based in Goma, where they have a large training facility.
One of her team, Natalie Zielinski, is sitting in the backseat. She doesn’t get carsick. She’s a small, bubbly Texan with brown, frizzy hair in a bob that never quite works. Sophie likes her optimism, but sometimes finds her irritating.
Nicolas, their Congolese driver, is a slim, self-effacing young man, very glad to have such a cushy job driving for an NGO, it’s a lot easier and safer than the backbreaking life of the peasants in the bush. He is quiet and calm with the soft manner of a lot of Congolese men. He drives smoothly but even that can’t iron out the constant bumping from side to side on the dirt road and those horrible lurching turns.
They started so early because they need to get a load of vaccines to a remote clinic before they go off in the heat. Several thousand dollars worth of polio, hepatitis, measles and other vaccines are packed into coolboxes in the back of the jeep. Once they get them to the clinic at Tshabura they can go into the solar-powered fridge and will be fine for the big vaccination day that they have set up later that week. The clinic is at the head of the Bilati valley and local field workers have spread the word around the farms and villages there, as well as advertising it on Radio Okapi. They are expecting two hundred children to be brought in to be inoculated.
The other reason they started at six is that Tshabura is on the edge of the area under the nominal control of the UN forces. The security situation in Kivu is always volatile; they listen to the radio every morning for the UN security update, like a weather forecast. At the moment their route is Condition Bravo – some caution is warranted, no immediate threat but follow normal security procedures. Condition Echo means evacuate urgently to save your life but it doesn’t happen often. Lawlessness is just part of everyday life in Kivu and Sophie has become used to the daily list of rapes, muggings and burglaries, as well as keeping track of which roads are closed due to militia activity.
After a prolonged security assessment and unsuccessful wrangling with the UN to do the delivery by helicopter, Sophie got fed up with waiting and decided that they could race there in the daytime, get to the clinic, stay overnight in their compound and then race back the next day. White NGO workers are generally safe in Kivu, apart from the usual hassling for bribes from the police and army, but she doesn’t want to be out on the roads after dark when armed groups roam at will.
All these factors are weighing on her mind and she’s also irate because they are behind schedule. They had a puncture on a track that had been washed out by heavy rain and then lost an hour getting over the river at Pinga where a truck had got a wheel stuck in a hole in the old metal bridge.
The car at last comes to the top of the hill and Nicolas pulls up so Natalie can look around the surrounding area and check the map. She scans either side of the jeep and all she can see are lines of green hills in bright sunshine receding into the distance. It is completely quiet but for the noise of a breeze buffeting the car.
‘Daniel Boone would get lost out here,’ she mutters, as she looks back and forth between the map and the view. ‘One hill begins to look much the same as another.’ The map has proved inaccurate already that day and there are no signposts anywhere.
‘Look, can we just get on with it, please,’ Sophie snaps.
‘OK, OK,’ Natalie says cheerfully. ‘We’re on the right route.’
Chapter Three
Alex is struggling to get a grip on the scale of the project that Fang has just outlined.
He stops being relaxed and sits forward, the fingers of one hand pressed to his temple.
‘Hang on; the Congolese government is going to lease you Kivu Province?’
Fang nods confidently. ‘Yes, just like the British government leased Hong Kong from China for ninety-nine years.’
‘OK. How many people live there?’
‘Well, that is a good question actually. No one really knows because surveys are from before the war, but we think about six million.’
‘Six million people?’ Alex looks incredulous but Fang looks back at him unfazed.
‘Yes.’
Alex shakes his head. ‘Why is the government going to do that?’
‘Well, Kivu is actually an embarrassment to the government in Kinshasa. The President promised to bring peace to the country when he got elected but he has failed to end the fighting, or deliver on any of his other Cinq Chantiers policies.
‘The government has no control there. I mean, look at the distances: Congo is the size of western Europe and trying to run Kivu from Kinshasa is like trying to run Turkey from London. Plus there are no road or rail links between the two areas.
‘The government had to get the Rwandan army in to try and defeat the FDLR but that failed. Now they throw their hands up and say it is a Rwandan problem and the Rwandans do the same back to them. No one takes responsibility for it so the whole problem just festers on and will never get solved. I mean, the whole of Congo is just …’ Fang waves his arms around trying to communicate the depth of the exasperation he feels about the country ‘…completely dysfunctional, the country makes no sense. The only reason it exists is as the area of land that Stanley was able to stake out.’
He begins ticking points off on his fingers: ‘The country makes absolutely no sense on a geographic, economic, linguistic or ethnic level. There are over two hundred different ethnic groups in it and the Belgians practised divide and rule policies that exacerbated the differences between them. The only things they have in common are music, Primus beer and suffering.’
Alex is nodding in agreement with this. He has had some dealings with the place and is aware of its legendary chaos.
‘OK, they don’t control Kivu so they might as well get some money off you for it, right?’
Fang clearly doesn’t want to be drawn into detail on money but nods. ‘Yes, we are talking very significant sums here. China is already the largest investor in the Democratic Republic of Congo with a nine billion dollar deal and we have been able to leverage this to give us more influence.’
Alex nods; he can well imagine what ‘influence’ billions of dollars of hard cash could get you amongst Kinshasa’s famously rapacious elites.
Fang continues to justify the project. ‘Actually the deal is not that unusual if you look around at the land purchases that are going on at the moment. UAE has bought six thousand square miles of southern Sudan, South Africa has bought a huge area of Republic of Congo, Daiwoo Logistics tried to buy half the agricultural land in Madagascar …’
‘Is that the one where the government was overthrown because of it?’
Fang nods, unfazed by Alex’s implied scepticism about his own project. ‘Yes, but that was different. No one in the rest of Congo cares about what happens in Kivu; when you go to Kinshasa there is nothing on the TV or in the papers about it.’
‘Hmm.’ Alex is still not reassured – the more he begins to get to grips with the project the more he can see problems with it.
Fang continues, ‘So your role would be to …’
Alex holds up a hand to stop the tide of enthusiasm. ‘Hang on, who said anything about me actually being involved? This is a huge
