Humbling

It's just after 6:30pm here, the rain is coming down in sheets, I just polished off a Coke, Marie is trying to get the satellite phone to work so we can communicate with the team in the field going from village-to-village assessing the situation with the suspsected plague there, our cat is currently attacking my back, and I am a little "quiet" as I think I just need a little time to mellow out and allow my head to take a break. Marie is being very kind to let me listen to a little Dave Matthews Band, as for some reason, their old stuff seems to cheer me up. It's not that I am down, I just feel a little useless in our situation here.

Today the medical team for MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) arrived; two doctors and a nurse. They had lunch with us here at the base/office/house and then this afternoon we met up with them for a meeting with the "chef du medicine" (the doctor in charge of the area) and they were brought up to speed on everything going on. There have been two reported cases of the suspected plague here in Isiro--- both being treated. After the meeting we went to see one of the patients.

He was as normal of a guy whom you would typically pass on the street and not think anything. We do not believe we are dealing with bubonic plague here, so of course there are no marks on his skin or anything like that... it's all internal, all airbourne.

Upon entering this completely vacant room, except for this guy sitting in the corner on a bed, we all stood back, no one getting too close. One doctor from MSF stood a good 10-12 ft away, asking him questions, writing everything down. The chef du medicine would interpret when he didn't understand in french and would need to be spoken to in Lingala. A Congolese nurse walked in, she had obviously been caring for him this week. What a scene for this guy; he's been isolated all week, now a bunch of westerner's walk in, asking him questions, while standing a good 10 ft from him with masks.

When the team got ready to evaluate him, they completely geared up; masks, double gloves, gowns, so careful, so clean, so precise, swabbing this, taking blood here, etc. It was a bit surreal to stand there and watch them work, not because of who they were, but to think of what we were standing in the presence of--- the plague.

This "disease" has been around longer than countries have been countries... it's age is biblical. And yet even in our "new age" of a vaccinated and technological world, we were standing in it's presence today. And it's nothing something you can see because it lives and travels by air. And in watching them take blood and saliva from this guy for their own testing, I was completely humbled by the situation; by them for the work they can do (which I so manytimes wish I could as well), for the man carrying it just because he's a normal guy who wants to return to his family, for this disease because it continues to be resilient in its existence.

As we began our drive back to base thru town, I looked out onto the side of the street and watched the numbers of people visit, greet, gather in groups and just exist together. I couldn't help but think of how easily this can spread and how much harder it might be to control. Then again, we've contained it before, so why wouldn't we be able to this time??

This guy came from the south, in a area where the suspected outbreak is large in numbers right now. He traveled by moto, stopping occasionally in this or that village for food or water. This isn't like home where people exist together in buildings, people here gather together outside. They gather in the marché (outdoor markets), they shake hands, they eat, drink and exist together. There is not a lot of "alone" time here because they sit and visit together. I bet just in today, I came in contact with 150 different people and that is just an average day. Granted, in a school it would be 3x's sa many, but when you think of travel, marché's, and just the daily life here, I wonder and worry... will things like the plague ever disappear completely from our earth?

"Humbling" and "surreal" do not even begin to incapuslate today, but that is the best I can do for now.

Our First Run in Isiro

Some call it adventure, my friend Erinn might call it “reckless abandonment”, and I am sure some will call it insanity. I call it just trying to get a little exercise in at the end of a long day before dark. Whatever you want to call it, Marie (my French counterpart here) and I had an interesting first run here in Isiro.

I was told by my “chef du base” that I could not run unless Marie or a guard accompanied me; basically we are just supposed to move in pairs. As Marie was gone all of last week (and I was sick for part of the week and in Bunia for the other part), I’ve not had the opportunity to run here in Isiro...until tonight. I DID run in Bunia with the team there--- twice in fact. Their route is a little less interesting than ours as it is a 4K loop around the airport in Bunia and this is only possible if the UN Peacekeepers are on guard. You will easily run across other aid workers on the Bunia route and it’s a pretty smooth run. In Isiro, things are a little different.

So I told Marie today that I was in desperate need of a run with everything that has been going on concerning the outbreak of suspected plague and such. (With all of the meetings and reading in French, my mind has had enough of a workout over the past few days, but my body was in frantic need.) Marie agreed to an easy run tonight, but nothing too long. Perfect. We closed down the office right after 5pm, changed, and were off. As she knows the area (she has a whole two months on me), I told her to lead. I thought we would head towards town (as we live on the edge of it) and run 10 minutes in and then back.

