All of the Things I Haven't Told You About South Kivu

A lot of people have asked me about my trip since I came home two months ago and I'm not always sure what to tell them, especially when they ask in a tone that makes it sound more like a vacation than a research trip to a Fragile and Conflict Affected State. I often answer that my trip was interesting but that the lives of people who live in South Kivu are very difficult. I guess the truth is I don't really know what to say.

For those of you who want to get past this very general explanation let me break it down  for you.

My Research Went Very Well

In total I completed 55 interviews and 35,000 words of field notes during my time in Bukavu. My interviews were conducted with organizational leaders, staff and beneficiaries of the three peacebuilding organizations that I worked with and the field notes reflected what I observed at each of those organizations. 

The highlights of my interviews were really learning about individual contributions to peacebuilding and what people were doing formally and informally to foster peace. Transcribing one of my interviews I was recalled that one of my interviewees share that before one of the organizations arrived in her community that women thought that rape occurred as a result of a curse and that women would go to witch doctors after being assaulted in order to be cured, all the while being left with debilitating sexually transmitted infections and fistulas. The organization came into their community and stressed rapid response to rape and taught both women and men about women's rights (addressing both the cause and the outcome of the problem).

I'd like to say that the highlight of observation was getting to visit the prison, or the Panzi Hospital or participating in a radio show for human rights. However, the actual highlight of my observation was much more simple. About a month into my research I had what I called an ethnographic breakthrough, suddenly the people I was working with started to open up in a major way telling me about everything from office politics, to their worries about their families and the war. This was really meaningful to me both on a research level and a personal level. 

Expat Life in Bukavu is very Interesting

The expat community in Bukavu was pretty different from the expat communities in South Africa and Uganda. Overall it was very small and almost everyone got together every Wednesday and Friday night at a bar called Wendy's which is literally a shack at the side of the road in the wealthy part of town. There weren't very many things to do other than party so I often found myself kayaking or playing ultimate frisbee, which was nice but lost it's novelty after a while.

Near the end of my time in Bukavu I realized there wasn't a lot of balance for the expats there. Many of the more seasoned humanitarian workers had been to more intense places and were quick to assure that this was not in fact a war zone, much to the surprise of most of my research participants. Overall I felt intense pressure to prove that I was tough enough to succeed there. However I coped by concluding that everyone in Bukavu was an alcoholic, sexaholic, workaholic or some combination of the three. 

What It's Like Living Under a Lack of State Authority

Basically if something goes wrong in Bukavu you have to resolve the problem yourself, often with some help from your friends, and if you can't you're in big trouble. Because the Congolese government doesn't pay it's police or army adequately they often extort money from the population causing most people to see them as a scourge rather than as a source of protection. This manifested itself one day when my taxi driver drove through a police stop one days, resulting in the police officer opening the back door but my driver just kept going saying "stupid police officer, he knows there's nothing wrong with my car. He just wants my money". 

The lack of governance also leads to issues such as the disrepair of roads, the lack of access to adequate medical care and unpredictable price fluctuations which kept life interesting.  

The Difficult Lives of My Research Participants

Every single one of my participants showed signs of the deep rooted trauma which arises from living through twenty years of violent conflict and extreme poverty.

The executive director at one of the organizations I worked with was assassinated in 2006, and approximately half of the current staff worked there at the time including the current executive director. Many of the staff at this organization fear the possibility of arrest and don't ever go out after dark for fear of their safety.

At two of the organizations I worked at, most or all of the staff were not being paid for extended periods because of a diversion of foreign funds from the Congo to other conflict affected states and an overall cooling of the aid market. These people continued coming to work partly out of their commitments to peace and justice and also because of the absence of better jobs that would help them keep food on the table for their families.

All of the staff at all three of the organizations had been traumatized by the war, reporting displacement and the loss of family members and friends. On top of their own trauma they were working to support beneficiaries who were often more traumatized than they were themselves, bearing witness to extreme acts of violence and hatred faced by many of the residents in la plaine de la Ruzizi. I'll never forget the story of one participant who voluntarily drove out to photograph a massacre because he thought that people should know what happened, an action that put him at risk of being arbitrarily arrested or worse. Only one of the three organizations offered psycho-social support to their employees to help them cope with these conditions and the other two simply lacked the resources.

The beneficiaries and participants of the organizations I worked with had it even worse. They mostly lived in areas outside of the range of protection of the UN and humanitarian organizations and lived in areas affected by armed violence and banditry. Many of them spoke to the need to engage youth to prevent them from joining armed groups. Some had been the direct victims of attacks and others had lost immediate family members. In addition to being the victims of war they lived in areas where no health care, clean drinking water, food security or security sector existed. 

