On January 30 I finished moving the rest of my things out of my apartment and briefly held back tears as my friend Ifte drove me towards the trains station where I was to meet my friend/colleague/travel-buddy-extraordinaire Ian. Over the next 24 hours we would travel from Ottawa to Bukavu, buying stroopwaffels in Schipol, staying across the road from the main stadium in Kigali and being met by Ian's partner organization in Kamembe who then helped us to cross the border into Bukavu. Because they're participating in my research I'm going to call this organization JH and not name any names in order to maintain anonymity, I'll be doing this a lot in my blog posts about my trip here.
It feels like the Rwandan-Congolese border is a great place to start the tale of my time in Bukavu. As you may know one of the reasons that the University of Ottawa was reluctant to allow me to go on my field work to the Congo was because of the boarder crossing. However, being met at the border by staff members from JH ensured that the border crossing almost went very smoothly (I'd note that the riskiest part was probably driving across the super rickety bridge).
The reason I say that the crossing almost went very smoothly is because when we arrived at the Rwandan side of the border Ian and I got out of the taxi were in and approached the border agent window. While we were doing this the JH staff moved all of our things from the taxi into the organization's vehicle. We then crossed the border and had our visas validated by the Congolese authorities which took about 15 minutes. It was at this point that I realized that my backpack with my laptop and all of my research materials was missing. I tried pretty hard to conceal my panic as I asked in French whether my bag was in the trunk. It was not. It was lost. My heart sank. At that moment the administrator for the organization sprang into action calling the Rwandan cab company where he knew many of the drivers well. Within 15 minutes my backpack and all of its contents had been retrieved.
I stuck pretty closely to Ian this first week attending meetings, going on a field visit to Bideka and meeting the provincial minister for gender, health and social services. I also had meetings with other potential participants in my research which showed the great diversity of local organizations here which was really interesting. I also met my room mate and attended some events with other expats. I seem to have hit it off with some of the people here although I'm still waiting for a follow up coffee invitation ;).
I would really like to write more about Bideka but to some extent I'm still processing what I saw and heard there and I think it's probably a long enough story to be it's own post so keep an eye out for it in the near future.
Ian left on Friday morning which was an unpleasant shock to the system. Suddenly I was very alone in Bukavu which seemed and still seems a little bit overwhelming on top of the other things that are also overwhelming about fieldwork like building relationships, culture shock and jet lag. His departure has hit me pretty hard.
Anyway I thought I'd give a general overview of the environs here for your reference as a quick way to wrap this up.
Climate: Warm during the day time and cool at night, so overall very pleasant. It is currently rainy season but so far there has only been one significant rainfall and threatening skies.
Food: Extremely inexpensive but there is definitely a lack of variety, I'll have to make due with no lettuce in my salads for the next little while.
Culture: Friendly and generally pretty respectful. So far I have experienced very little street harassment.
Language: French! Boy is my language proficiency getting a ork out.
Security: Not obviously dangerous but there is sort of a constant low level of concern. So far this has really been the hardest part of my trip to navigate. Most of the other expats here are working with international NGOs which gives them access to cars, drivers, assistance finding cellphones and ongoing security updates. This is not the case for this Ph.D. student which is leading me to feel a bit uneasy. However, I'm keeping my eye on the prize and hoping that it gets a bit easier with time.
Anyway, that's all for now. Stay tuned for posts about my research, my trip to Bideka and other crazy adventures.
With love.
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