Earning my wings

The last few days have been some of the strangest of my life.

I knew they would be. When you leave a place as deep in the bush as Bossangoa to go to “the field”, you know you’re in for a serious backwoods experience. It’s a good thing I packed as thoroughly as I did before leaving New York, because I have used just about everything in that suitcase. The leatherman, with its keen blade that snaps to attention like a soldier under inspection. The mosquito net, which unlike the ones already out here, doesn’t stink like mold and insecticide. The sleeping bag liner, which allows me to bed down without worrying too much about the fleas in the mattress. The head lamp, the satellite phone, the insecticide spray, the med kit. My radio is a part of my body, about the only part that isn’t covered in mud most of the time. Cold water for bathing is routine. So is eating grilled goat and gritty bread at the side of the road, picking the random bits of bone out of your mouth and trying not to think about the dirt-encrusted fingernails of the man who served it to you (with his bare hands). I have earned my wings this week alone, and I’m barely a quarter into the mission.

Mostly we’ve been staying with Catholic priests and nuns, which in addition to – let’s call it “modest” – accommodations, means being gonged awake every morning at five as the congregation is called to mass. It also means lengthy prayers over every meal, and a troubling inability to curse when you really want to. Which is rather often, in my case.

There are some real characters out here. Like Father A., the fierce-eyed Italian priest who delivers mass in perfect Sango and presides over some of the most inspiring grass-roots aid programmes I’ve ever seen. Father A. is a man of God, but he doesn’t hesitate to admit his role in encouraging the local population to take up arms to protect themselves from the predations of the Zaraguinas, the local bandits who terrorize villages all over the north west of CAR. The way Father A. sees it, there is no choice left to the villagers given the total absence of the state out here. Who will protect them if they don’t protect themselves? When I told him the story of the Mai-Mai in the Congo, the “people’s shield” turned roving predators, he only smiled. It’s nothing he hasn’t thought of already. But what alternative is there?

Sister D. is a tough-as-nails Congolese nun who runs a nutrition centre near the Chadian border. She’s a small woman, but somehow you don’t notice that when she speaks. Perhaps it’s the way she expresses herself – passionate and direct, classically Congolese. Or maybe it’s the way she stands up for herself and her patients, refusing to be intimidated by any soldier, rebel, or cheeky foreign aid worker. She told us a story of a pregnant woman in her village whose baby hadn’t turned. The husband, a Muslim, refused to allow his wife to be taken to the hospital because the baby was conceived before they were married and therefore was not recognized by the family. Hearing this, Sister D. sent one of her nurses to fetch the woman and bring her to the clinic. When the nurse returned empty-handed, Sister D., furious, got in her car and drove to the woman’s house herself. The husband wasn’t there, so Sister D. bundled up the woman to drive her 40 kms to the nearest hospital. As they got into the car, some of the local Muslim women told Sister D. she would need to return and see to the husband. Sister D. retorted that if she returned, it would only be to slap the foolish man’s head.

First prize for characters, however, definitely goes to the Colonel, the rebel leader with whom I spent my morning. His posturing began before we even met him: to reach him, we had to drive through the bush for an hour, past checkpoints manned by stone-faced youths with Kalashnikovs. Given the extremely tense state of the peace process right now – on hold, truth be told – I couldn’t help but wonder whether the rank and file were still under orders not to meddle with humanitarians. Even if they were, they’re usually drunk. So we were tense before we even sat down. It was like something out of a movie, the Colonel surrounded by his rag-tag men, his chin high and his nostrils flared like a bull before it charges. He was very polite as we sat down, but that soon dissolved into a 45-minute tirade, spittle-flying and fingers pointing, about the UN and its failure to bring peace to CAR. When he had finally finished, I had the unhappy task – as Chef de Mission – of replying. I swallowed my nervousness and said that he had raised some very interesting points, which I would be happy to discuss in my personal capacity, but which had nothing to do with us as humanitarians. I explained again why we were there – details I won’t get into here, because they’re delicate – and that political concerns were not our domain. Whether he was convinced by this I don’t know, but at least the negotiations proceeded and we got the commitments we wanted. (What good that will do, of course, remains to be seen.)

I feel like I’ve lived a year in the space of two weeks. It’s crazy. And God only knows what’s yet to come. One thing’s for sure: nobody can say I haven’t “done the field”.