safari animals, and declaring how Gaddafi was
wronged and inhumanely murdered (complete with graphic photos). [On a side note, on the drive, we saw a huge billboard
in a field displaying two photos of the Ugandan president with Gaddafi.]
Next we walked past the security gate into a strange border
“town” inside of “no-man’s land.” It was
technically still Uganda, but you could tell that it had all been built up
based solely on the import/export between Uganda and DRC. (I think almost everything was going from
Uganda into DRC.) We walked past a few
sedans that were being filled to the brink – both in the trunk and in the back
seat – with soda and beer bottles. I
guess you can fit more bottles into a car if you take them out of the cases! At this point, we headed to the actual Ugandan
immigration office. (Why that one stop
wasn’t sufficient beats me … the airports don’t seem to have a problem with it.) Here they checked for everyone’s tourist
visas or work permits and then stamped our exit.
We then piled back into the cars and drove for about 1-2 km
until we got to the DRC border patrol. A
small river with a little bridge marked the official border. As soon as we crossed to the DRC, you could
immediately tell that less money was spent on infrastructure. Immediately the paved road became a black mud
road (I assume the black soil was due to being in a volcanic region). It had been raining, so everything looked
especially muddy and dismal. Our van
reached a final gate, which we passed and then kept on driving. Mary, an American on the US board of the Congo
Initiative (CI), was in the van with us and asked our driver if we were
supposed to stop. He didn’t think we
were supposed to, and we were starting to get puzzled about why we didn’t have
to stop at DRC Immigration, which we had heard might take a while. We were starting to think we were super lucky
until a couple border patrol cops on motorcycles pulled us over and yelled at
us for trying to run the border! =D haha, whoops!
They asked for our passports, which we didn’t even have with us because
they were in the other car with three of our volunteers and another CI rep. We drove back to the immigration office and
waded across the black mud, grateful for another bathroom stop while we
waited.
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| DRC Immigration Office |
They asked for two representatives of the group, so I went
in with Lise, who – what a blessing – speaks an amazing amount of French! [The eastern DRC primarily speaks French
& Swahili, the latter of which I was happy to practice while I was
there.] The officials started to tell
stubborn me and slightly-nervous Lise that she and Erland (our civil
engineering intern) did not have valid visas and would have to return to
Uganda. Now, I DID know this was coming,
but I didn’t think to warn Lise before they started telling her all of this in
French. I think she was worried for a
bit that they actually might not let her in.
The problem was that we all had to get Congolese visas in our passports
ahead of time, and for the five of us living in Uganda, we got them from the
Congolese Embassy in Kampala.
Apparently, although the Embassy in Kampala has no problem taking our
money and issuing us visas, the DRC border folks insist that the visa needs to
be from the Embassy in your home country.
Well, we didn’t know this until it was too late, so we just prayed and
knew that it might take a while, but they’d eventually let us in. Pat, Robert, and I were fine because we have
work permits in Uganda, but Lise & Erland don’t, so we had to explain that
they ARE residents, but when you are a resident for less than 5 months, Uganda
doesn’t require you to get a work permit.
This is true, but I don’t think the border guys really cared about my
argument. Like most immigration
officials, we needed to let them assert their authority for a while, ask
forgiveness and mercy for a while, wait a while, and then we were given the
green light.
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| DRC Road |
After all of that, now came the intense part! The DRC apparently has VERY FEW paved
roads. The country itself is almost 1/3
the size of the continental US, and various reports indicate that it has only
50-500 km of paved roads in the whole country.
So this somewhat-main road leading from the Ugandan border to a paved
road linking the major Eastern towns was NOT paved. It was a rather wide and somewhat-well-maintained
“thoroughfare” but extremely bumpy nonetheless.
The bumpiness was added to the fact that most drivers take it at what
feels like break-neck speed in order for the 50-mile trip to “only” take 2-2.5
hours. This combined for a crazy ride
that was most-often compared to rally car racing. I also did know this was coming, so I had
taken half a Dramamine, and I steadfastly stared at the road ahead of me, but I
was still feeling somewhat nauseous by the end. (I took a full Dramamine and opted for the
sedan on the way back.) There were also
a couple of harrowing bridge crossings, one that involved a slight skid and a
quick flash of death through some of our minds.
=) Lise’s fingers became numb
about halfway through the trip and she finally “tossed her cookies,” as my
friend Janet would say, when we were just 5 minutes from the guest house. =( But
we all finally made it safe and sound (well, sound-ish). We were very thankful for God’s protection on
many dangerous roads!
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| Kids gathering as we stopped along the road |
Along the road, when we were blessed with an occasional
slowing down or stopping, we noticed that we were surrounded by beautiful,
lush, green jungle. It is quite a
beautiful country. Uganda is known for
being green, but eastern DRC made Uganda seem brown in comparison. We arrived at the end of the dry season, so I
would expect everything to be dried but, but everything still seemed very
green. I would have thought it was the
middle of rainy season!
[On a separate note, I had the flu and stayed home all last
weekend. It wasn’t too bad; I just felt
crummy and tired. I’m actually quite
impressed that this is the first time I’ve really been very sick since moving
to Uganda two years ago! My cat kept me
company, and several friends graciously offered to bring me anything I needed. I’m thankful for a supportive community!]
