My daily routine begins when the Concern driver comes to pick me up at the team house at 7:45am. My housemates and I climb into the Land Cruiser and we’re at the office by 8am. On Monday mornings we have an hour-long staff meeting. The security briefing is usually the most interesting part. It’s where you get to hear about street fighting or other civil disturbances, often involving “martial arts groups.” These ad-hoc groups are comprised of disaffected, often unemployed young men who perform various martial arts rituals. Rightly or wrongly, they’re frequently accused of promoting gang activity and exerting their influence through fear and intimidation.

This morning our security officer shared some bizarre information with the staff. He advised us that next weekend a resistance leader who fought against the Indonesian occupation and who was thought to have died three decades ago may be coming to Dili. According to the rumour, he wants to show that he’s still alive and that he’s now opposing Timor Leste’s newly elected government. No one seems to know if this is fact or fiction. But we’re advised to be alert to possible civil unrest just in case.

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!

Sarah and the Concern team are responding to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by rebuilding 30 kilometers of road and 18 bridges as well as by distributing seeds, tools, oil, salt, food and resettlement kits to people in 64 villages in Katanga. 

July 9, 2007- It’s been quite an interesting few weeks here in Katanga. We’ve been out doing a water and sanitation assessment, so I’ve visited about 60 villages, been stuck on the road nine times, done a ten-hour drive from Shamwana to Dubie and received a marriage proposal! 

We started the water and sanitation assessment three weeks ago to see if the needs were strong enough to start a program here. We split the work so that Per, our advisor, looked at the water sources in the villages and I did the group discussions with the community members. The water sources in the communities are sometimes more than a 30-minute walk away from the village. You can imagine how difficult this is for the women here who have to make three trips a day to collect up to 20 liters of water for all their cooking, drinking, and bathing needs. My job was a lot easier than Per’s because I got to sit under a tree and have discussions with the people. We were asking them questions about their hygiene habits, trying to teach people to use latrines, wash their hands regularly, etc.

A six-year civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) killed more than three million people and displaced another two million. Eighty percent of the nation’s population struggles to survive on less than a dollar a day. For many of the people with whom Concern works, that can be a little as 25 cents a day.

In August 2006, Concern Worldwide expanded its emergency response program in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to respond to the needs of displaced people returning home after years of violent conflict. Focusing on Katanga, the nation’s most violent and impoverished province, Concern’s program has assisted with the resettlement of displaced and returned families by providing them with food as well as basic supplies including seeds, tools, and household resettlement kits. Concern is also working with community members to rebuild schools, roads and bridges.