Democratic Republic of Congo, Day 2

Today started way, way too early, with my alarm going off at 4:30 so I could get ready and check out of the room a little after 5, because at 6, an embassy car came to pick us up to take us to Ndojo airport, the domestic airport in Kinshasa. We were going to Muanda to evaluate the hospital at Kitona Base.

Our chariot awaits

Not unexpectedly (as I have spent some time in the developing world), the plane that was headed toward Muanda took off late. We thought we were leaving at 9; it was closer to 10. It was a situation pretty similar to what I experienced in Papua New Guinea: one small plane (maybe 18 seats?) that made a few stops before it got to where I wanted to get off. DRC was pretty, from the air. Because there’s so little development, everything is all green and full of rainforests, without even roads to interfere with the landscape once you got away from the cities.

The view from above

It was around noon when we landed, and then we had to go through some rigamarole with the passports (why they were checking passports on a domestic flight is beyond me) and luggage, but finally we were able to step out of the grass hut that makes up the airport and into the air conditioned rental cars (complete with drivers) to take us to the hotel. Because the entire city of Muanda is lacking any real-sized hotels, our group is split up between two hotels. I think I’m in the nicer one, but that’s not saying much.

By the time we sat down for lunch (at the hotel’s restaurant), we had already missed our scheduled meeting with the commander of Kitona Base, which was pretty much all we had scheduled for the day. So instead of doing anything meaningful, we did “familiarization activities”, which consisted of scoping out restaurant where we could eat, seeing the beach (since Muanda is on the tiny stretch of Atlantic coastline that DRC has), and traveling the road from Muanda to Kitona Base. It’s a very, very bad road (“unimproved” was how I was told to describe it), and the mission planner is definitely not excited about the idea of a MEDRETE team driving that twice a day for two weeks. More if they don’t have food available on base. It was bad enough that the car I was in got a flat, which always makes for some entertaining pictures.

Fixing the flat

So that was today. Not much meaningful happened, unfortunately. Tomorrow we’re supposed to meet with the deputy base commander (word is the base commander is in the east of the country somewhere) and then visit the hospital to see if there is anything worthwhile there. Pretty much, unless they have really cool diseases and a staff that is really interested in learning about public healthy, we’re probably going to recommend that the MEDRETE not happen. Because it’s really not worth $150,000+ of the taxpayers’ dollars to go on a mission where nobody learned anything and the local Ministry of Defense couldn’t care less.