Tag: Dungu

Dungu, Province Orientale, DR Congo

~ The PhotoDiarist ~ 1 Comment

After the first two weeks spent in Faradje, the next month of my recent contract in the Democratic Republic of Congo was spent based out of Dungu. The iconic landmark of the town is Dungu Castle:

Dungu Castle

Among expat aid workers, the weekly MSF “soirée pizza” is an important event, during which many pizzas are created, cooked, and consumed. The brick pizza oven has to be heated for some time before the first pizza can be put in to cook:

MSF Dungu pizza oven

Guests take turns preparing pizzas of all imaginable varieties. Once each pizza is ready to be eaten, someone cuts it into pieces and within seconds a dozen or more hands thrust forward, trying to grab a magical slice. A cooked pizza rarely lasts more than one minute on the cutting board.

Eating pizza

One night, a bunch of us were invited to the house of Invisible Children, where we had a “soirée québécoise” complete with poutine, pineapple covered in maple syrup, and a campfire to roast marshmallows! While I may have issues with the organisation, I can definitely vouch for the warm welcome and cooking abilities of their staff in Dungu.

Marshmallows over the campfire with Invisible Children in Dungu, DR Congo

Of course, it’s not all fun and games… I was in the DR Congo for emergency measles vaccinations after all! In Dungu, we often had crowds of children waiting for their turn at vaccination sites:

Rachel at a vaccination site in Dungu, DR Congo

These are the sharps boxes we use to collect the needles used in the vaccination campaign. They were taped up and then burned in an incinerator.

Sharps boxes ready for burning in Dungu, DR Congo

After the vaccination campaign ended, we on the emergency team had to load up all the stuff we’d brought with us and send it to Bunia. Among many, many other things, we had to wash and dry the big blue cold boxes we’d used to keep the vaccines cold:

Drying out the RCW25 cold boxes after washing

The first truck that the transport company brought us wasn’t very big. We loaded this MF314 freezer first, then a bunch of other stuff, and eventually the transporter agreed that the truck was too small.

Loading an MF314 freezer onto a truck in Dungu, DR Congo

The next morning, February 24th, he brought a much bigger truck. I then organised the loading of the bigger truck, and after a few hours the tarps were on and the truck was ready to head to Bunia:

Tying down the tarps on a truck in Dungu, DR Congo

To make Alan jealous, I also got to drive the truck:

Driving the truck to make Alan jealous

Later that afternoon, just before most of us boarded a plane for Bunia, we took a team photo at Dungu Wando Airstrip:

Emergency measles vaccination team photo, Dungu Wando Airstrip, DR Congo

I got to sit up front and spend the entire time chatting with Dave, our pilot, through the headsets we both wore. I asked him tonnes of questions about the plane, about the instruments and gauges on the dash, about his flying experience and personal life, and a bunch of other topics. It was really neat!

Dave, our friendly and skilled pilot from Dungu to Bunia, DR Congo
First class on a Cessna 208 Caravan I

The scenery was pretty cool, especially as we got closer to Bunia, flying over mountains that reminded me of the flights I took between Goma and Beni in 2010.

Mountains just outside Bunia, DR Congo

The outskirts of Bunia, from the air:

River in the outskirts of Bunia, DR Congo

Coming in for landing at Bunia Murongo National Airport:

Landing at Bunia Murongo National Airport, DR Congo

Once we landed, we had to clear customs (even though we didn’t leave the country, we had to have our documents checked and stamped each time we arrived in a town). I was at the back of the line with a Danish guy who speaks Swedish too, so we spent about twenty minutes chatting in Swedish as the line moved very slowly along. All in all, a great day!

Disclaimer: The postings and views expressed on this site are mine alone, and do not represent the position or values of Médecins Sans Frontières.

Duru, Province Orientale, DR Congo

~ The PhotoDiarist ~ 2 Comments

After we finished our vaccination program in the area around Ndedu, we headed north of Dungu to a town called Duru. We then planned and organised to vaccinate all the villages from Duru south back to Dungu in a single day. The trip was 93km each way but it took us less than 3 hours to get to Duru, which means it’s an amazing road by Congolese standards!

The road from Dungu to Duru, DR Congo

The reason the road is so good is that the Indonesian military is on the ground as part of the United Nations (MONUSCO) mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They’re amazingly efficient at building and improving roads, and the quality of their work is really impressive.

Indonesian military bulldozer preparing the Dungu-Duru road

I didn’t take too many photos on this day trip. This is the backside of the large Catholic church in the town of Duru:

Catholic church, Duru, DR Congo

This kid was staring at me when we tried to find the catechist to discuss placing a vaccination site beside the church, so I asked if I could take his photo:

Child carrying bricks, Duru, DR Congo

Within seconds his friends or siblings showed up with their bricks, too, wanting their pictures taken. It’s always fun showing little children photos on a digital camera screen afterwards; they get a real kick out of it.

Children carrying bricks, Duru, DR Congo

On the way back to Dungu one of the places we stopped was this monument to three FARDC soldiers killed by Joseph Kony’s LRA a couple years back:

Monument to three FARDC soldiers killed by the LRA
Monument to three FARDC soldiers killed by the LRA

Anyone looking for a map of the Dungu-Duru road with village names, distances, and motorcycle driving times, just contact me and I’ll send it all your way.

