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 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.

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:

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:

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.

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:

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.