Kinshasa, Congo

The day starts with a briefing from Alessandra Dentice, directrice of the Programme UNICEF. More about that later when we get to Mbuji Mayi. In short it seems that in the province of Kasai Oriental, the only thing going is diamond mines. And these aren’t the big jewellry diamonds but small industrial diamonds. We will hopefully see all that in the coming days.

Dirty and exploited it is difficult to even help her.

Next, we look as some UNICEF projects to help street chldren in Kinshasa. I have been to many African countries, but the Congo is in bad shape. I feel frustrated because there seems to be so many stories here, I could stay a year. Everything needs to be done. We go to the Marché de la Liberté where street kids are exploited by sellers to do work for them in return for what ever is left at the end of the day to eat… that which did not sell and is too rotten to sell the next day. We met a little 9 year old girl covered in dirt and soot. She gathered crumbs of coal dropped by clients or sellers and tries to sell that for something to eat. The UNICEF people with us wanted to take her to the center where she could get care until reunited, if possible with her family. But a women at the market was opposed to that because she needed her to work. So the women said the girl couldn’t go because her parents were near but not there at the moment. The UNICEF people knew that was probably a lie, but couldn’t take the child because of the opposition of the women and others. They will have to go back and investigate to find the truth. In the meantime, the little girl looked at us with her innocent eyes, happy with crumbs, not knowing or understanding how she is being exploited.

Healing infected wounds on street children in Kinshasa.

Out next stop is a security briefing. They go over robbery, carjacking, rape and the interdiction to take taxis, to be out between midnight and 5 :30 in the morning, to beware of areas around our hotel and not to use national airlines. Then we get a call from the Directrice saying we may not get a place on the UN plane going to Mbuji Mayi because, as non-UN staff, we don’t have any priority. She suggests taking a national airline, Kewa Bora. We talked about it and decided it wouldn’t be a good idea if the airline is on the black list and cannot fly in Europe. So we will see tomorrow morning. We leave at 5:30 and will try to get there early to get a seat on the plane !