Rachel B.

Yesterday we buried Rachel B., a local woman who was until July 2006 part of a support unit to the Ministry of Economy to manage European aid. She then left for Libreville in Gabon for a job with the Economic Community of central African States. She died lonely and far away from her friends and family from a burst bloodvessel in her brain at only 48 years old. After George Ng., whom I wrote about on 16 october 2005, she’s the second of the three local members of that unit to die prematurely, and her death presents another blow to the few competent national cadres of integrity this country has. She was much respected, as the massive turn-out for her funeral shows.

Last week was very difficult. The first week after coming back had been fine, it was fun to get into the routine. But tension built quickly after a few run-ins with the boss (one on me recruiting a local agent whom he did not want to manage european experts – not the first time he displays doubtful prejudices; one on the upcoming assessment and promotion exercise: I told him I saw room for improvement for its conduct, which had been far from perfect last year.) These would normally have been fairly trivial incidents of everyday office life, but the absence of A. and the children was getting the better of me for four or five days and didn’t do much good to my tolerance to other, work-related irritations, and I felt terrible. Part of the hardship of this post, I'll just have to live with it. I am feeling better again.

Good things happened as well though. I’ve started walking Sammy more regularly. Today I lost its leash somewhere high up on the hill, it must have fallen from my pocket. This meant that I had to allow the dog to walk free for the rest of the hike. I was initially nervous about him and harshly corrected him whenever he so much as looked at passers-by. Two office colleagues who had come along told me to take it easy and just let the dog do its thing, and they were right. Sammy actually listens quite well. It was a nice walk. Furthermore, yesterday was a nice and lazy day: spent all day reading Jan Siebelink’s ‘Engelen van het duister’, the sequel to ‘Knielen op een bed violen’, and equally a masterpiece on moral decay and the vagaries of human nature. Dutch literature really has a lot to offer. In the evening a colleague had arranged for dinner in the capital’s only Chinese restaurant, and we had a lovely, light-hearted evening with nice food and some good laughs among colleagues who get along well. A group of French soldiers accompanied by guitar were singing melancholic Breton and other songs, and did so quite beautifully.

Amour, the nanny who was with us for over two years, went to work with a colleague of mine after A. and the children left in June. She was fired for theft, caught red-handed, within two months. She was accused of theft very early on during our stay here, when A.'s necklace was stolen. All fingers pointed at her, but as we could not be sure it had been her (outside people had been in our house as well), we didn’t want to fire her. Maybe we should have: her reaction after having been caught by my colleague’s wife eerily resembled her behaviour two years ago with us.

I’ve started working with people of the Ministry of Rural development on a plan to pay two years of arrears (2001-2003; the cotton firms owing the money went bust) to small coton producers out of our budgetary aid. It’s a problem that I first learnt about two years ago. I immediately suggested we include it in our budgetary aid, and suffered some ridicule over it, as it had never been done before. Usually we just pay the money into the Treasury after certain conditionalities have been met (or waived…), and the government is then free to spend it, which is usually on salary arrears for its improductive state officials. These cotton producers have actually worked hard for their money and truly produced something. Moreoever the money (4 million euros) will go to the provinces for once instead of to the capital. It will not save the country, but will give some encouragement to almost 100.000 rural families in extremely poor conditions. I am happy and, silently, a little proud that I managed to push the operation through in spite of initial scepticism. It'll be a hell of a job though to actually get the money to those families, in a country riddled with corruption and highway banditry.

Sammy is getting an education

Before I left for Lith in November I was getting desperate about Sammy our dog. It seemed it was uncontrollably enthusiastic, jumping up against people (thus ruining three pairs of pants of mine), and territorial in the extreme, barking and gnarling at anybody passing our entrance. Taking the dog for a walk was impossible, as it would resist going any further than 50 meters from home.
But things have changed. Sammy is coming of age, and I managed to take him on a beautiful two-hour walk. He can't be trusted yet with passers-by, so i had to keep him on the leash much of the time. Once we were on the hill behind our home I let him off the leash for an hour or so. Here's a few pictures:

Furthermore, a view fro; the hillside over the river. On the other side is the Democratic republic of Congo.
Then one of the major achievements of Chinese development cooperation in this country is ....... a soccer stadium (the eyesore in the middle of the picture). Brand new, cost about 15 million USD, no money to pay for maintenance, no soccer league to speak of. An example of supply-driven assistance if ever there was one. Very few Africans were involved in its building, plus the project made cement prices rise sky-high in the country. But hey, no strings attached, which president would look such a gift horse in the mouth?

G.

First things first: here's a long overdue photo of our youngest, G. It was taken with my new toy gadget, a Nokia N73.

I add another with the three eldest taken in November. The weather was amazingly, frighteningly warm for the time of year.

My first week back on the job was not bad. I had feared that having been away for 9 weeks I would be completely out of the loop, but I feel mentally refreshed and managed to get a grip back on the major files quickly. Wrote several sour letters for the boss to our pain-in-the-butt Minister, which i enjoyed as always. Managed also to do some fairly clear thinking on a few other files. Put a few dots on i's as regards my being better informed of things, which included some friendly but straight talking to the boss, which he accepted.

Obviously, the family being split up we are now counting the months towards the end of our posting here (Summer 2008), even though A. and the children will normally come back in Summer to do our last year together. Soon we will hear more about available posts for 2008-2012. Given A.'s Hindu background, our determination to get out of the french school system and back into the Anglo-Saxon tradition, India tops our list, but we will see.

It's actually good to be back, without wanting to be euphoric about it. This is a very good time of the year: nice dry heat (up to 40 degrees Celsius) with cool nights. Apart from setting up a new study scheme for my next CeFiMS module I haven't really started studying yet; took this first week to concentrate on work and getting in touch with developments in the country again - more on those and on how the family is faring in my next postings. I have also started reading again, Peter Hoeg's 'Smilla's Sense of Snow', which is particularly good reading in the central African heat!

On second thoughts..

Forget about the roots stuff I wrote. I tried in Dutch for some time, and strangely enough it was not nearly as much fun as I thought. Of course this led to procrastination, preventing me from writing neither in Dutch nor in English.

Then I left in the beginning of November to spend 9 precious weeks with A. and the children (now four!), during which time I was not able to do anything even mildly intellectual, while quickly regaining my skills in changing diapers, cooking and cleaning and trying to give my three eldest something of an education.... And here we are, back in the bush, after a four month gap.

I feel quite flattered by the fact that several friends have inquired as to why I had stopped writing and suggested I should take it up again. I feel that after four months I have lots of things to tell, and I'll try to be writing more or less regularly again.