I came back from R&R a few weeks ago ready to go—well almost! I admit that it was a bit difficult to face coming back to a remote area after a lovely week in Kenya. I armed myself with a supply of chocolate to ease the transition and returned to the field.

I stopped in Dubie on route to Shamwana because the program team was completing the distribution of household kits there. Dubie is a logistical hub for our operations in Katanga—we store most of our program inputs (food, household kits, etc.) until we are ready or able to distribute them. Dubie is a large town (population 12,000) by local standards, but is still very, very rural. Our house and office are in separate locations there, so we walk to work through various people’s gardens, much to the amusement of all the kids in the area. It seems that the constant stream of Concern staff in the area in the last few months has not reduced our sense of novelty to the people, so we are accompanied by a posse every morning. I haven’t spent much time in Dubie since the first couple weeks after I arrived in DRC, but the kids still all remembered me and were calling my name as I walked around. It’s useful for when I get lost; I have an appalling sense of direction, and it’s no help that every little road here looks the same. I got lost the other evening, and a little boy took me by the hand and led me home!

We completed the distribution of household kits to almost 3,000 families last week. These people were displaced from their homes during the war and lost everything; they need help to get their lives back together. The kits contain things like plastic sheeting, blankets, cooking utensils and soap, and are designed to help people get started again after returning to their villages. This was the last distribution, and it marks the end of the first phase of our emergency program in the area. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think the team (and I) all feel relieved that this “emergency phase” has finished. I think they are also hoping that things will calm down here now, and we can all start having weekends. We are planning a party at the end of the month to mark the end of the distributions. We’ll just use any excuse for a party here since our social life is rather limited!  

When I came back to Shamwana, I found that I now live on a building site! We are building more offices and tukuls (little huts made of brick with thatch roofs that we live in) to accommodate the increasing size of our team. As construction can only take place in the dry season, we have to try and get it all done in the next few months. People can only make bricks during the dry season as well, and we’ve been able to buy them locally. Cement is proving more difficult to source. It has to come from Lubumbashi, and is scarce at the moment as all the cement in the region is being sold to South Africa for construction for the World Cup. Still, work has begun and our compound is now overrun by whistling builders. Fortunately, it’s not wolf-whistling, just tunes sometimes accompanied by the singing of our guards. It all makes for an interesting backdrop as I sit here trying to complete donor reports.