That Kindamba Kid

It’s done. The boxes full of satellite phones, action DVDs and long-expired medications have been packed and shipped, the confidential files burned, and the MSF logos painted over. Kindamba project is no more.

On Saturday we handed the keys over to Global Outreach Mission Congo (Mission GO), who will continue running the Kindamba hospital, albeit on a smaller scale than MSF.

At the end of an impossibly hectic final week, I gave Mission GO’s director, Dr. Joe, a midnight tour of the base by flashlight. Here’s the generator; that spliced electrical cable held together with surgical tape runs to the garage, this one goes to the house and offices. Here’s what to do when the system overloads, there’s the fire extinguisher, good luck.   

Michaelle and Edgard pass out on the way back to Kindamba as the car pitches like a rowboat in a hurricane. 

While MSF is secular, Mission GO is a Christian evangelical organization. But we think they’re a good match for Kindamba, where the majority of people are committed Christians. The people seem to agree, and have welcomed Mission GO with open arms.

We elected to hand over to Mission GO after visiting the impressive hospital they run up in the remote northern town of Impfondo. Another deciding factor was that nobody else was interested in taking over from us.

(Few would deny that the Republic of Congo is a bit of a global backwater. Even the UN accidentally routes shipments intended for this Congo to the larger and more infamous Democratic Republic of Congo next door.)

Mission GO director Dr. Joe is a friendly guy from upstate New York who speaks fluent Lingala. He has hired much of our beloved local staff to continue running the hospital, and has displayed stamina and grace under pressure in the battle to secure official assent for the handover.

Mission GO’s Dr. Joe Harvey heads into the jungle (of bureaucracy). 

Congolese are sticklers for protocol. Even a slight deviation from the unwritten social and political rules will get you an annoyed “Mais c’est pas comme ça que c’est fait!” (“That’s not how it’s done!”).

If you want to get anything done, you have to do it the right way. Which in our case meant clearing the Kindamba hospital handover with every government official and functionary from the minister of health all the way down to the guy who cuts the grass. Signed, stamped, and in triplicate.

Unfortunately, not only did we not get all our signed and sealed documents in order, we got lost in a murky political swamp of conflicting interests. And Kindambans started getting anxious that when the dust cleared they would be left without healthcare. We began wondering if our departure would trigger a resumption of the civil war, which is the kind of ironic farewell a good humanitarian aid organization should avoid.

A week after the handover, I wouldn’t say that Dr. Joe and Mission GO are completely out of the woods. But I think they’ve gotten off to the best possible start. The people are pulling for them.

And I have faith in Dr. Joe. When he was trying to set up the hospital in Impfondo, he also had bureaucratic obstacles to overcome. Then one day he ran into some American oilmen in Pointe Noire who asked him to accompany them to an important business meeting, because they couldn’t speak French. When he found himself interpreting for Congolese president Denis Sassou-Nguesso, he naturally brought up the Impfondo hospital. “What?” Sassou-Nguesso exclaimed. “That still hasn’t been taken care of?” He turned to his aide. “Get the paperwork for this hospital finished right now!”

So here’s hoping that this same serendipity or divine providence will continue working for our brothers and sisters in Kindamba.

Nurse Maartje is already back in Holland, and we put big boss Leonie on the plane last night. That leaves me and Dr. Ahmed to help close up the shop in Brazzaville. The gala dinners, long speeches over warm Primus beer, and tearful goodbyes have almost wrapped up, and Kindamba will go on getting on with its life.

New shops are opening, the market is busier than ever, and a few people seem cautiously optimistic. They’re talking about building a micro-dam on the river to generate electricity. And did I mention that the government recently repaired the bridges on the Loukouo-Mayama road? I wonder if there are any elephants out that way…

The small village health centers we support have been exceedingly generous in their parting gifts, and every time our mobile team goes to drop off a final donation of drugs and supplies, we come back loaded with produce.

The cars roll into base bulging with live goats and chickens, bricks of foufou wrapped in leaves, buckets of oranges and papayas, giant banana bunches, huge bags of peanuts and vats of palm wine.

The chickens seem to travel pretty well, trussed up in woven grass carriers. The goats make more reluctant passengers, and have a distinctive smell that quickly saturates the vehicle.  

But nothing could really equal the odour of the parting gift offered by the town of Vindza. A porcupine! What a delight. This animal is considered a rare and precious delicacy all over the continent.

Apparently the hunters of Vindza had been saving this one for a while, and by the time it got back to Kindamba, it was obviously overripe. I came outside to greet the returning mobile team and the smell of the porcupine smacked me hard in the face.

The staff have a calm, reasoned discussion about how to divide the moble clinic spoils 

Inside a cloud of flies I could see Antoine carving up the animal and placing portions into the eager, outstretched hands of our staff. Dr. Ahmed was running around the compound spraying clouds of air freshener, which proved no match for the stench of rotting meat.