Disclaimer: The postings and views expressed on this site are mine alone, and do not represent the position or values of Médecins Sans Frontières.

Ndedu, Province Orientale, DR Congo

~ The PhotoDiarist ~ 1 Comment

In mid-February, a few of us went south from Dungu to Ndedu by motorcycle to plan, prepare, and run three days of measles vaccinations. In the planning phase our job was to try and figure out which vaccination teams would go to which villages at which times, how long they’d stay in each place, and how long it would take to get to the next one. This was all decided with the advice and help of the local chief in each location, as well as other important people like school principals, health centre staff, church pastors, and parents.

At the same time, I made simple maps using my GPS device, as the Google Earth and United Nations maps (which are almost identical) lack all the place names and include several locality names which they’ve mapped as villages. My maps and distance charts are free if you contact me.

Map of the Dungu - Ndedu area, DR Congo

The “roads” through the jungle in this area range from a fairly smooth and wide path in some places to very, very, very bumpy and overgrown in others. Suffice it to say that, at the end of the fourth full day bouncing up and down on the back of a motorcycle in the jungle, I was a bit tired. Here are two of my motorcycle drivers crossing a slippery log bridge:

Motorcycles crossing a log bridge in the jungle outside Ndedu

Map of our second day based out of Ndedu:

Map of the Dungu - Ndedu area, including Kpekpere area, DR Congo

On the second day we visited villages in the area around Kpekpere, and went as far as Bawaku. One motorcycle also got a flat tire, which was soon repaired.

Inflating a flat motorcycle tire outside Ndedu, DR Congo

On the way back from Bawaku to Kpekpere we got caught by heavy rains and had to hide in the nearest large hut we could find. We were there about an hour, of which I spent perhaps 20 minutes sleeping.

Waiting out the rain on the Kpekpere - Bawaku road

Map of our third day based out of Ndedu:

Map of the Ndedu - Libombi road, DR Congo

On the third day we went all the way to Libombi, a three and a half hour drive, meaning seven hours of motorcycle movement that day, plus all the time we had to spend in each place along the way! This was by far the longest and hardest day, but it was still really fun.

On the fourth day I supervised three vaccination teams. Children waiting to be vaccinated in Li-Lungbu:

Children waiting to be vaccinated in Li-Lungbu, DR Congo

Inside a vaccination site in Kpekpere:

Inside a vaccination site in Kpekpere, DR Congo

Children waiting to be vaccinated in Kpekpere:

Children waiting to be vaccinated in Kpekpere, DR Congo

Motorcycling through the jungle south of Dungu:

Motorcycling through the jungle south of Dungu, DR Congo

Soon, we were back in Dungu for a much-needed day off work, followed by similar activities in the other direction: north! More on that later…

Disclaimer: The postings and views expressed on this site are mine alone, and do not represent the position or values of Médecins Sans Frontières.

Le Parc National de la Garamba, Province Orientale, République Démocratique du Congo

~ The PhotoDiarist ~ 1 Comment

Once we finished our measles vaccination campaign in Faradje, we were asked to fly west to Dungu to do the same. If you draw a line from Faradje to Dungu on the map (and there is indeed a road joining the two, though our security rules prevent us from driving along it), what you see above that line is Garamba National Park, once home to an incredible number and variety of wild animals. Unfortunately, it has for several years now been frequented by Joseph Kony’s famed Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) which, some may recall, was active in Northern Uganda for many years, but eventually began to frequent areas of South Sudan, then DR Congo and Central African Republic once a number of militaries started putting more energy into pursuing them. The LRA not only terrorised and thereby displaced local populations all across the area, but they also seem to be part of the reason for a decrease in the number of wild animals in the park. Nevertheless, during the half hour flight from Faradje to Dungu in a Cessna 208 Caravan I, during which I was lucky enough to get the co-pilot seat again, we managed to see quite a few animals. Our pilot, John, could see the animals from far away, and banked the plane hard several times to get us closer for a better look.

John, pilot extraordinaire, banking left to see some elephants

I only had a wide-angle lens with me, so I took very few photos and focused on watching the animals with my own eyes, but I’ll post a couple pics anyways. In this photo, there are at least seven elephants, two of which have white birds on their backs. Can you see them all?

Seven elephants in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo

If not, here are zoomed views of two different parts of the photo:

Three elephants in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo
Four elephants in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo

In total, I saw about twenty elephants during the flight. We also saw well over 200 hippos by my estimate, as we flew over at least ten groups of hippos lounging along the banks of the Dungu River, which runs through Garamba National Park, and each group had at least twenty individuals. For instance, I count at least 38 hippopotamuses in this photo:

At least thirty-eight hippos in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo

I didn’t get to fly the plane, but being in the co-pilot seat has its advantages regardless, mostly the chance to wear a headset and spend the entire flight chatting with the pilot and listening in on radio conversations between pilots and airport control towers.

Chris the co-pilot

As we flew over the town of Dungu to prepare for our final approach to Dungu Wando Airstrip, we got a clear view of the famed Dungu Castle. The story told about the castle’s construction is that the Belgian administrator at the time chose to build a single bridge across the river instead of two, using the bricks instead to build this medieval-style castle:

Dungu Castle from above