“There was fighting there, everyone scattered; there’ll be a big rise next month”

September 8th, 2009

This blog is late. Three months late to be precise. It’s three months since I passed through the London office to get a briefing for my fourth mission for MSF. This time as a mobile clinic nurse in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. I said that if not too busy, I’d love to write a blog.

Well I have been busy. I’m on a team with seven Congolese nurses doing eight clinics per week. We had a cholera outbreak and sporadic fighting in the neighbourhood, along with our daily consultations of malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, sexually transmitted infections…and the list goes on. But, if I’m being honest, my failure to write has not been a problem of workload but of tone. There are a lot of things I’d like to write, but I can’t think of how to put them. In Congo, the tragic mixes with the comedic and the surreal in equal parts; but too much tragedy and it sounds as if we sit around wringing our hands all day clutching our brows over the awfulness of it all (which we don’t) and too much comedy makes us sound insensitive to the fact that sometimes, it’s unpleasant here.

Take today. Today is Saturday, our office day, when we order medications, follow up hospital referrals and compile the statistics for the week. But there’s a gap in the statistics. “Collette” I say, “there’s no rape statistics for the mobile clinic number 3 this month”. Collette is our nurse who specialises in women’s health. She raises one elegant eyebrow. “I gave them all to JP”. JP is the nurse in charge of collecting statistics. He’s five feet tall with contagious good humour. Like everyone here, he gets his clothes second hand from the market, but he seems to have found a secret stall that sells the kind of designer labels that I can, in no way, afford when at home.

Today it’s a bright orange “Yves St Laurent” t-shirt and his trade mark white, pointed slip-on shoes which, curiously stay white no matter how much mud is around. JP takes on a look of injured professional pride and says: “I put in all the statistics you gave me”. I sense an argument brewing. “Well,” I say, “It seems unfortunately impossible that we had no rape victim during this mobile clinic this month and there’s figures for all the other clinics”.

It turns out I’m right and there’s been a mistake. It’s not possible that we didn’t get any rape cases. In this area of Congo, it’s estimated that 70% of women have been raped. At least once. I think about that often when I see groups of women queuing up for water at the water pump. They’re talking and laughing and I think, “the majority of you have been raped, some of you on numerous, separate occasions. Often by more than one man”.

But today I’m just trying to calm down the office spat about to break about between “Dolce” and “Gabana”. It’s the kind of minor dispute you get in offices everywhere when figures go astray, just that it’s usually sales figures. “Ok,” I say “No problem, no one’s fault, just let me have the figures this morning”. Collette regally accedes to my request. JP looks mollified, and we move on to other business.

Later on after the meeting, I go to our small pharmacy with two other nurses. We’re trying to figure out better ways of following our consumption of drugs. Collette enters and hands me the figures. “Oh thanks” I say, my mind still on the medications. I almost put them straight in my pocket, but then give them a cursory glance before I do, and my brow creases. I poke my head out the door and call out “Collette”, she turns, “really? Only one case this month?” “Yes” she says, “There was fighting there, everyone scattered; there’ll be a big rise next month.” “Oh,” I say, mystery solved, and I place the paper in my pocket.

Tags: Kivu, Medical, Mobile clinics