I started to experience compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma during this trip and I began to resent the fact that every person who talked to me shared their trauma, even though it was part of my research. This made me feel like a bad researcher and a bad person. Fortunately I was able to recover enough after a holiday to continue with my work. However, the thought that living a life of poverty and violence in this world is seriously based on the chance of where you were born remains too much for me the bare. It's difficult to know how to help when the problem is so pervasive and systemic. 

The Contributions Made by My Research Participants to Peacebuilding

Please, don't for a moment think that the people who I worked with were passive victims of conflict, unable to act and that they need you to ride in on your gold stallion to save them. They aren't and they don't. The truth is, the people who I met are doing incredible work and understand the conflicts in their communities with much more depth than an outsider ever could hope to, which also means that they hold they best chance of resolving those problems, with a little bit of help from their friends. 

Some of the amazing programming I saw included radio shows on human rights, human rights education, free conflict resolution services, community based conflict analysis groups, children's peace clubs, literacy clubs that taught women public speaking skills and programs that helped women access access legal and medical assistance after they experienced sexual assaults. 

While many of the employees of the organizations I worked with showed commitment to peace, no more so than the women working at these organizations who made up less than 25% of the overall staff. All of the women I spoke with were running community or church based organizations to support peace, justice and economic development in addition to their paid work and caring for their families. In a country where women aren't traditionally allowed to speak in front of public audiences and couldn't travel without their husbands' permission, this kind of work takes incredible courage. 

The Difficult Parts of My Life in Bukavu and South Kivu 

Doing my research was a rich, rewarding experience. Unfortunately, my daily life in Bukavu was a strain. I had some third world problems including frequent power and water outages, a lack of food variety and poor road transport. I had some expat problems like homesickness, culture shock and coffee withdrawal. 

I also had some big problems. The second biggest problem was when halfway through my trip I developed a cough, which a western doctor listened to and said he thought it was antibiotic resistant or viral and that I should wait for it to go away. It didn't go away in the promised two weeks, in fact it lasted two months by the time I finally went to the doctor, worried that I might have TB. In the end it was antibiotic resistant bronchitis which I am just finally getting over. 

The biggest problem was my overall security. Local people have their personal networks of information and support which help to keep them safe. Most expats have security briefings, drivers, and extensive human and financial resources which help to keep them safe but I was all on my own. All on my own when I witnessed a woman being attacked on the side of the road. All on my own when a security guard from a hotel tried to force himself on me one night. All on my own when one of the organization's I worked with left me in a town on the side of the highway with no cell phone reception or vehicle and then was told it wasn't safe for me to be there. Even all on my own while I lay away at night wondering what would happened if the police arrived in the middle of the night and demanded that I hand over my research or worse arrested me.

It's true that it all worked out, but being solely responsible for your security in a conflict zone is tough on you both mentally and physically. I came back to Canada pretty exhausted. 

What's Next?

As you might know this was only the first of two of my research trips. Although I came home with enough data to finish my Ph.D. my supervisors are encouraging me to complete a second field visit to the Congo or elsewhere. Intellectually and emotionally I'm still very attached to the idea of returning but I'm now much more acutely aware of the challenges in doing so. Goma was always the more risky location and the economic, security and political situation are all deteriorating. 

Careful self reflection have led me to the conclusion that I can probably go back to the DRC with some adjustments to my security strategy and a bit more cash in hand. This is of course contingent on the situation not falling apart as a result of the elections currently scheduled in November. The office of risk management, my supervisors and I will all be watching the news carefully in the coming months to decide whether or not a second trip is viable. I hope it is, for my own sake as well as for the sake of the Congolese people. They have shed enough tears and blood for many lifetimes. 

In the mean time I'm working both academically and professionally to advance my thesis and make some money. I am also coping/working through the mild vicarious trauma and traumatic stress I acquired during my trip. These things are more or less going fine. 

Ending at the Beginning 

There's a story I like to tell people about my trip. When I arrived in Kamembe (Rwanda) my colleague and I were picked up by his Congolese counterpart in a Taxi which drove us to the Congolese border. Once there, we went through immigration while the staff of the organization offloaded our luggage into their organization's vehicle. We got into the truck, crossed the rickety bridge into Bukavu and while we were having our passports validated it suddenly struck me that I didn't see my backpack containing my laptop and research materials in the truck. After our visas were validated, we returned to the truck and I inquired about my backpack discovering that it was not in fact in the truck. Trying to moderate my panic I explained the problem. To my amazement the man who had helped us through the visa process using his connections called the Rwandan taxi company, located my backpack and it was returned to me within less than fifteen minutes. 

The moral of the story is that although my trip was scary at times, that it all worked out in the end.

In peace.