Dominique had been awarded the porcupine’s reeking, whiskered little head “You’re going to eat that?” I asked him. He certainly was. I was sure they would all end up in the hospital.

After a few days passed and nobody died, I asked Dr. Ahmed for an explanation. He talked about adaptation to the environment and local herbs neutralizing the toxins, but seemed a bit surprised himself.

I was happy to have stayed home from Vindza, but I made a mistake in not joining the last trip to Loukouo. That day the cars got back late, all the passengers tipsy from palm wine and singing and laughing uproariously. Apparently the villagers had thrown an epic bash, with a drumming group, singers, a theater performance and a big feast.

Victor, the head of the mobile clinic team, was glowing (and wobbling slightly). “You really missed a party in Loukouo!” he kept telling me. By the third time it was kind of annoying.

For our big project closure party, everyone was clear — we needed meat. Big meat. (Well not everyone. Nurse Maartje is a vegetarian and would be quite happy if we left the meat alone).

Kindamba used to be awash in cattle, but then the civil war broke out, and that was it for the cows. Rumour has it that the villagers are thinking of bringing them back, if the peace continues to hold.

Anyway, this is going to be a big party, and there’s no way we can feed everyone on chicken and fish. Fortunately we were able to track down a suitable cow a few villages away thanks to Willy, one of the MSF guards.

Apart from being a stand-up chap willing to do whatever is necessary to get a good party off the ground, Willy also used to be some kind of Congolese cowboy. He volunteered to go and retrieve the cow.Where Willy was going the Land Cruisers couldn’t follow, so his instructions were to escort our cow to a pick-up point on the Kinkakassa road. The plan seemed straightforward; Willy hit the road, and people began talking about recipes, occasionally lapsing into little beef daydreams.

Now and then Willy would climb a mountain in order to get cell phone reception and update us on his progress. Everything seemed to be going well until about the fourth day, when Eric came to see me wearing a grave expression. He had received a call from Willy. “The cow has escaped,” Eric informed me.

Rebel cow gets settled after her long trip to Kindamba 

How the cow had managed to escape was unclear. I was confused because it seemed to me that the whole point of thousands of years of cattle domestication was that cows shouldn’t escape so easily, especially when there’s only one of them under direct human supervision.

The plan to recapture the cow was also vague. “Willy’s going to wait until dark. The cow will stop moving at night,” Eric told me. Stalking a cow through the Congolese bush at night sounded a bit off. But more experienced heads were nodding all around me, so I accepted this as the wisest course of action.

Days passed, rains fell and suns blazed, with still no word from Willy. Talk of a rescue mission began. But where to begin? The cow’s speed and direction were unknown. 

Finally, almost a week after departing Kindamba, Willy phoned in from a mountaintop near Mounkomo, where he was staying with the village chief. He had tracked the cow about 50km through the bush and had finally recaptured it.

Willy Batantou, Congo Cowboy, heads home for a bath and a long nap

“Come and get me,” he shouted through the static, sounding exhausted. “Bring food.”

Everyone was pretty surprised at how far Willy and the cow had managed to trek. Apart from being thoroughly impressed by his stamina and perseverance, I was excited about the rescue mission, because this meant a trip up the Kimba road and into wild elephant territory.

Alas it was not to be. Once known as a cowboy organization, MSF has matured over the years, and retrieving our own cowboy in unfamiliar territory would have required going all the way up the chain of command to Toronto headquarters, for official permission.

Since Willy wasn’t loitering on mountaintops, we had no way of communicating with him. Even if we could reach him, he would probably have been unimpressed to learn that we needed him to drag the cow another 30km south from Mounkomo to the Mbemba crossroads because of security rules. So we set about hiring someone to go and fetch him and the cow.

As it turns out, there are at least three villages in the area called Mounkomo. The one guy in Kindamba with a viable truck demanded an appalling sum of money to carry out the rescue mission, but we soon realized that he was planning to go to the wrong Mounkomo. When Eric explained that we wanted him to go up the Kimba road, he laughed and refused to make the trip at any price. Maybe he’s already seen the elephants.

Now if I had just chased a cow all over the countryside, I would have simply stayed put in Mounkomo growing increasingly resentful as my rescuers failed to appear. Fortunately Willy is a more sensible fellow, and when help did not materialize he began making his way south along the Kimba road.

As the prospects of hiring an independent transporter declined, we decided to send Eric and Richard up to the Mbemba crossroads to see if Willy might turn up. Eric was pretty sure he would.

When the rescuers radioed back to base to tell us they had found Willy and the cow alive and well, a great cheer went up. Once again talk turned to beef: recipes, butchery, and how to slaughter the cow in a Halal manner so that Dr. Ahmed could also partake.

The consensus was that Willy should be rewarded with the choicest cut, which around here is the head. Fine by me.