Meanwhile in the Congo...

Be careful what you wish for. Isn’t that what they always say? I’ve been grousing for a couple of months now about how few times I’ve been to the field in my new job. In principle I’m supposed to be traveling about 40% of the time, but as the protracted silence of this blog attests, that has certainly not been the case. I was only too happy to volunteer for this Congo assignment.

I had to remind myself of that fact several times last night – as I fumigated my hotel room with Death in a Can (with particular attention to the bathtub cockroaches), as I tried to position the sunken mattress in such a way as to avoid the bed collapsing, as I surveyed the high ceiling and the impossibility of hanging a mosquito net, and most especially as I squatted in the bathtub trying to coax enough (cold) water out of a rusted hose to rinse the shampoo from my hair.

There’s a big diplomatic conference in town, so all the passable hotels (all two of them) are booked solid. I’m not sure how long this is going to last, but it doesn’t really matter; I’ve made peace with my lot. (At least until my next ‘shower’. Tangentially, I wonder what manner of contaminant causes water to turn pink? Better left in ignorance, I suppose.) My equanimity owes a lot to the fact that it isn’t too hot, which is generally the one thing that puts me over the edge in these situations. When you’re in a filthy room full of mosquitoes, the one thing you really don’t want to be is sweaty (especially if all you have to hose yourself down with is freezing, smelly water in a mysterious shade of pink.) “Why do you GO to these places?!” my husband demanded last night. Good bloody question.

There’s an answer, of course: because it’s worth it. For now at least, the work is easily interesting enough to answer for the discomfort. I am here as a part of a three-person team to help the peacekeepers and the aid agencies come up with a new joint plan, a grand strategy that will orient their efforts to quell the violence in the east and alleviate the crushing poverty in the west. I’m neither expected nor equipped to provide the substance of that strategy. I’m a traffic cop, or a cat-herder, or a mid-wife, or some such metaphor. I won’t make the strategy, but I’ll help usher it into being. Whether that process will be inspiring, like watching a composer write a symphony, or disillusioning, like watching sausages get made, remains to be seen. I suspect there will be elements of both.

Now for my next challenge: finding internet access…