Dungu

Sorry i have not updated my blog for some time. Its been a little busy. I took over as temporary base manager In Isiro fir a while. That coincided with demonstrations and security concerns arising in the town. The civil population decided that they were going to introuduce a `ville mort` in protest at the state of the roads in Isiro. A `ville mort` is when the local population forces the town to completely close down for 3 days.

The roads in and around Isiro are all in a dreadful state, and there is now no possible way to access Isiro by vehicle. This all despite election promises from Kabila in 2006 to improve the infrastructure. All to predictable! And of course the demonstrations turned violent, 2 people killed, looting, gunfire very close to our base. We had begun preparations to evacuate. The military and police finally brought the situation under control.

The other big news is that i will be leaving Isiro at the beginning of November. I will be taking up the position of base support manager in Dungu. You can see on the map above where Dungu is, in far North Eastern Congo. The LRA crisis touches the Northen edge of town, there are 500,000 IDP`s in the area. I will be taking over the role as Base Support manager, responsible for logistics, finance, admin, security and some donor relations. It will be a challenging environment, more basic living conditions, more insecure, just myself and 1 other expat, our medical co-ordinator. It promises to be be an interesting few months.