Running, here, sometimes attracts a great amount of attention from the people and ESPECIALLY from the kids. Why would someone run for exercise when you have to walk 15km to fetch water?? Aren’t you tired enough at the end of the day from the manual labour?? Those would be the logical questions coming from a local here as they do more manual labour in a day than I do in a week. So heading into town would have attracted attention to ourselves, let alone the kids always run along side of you and quite typically run at a faster pace in their flip-flops or barefoot than we do in our running gear. So why embarrass ourselves by running in town?? We headed out on the trails through the jungle.

It was a windy, very narrow path, mostly downhill towards a few of the waterholes. I was in my long running shorts (which are typical basketball length shorts back home) and t-shirt, Marie was in ¾ pants and a t-shirt. The overgrowth from the jungle took over the path in some parts and in other parts, the path opened up a bit. We ran, taking different routes, stopping to check where we were, and that we were not too far away from town, seeing people coming back from the water holes along the way. As long as we were still meeting people on the path, we knew we were fine.

But after a while, we did not meet anyone on the path. We couldn’t hear town anymore and the jungle seemed to grow denser, thicker and in this denseness we began to loose light. We had taken turns leading at this point, each of us as clueless as the other. My legs were covered in scrapes, blood smeared across my ankles and shins from certain scratches, but it felt so nice to run. Finally, I stopped and asked if she knew where we were, but I already knew the answer to that question. We decided to turn back and retrace our steps… very Hansel and Grettel of us, eh? Had we left bread crumbs, we wouldn’t have been able to see them on the jungle floor.

The one consistent thought which kept running through my head was “if we get lost in here, my parents will kill me!" As it is, my mom says I am hard on my guarding angel, so I knew we had to get out at some point. If not, I would have guessed my guarding angel to be slacking off a bit.

In the nick of time (concerning daylight), we found our way out of the dense part of the jungle and began to follow sounds of town. We were now in the savannah part of the jungle (large grass jungle growth, but not the overgrowth that you get with trees and such) at least able to see the sky. Once we hit town, we quickly picked up looks from the villagers and… of course about 10 kids followed us back to the house in our easy jog, running and laughing next to us. I played back and forth with them, slowing down and acting as if I was going to chase them… they got a big kick out of it.

Covered in scratches, scrapes, an entire layer of sweat only breeding more humidity in the area, and smiles we arrived back at the house 65 minutes later. Laughing, Marie said she wasn't sure she wanted to run with me again, but I signed her up for another run on Saturday afternoon. I think our next run we’ll bear the drawn looks and head towards town. But we did catch a beautiful sunsent on our run thru the jungle tonight.

Congo Update

Here is the latest from Congo.
http://www.medair.org/en_portal/medair_news.php?news=426&desc=suspected_plague_epidemic_in_congo_%28drc%29

Saturday in Bunia

I have been in Bunia for almost five days now. My two country director's came out to Isiro earlier in the week to check on work out there and then brought me back with them here to Bunia on Thursday. While I did not want to come (being a bit of a hermit) I am glad for the time here. I have gotten to know the team here, what they are individually doing, their projects, how I can work with and thru them, etc.

We, here at Medair, are also in the process of saying goodbye to our current Country Director and our head of the Psychosocial program--- a wonderful Dutch couple who was worked here for the past 3 years. As they prepare to leave within the next 10 days, we had two parties here at the house in Bunia for them; one with just the Medair staff and then one in the evening with other expats from other NGO's (non-governmental organizations). Two completely different parties.

The one with the Medair staff was heart-warming as they have worked together for so long. It's a small family within a family here. The national staff dressed in their best, did skits, gave speeches, sang beautiful songs about the Dutch couple and what they have meant to this Congolese Medair team.

The party in the evening was a little different; numerous Westerners from different parts of the globe, sharing, eating, drinking, and dancing. Relief/ aid workers... they (or I guess I should say "we") have a look about us. I cannot even describe it, but usually when we get together you can guarantee that a good time will be had. I have never NOT enjoyed myself in these types of situations, however last night was particularly fun. Possibly the company, possibly the atmosphere, possibly the diversity of the situation, or maybe it was the dancing--- but it is nice to see everyone letdown and enjoy themselves as well. We never see this in Isiro--- there are only two of us and we make up the soul NGO there in town.

Nonetheless, it was great to meet other people from the field, to hear what they are doing, where they are from, what they do at home, to work on my french (yes, most conversations were in french and by the end of the night my head was pounding), just to make those connections. People never seem to know where Kansas is OR they relate it with "Dorothy" OR they get it confused with Texas. Even other Americans out in the field are taken back by meeting a Kansan out here. I usually just smile and try to clear up all of those misconceptions about Kansans... we are quite interesting people, if I do say so myself.

I am headed back to Isiro tomorrow.