Mundele!

Mbote! It's been a busy week.  Mysteries have been solved- Delphin's son is indeed named Stan and the servant/relative is Belange, Régine's half-sister (both her father and Delphin's had three wives!!) who lives with them in exchange for cooking and cleaning.  I also found out that Delphin paid Régine's parents two goats, ten chickens, a suit and dress, cases of beer, and several other things to be able to marry her. Yeah. Also, there are a lot of power outages here, so that's been fun.  Sunday we went to church, which Delphin said would be at least three hours. That's a lot of church. Well, I actually had fun! It mostly consisted of booty dancing (seriously), singing, clapping, and yelling in Lingala.  I was introduced to the congregation at the end, and many people came up to me individually afterward to say hi.  There were a ton of community meetings after, so I mostly just hung out and talked to people in the courtyard.  I was introduced to Elmer, a man from Fresno who runs an orphanage here and works with gangs, Patience, a nurse at the clinic, and a ton of other people whose names I don't remember.  One of these was a now healthy girl who had almost died of malnutrition.  The adults are all mama [name] or papa [name]; I've been introduced as mama Brittany a few times and it makes me feel really old. Anyway, on Monday I went to the clinic for the first time. Everyone has SUVs or vans here, and on the way I understood why.  The roads on the way are hilly and uneven and made of dirt and trash. It had rained in the evening, and at one point we had to cross a depression in the road that had literally become a small pond. We parked the car at a former patient's house at the edge of the "good neighborhood", and Delphin said we were going to cross a "big bridge".  We climbed over a low wall and walked down a dirt alleyway, then came across said bridge (also, that stream appears to be the water source for the neighborhood):

 Also, there was a tiny cat hanging out by the clinic:

 The clinic itself:

 The neighborhood:

 The lab:

 The cat stalking a chicken (on the other side of the wire thing):

 Pierre sitting by the reception:

Bon Berger is in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Kinshasa.  Delphin and Pierre started it after med school in a tiny, one-room house with only one bed.  Since then, they've moved twice and expanded, now occupying a fairly large (for the area) two-story building. Patients are still two to a bed though, and demand keeps increasing.  There is no help at all for the cost of supplies, and no government programs for even basic needs like water and trash removal. After treating patients for a while, they decided to try to tackle the larger problems facing the community, which are substantial. They, along with the clinic staff and many community leaders and volunteers, have started a water and hygiene program, a nutrition program, classes like sewing and career skills for the young men and women to help discourage prostitution and drug use, a literacy program, a microfinance program, and they plan on building latrines soon.  On Monday I met with the community leaders and volunteers after my mini tour of the hospital, and Tuesday I started doing house visits with water and hygiene teams.  The teams consist of a man and a woman, both well respected in the community, who go to people's houses and explain basic hygiene and prevention measures. They discuss mosquito nets to prevent malaria and covering latrines and food to protect both from flies, then do a hand washing demonstration using a bucket with a spigot (ubiquitous in the nicer areas of Kinshasa) to prevent against typhoid and diarrhea in general.  They also have a simple and free method of purifying water: put the water in a clear bottle, shake it up well, and let it sit in the sun for six hours.  These are all very simple, low cost or free things people can do to prevent disease.  And let me tell you, they are desperately needed. I’ve been repeatedly shocked at the standard of living. The streets are full of trash and worse, as some families don’t have latrines and just use the street, and of course the kids run around without shoes.  They pick things up off the ground and stick them in their mouths, are covered in dirt and flies and who knows what else, and have snot constantly running from their noses.  There are flies EVERYWHERE.  I saw some of the latrines yesterday, which were for the most part just holes in the ground covered in flies: 

 Me in front of a latrine:

A bunch of people who listened to a demonstration and I:

Wednesday was the nutrition program, where mothers come with their children to listen to a cooking demonstration. After, the children are weighed, and their height and their bicep circumference are taken.  Every child was malnourished.  Every single one.  While watching the demonstration, I thought that they didn’t look too obviously underweight or anything.  Then I found out how old they were. One fourteen month old girl weighed the same as a six month old (who was also malnourished).  If the children look younger than they are, the mothers look much older.  I was pretty sure a few were nearing sixty until they started breastfeeding an infant.  Apparently the life expectancy there is around 45.  I believe it.  Other than the deceptively old-looking mothers, I haven’t seen any actual old people in the neighborhood so far.  I'll have to post those pictures next time, as the power's gone out several times this morning.

The microfinance "office":

On a lighter note, especially in Bon Berger’s neighborhood, everywhere I go I’m greeted with “Mundele! mundele!”  That’s the word for a white person in Lingala.  All of the little kids yell and run after me and try to touch me.  When we do the home visits, a huge crowd of neighborhood kids gathers around me.  Most are excited, but some just look confused, and the littlest ones are sometimes afraid of me.  Delphin said the same thing happened to him when he went to the Philippines several years ago for a development conference. I’m torn between thinking it’s funny and feeling pretty awkward (which, to be fair, is kind of my normal state). Today, several older girls apparently had a long discussion about whether my hair was real.  One actually ran behind me and touched it.  I had to explain later as well that not only is it real, I don’t use any products to relax it and it used to be much longer.  Good times.