I flew to Bunia on Monday from Kampala. On one of the smallest planes you can imagine. A 12 seater MAF plane. Amazing views as we flew over Lac Albert and the jungle. Having been debriefed in bunia for a couple of days i flew on to Isiro on Wednesday, my new base. Isiro really is the town the jungle overtook, the villages on the edge of town surrounded by the encroaching rainforest. Believe it or not, in the colonial days, you could once fly here directly to Belgium. Not anymore. the airport has become a symbol of the towns decline. Constantly flooded when the rains come and hosting only MAF, the UN and a handful of domestic airline carries, it has lost something of its former glory
The house and the team are great. I have experienced the famous bucket shower of the Medair Isiro house. The school next door is a bit special as well. As the majorty of people dont have alarms here the headmaster wakes up the kids by smashing a big gong at 5am every morning. I kid ye not. You can see the base above
The secuirty in Isiro is pretty stable but the LRA (Lords Resistance Army) are attaking towns not too far from here. A particularly brutal, nasty group they terrorise the local population.
A bit of background the LRA are lead by a guy called Joseph Kony. They were originally based in Northern Uganda. For various reasons they are now more concentrated in North Eastern Congo. Kony is a spiritual medium and wanted the people in Northern Uganda to live by the 1o commandments. Its a strange 10 commandments that now includes rape, abduction and the infliction of complete terror on the civilian population.
After several failed attempts by the governments of Uganda, Southern Sudan and the DRC to wipe out the LRA, they are now scattered across the NorthEastern region of the DRC. Many of the towns north of Isiro are not protected by the military and are completely vulnerable to attack.
Darfur gets a lot of publicity at home, and rightly so. The LRA are a vicious group though and have been guilty of committing massive attrocities in this part of Africa.
I will attach a few useful links below so that you can read a bit more
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/80769/section/9
http://www.petereichstaedt.com/
The house and the team are great. I have experienced the famous bucket shower of the Medair Isiro house. The school next door is a bit special as well. As the majorty of people dont have alarms here the headmaster wakes up the kids by smashing a big gong at 5am every morning. I kid ye not. You can see the base above
The secuirty in Isiro is pretty stable but the LRA (Lords Resistance Army) are attaking towns not too far from here. A particularly brutal, nasty group they terrorise the local population.
A bit of background the LRA are lead by a guy called Joseph Kony. They were originally based in Northern Uganda. For various reasons they are now more concentrated in North Eastern Congo. Kony is a spiritual medium and wanted the people in Northern Uganda to live by the 1o commandments. Its a strange 10 commandments that now includes rape, abduction and the infliction of complete terror on the civilian population.
After several failed attempts by the governments of Uganda, Southern Sudan and the DRC to wipe out the LRA, they are now scattered across the NorthEastern region of the DRC. Many of the towns north of Isiro are not protected by the military and are completely vulnerable to attack.
Darfur gets a lot of publicity at home, and rightly so. The LRA are a vicious group though and have been guilty of committing massive attrocities in this part of Africa.
I will attach a few useful links below so that you can read a bit more
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/80769/section/9
http://www.petereichstaedt.com/
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1 comment:
'Welcome to the Jungle' would be a fitting track to your trip so far then!
Glad you're safe mate, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised if we lose communications all of a sudden :/
Do you have a gun? A weapon of some kind really would be useful.
take care,
Jon-man
p.s. I'm installing Skype at home soon. Promise!
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