Here’s a great interview with Toby Lanzer, the head of the UNDP office here in CAR. He does a really good job of highlighting what the issues are in the country and how little attention they get next to other causes. One of the major issues that I’ve seen so far is that CAR needs humanitarian aid AND development aid — but all it gets is humanitarian support. That’s great for taking care of immediate needs, but if you want to work on building infrastructure, you’re out of luck as there is no money allocated to it.

This tends to create a vicious cycle where, because you can only do humanitarian work, you can’t ever really address the root causes of the poverty and disorganization. You’re perpetually addressing only the most immediate needs. What’s worse is that, should you start asking for development aid, then the humanitarian aid completely dries up (because donors say, “oh, you want to do development? Then there’s probably no longer a humanitarian crisis: great, then we’ll stop giving money to that”). It’s an oversimplification, but this is how the issue has been described to me.

Anyway, Toby’s been working here for two years, which basically makes him a lifer in the development world of CAR. People working for NGOs here rarely stay longer than a year — so the duration of his stay is certainly a testament to his commitment to getting things done.

Why has CAR been ignored for so long?

“You can’t ignore something unless you know it exists. In spite of its name, nobody knows where the Central African Republic is. Very few people know it is a county and even fewer have time to worry about it. Also, it is surrounded by bigger, more complex countries… Until we inform people of why CAR matters, it never will.”

Why does it matter?

“It’s loaded with resources; diamonds, gold, uranium, timber and almost definitely oil. It’s in the interest of the international community to keep CAR stable because it’s surrounded by unstable counties, and Darfur and Chad show no signs of improving in the near future. CAR is often used by trouble-makers as a safe-haven, a throughway, a launching pad for actions in Chad and Sudan.

“Development partners have to walk the talk when they say there should be more aid in Africa. When saying ‘we have to help the poorest of the poor’, their absence for CAR is difficult to explain.”

What’s the good news?

The best thing is that violence by state actors has decreased in the north, government troops are conducting fewer operations, and they’ve stopped burning villages. This is the fruit of advocacy, lobbying and reporting.

“There are now 75,000 children in bush schools [in locations to where entire village populations have fled. Tuition is conducted by parents after basic training]. Vaccination campaigns have prevented killer epidemics such as measles; water and sanitation programmes have prevented cholera; the number of NGOs here has increased from three to 30 since mid 2006.”

Just to give you sense of how insular the life is here . . . I walk out my door at about 8:45, hop into a UN vehicle with a UN driver (from the Central African Republic), and he drives me to work (which is literally only about a 20 minute walk away).

Most people in CAR walk when they want to go somewhere. Most western NGO employees tend to take taxis or have cars. The lives the the NGO staff and the regular work-a-day Central Africans are polar opposites: there isn’t very much “formal enterprise” here, in the sense that people can work for anyone or any larger business. Even people who have been in other African countries are bit surprised by how little is being done (in the ways of commerce) here. I talked to an economist from Burkina-Faso today and he just described the Central Africans as being plain old lazy: “they just don’t want to work.”

This pretty much typifies a certain view of CAR. Some just think that they’re not interested in development. A simple example is right outside my window: they’ve been “paving” a road outside of my office for the past month now . . . and even according to people I work with, they seem to only be pushing around dirt, day after day.

That said, there tend to be a few types of people that I work with: those that think it’s horrible here and see no way that it’ll improve without serious intervention (of the kind that the UN cannot provide), those that think that it’s a gradual process and you just do what you can with what you’ve got and hope you’re making forward progress, and those that are doing a tour-of-duty and cannot wait to get out (and try and spend as much time outside of CAR as possible). I have to say, I feel like I understand all three positions pretty well after only being here a week.

Your Friday moment of zen . . .

Holy smokes: it’s almost like lightening striking twice. Of course, this article is slightly more about Mia Farrow than it is about C.A.R., you have to admit, that it’s a bit bizarre that it should appear in the press twice in one week (and major western publications, at that).

This may have something to do with the campaign that the UNDP and OCHA have been running here: in the past two years, the number of NGOs operating in C.A.R has increased from four to over 30. The people here are seeing a huge influx of foreigners . . . coming in and doing humanitarian work — although most of it is actually happening outside of the city, in the northern part of the CAR where there are hundreds of thousands of so-called “internally displaced people” (IDPs) and refugees from the conflict in Darfur and southern Chad. Unfortunately, the situation inside of the city has basically degraded ever since France left in the 1950s. The roads that are here are the ones that the French built. The buildings here are the ones that the French built. The other infrastructure here is largely what the French built (save the power infrastructure and some other exceptions).

That said, the city itself is very very run down:

This is almost at the city center (1 km away). And this is about as developed as it gets here. There aren’t business in those building: most of it is empty. Children roam the street begging for money — and once one is upon you, five, 10, 15 more show up from out of nowhere. There are people walking all over the place, but not many cars, and, really, not much going on.

I just back from lunch from a great Senegalese restaurant — it was inside a house, nestled on the outskirts of one of the many shanty neighborhoods that, ultimately, are Bangui. The proprietor was very nice (although I’m sure it helped that the friend who took me there had been there several times herself), and gave us a spicy chicken dish over rice. Anyway, what is kind of shocking is how little commerce there is here. In the other developing countries I’ve been in, there have always been tons of street vendors, people walking up to sell you whatever it is that they have . . . here, it’s, well, slower.

Oddly, though, the city feels safe. I mean, not safe in the sense that you’d want to raise your family here (Central Africans don’t want to raise their families here either — which is why most of those that are educated and have the where with all don’t), but in the sense that it doesn’t feel any more dangerous here than parts of New York. Just dustier.

Of course, when there’s news, it’s pretty much always bad . . . case in point.

CAR doesn’t even get to be the worst . . .

First off, thanks for all the nice emails and comments!

That said . . . so, office life here is pretty cushy.

We work on the 4th floor (2ieme etage) of a six floor office building in what was formerly the Japanese embassy and is now the UNDP’s office. It’s air conditioned and has an elevator (that doesn’t appear to work), running water, a generator for when the power (frequently) goes out, an outdoor cafeteria (that, so far, puts the canteen in the McGraw-Hill building to shame) and a barbed-wire adorned wall surrounding the perimeter.

Here’s the view from my window:

It’s at the corner of two dusty, mostly paved roads and next to one of many arches that bridge the main roads here. Each arch is painted with an inspirational phrase (pics of this later) in French and something that I can’t understand in Sango (the national language).

The local UNDP office here is mostly staffed by Central Africans. This folds into a larger “capacity building” project which is basically meant to give locals as many jobs in the UNDP as possible. The idea is to that after learning in these jobs, they’ll have enough skills so that they can administer their own country without the help of the UNDP. Obviously, this is a long-term plan . . .

Of course, working at the UN insulates you to some degree from what was really going on: there was no power (from the grid) yesterday, all day. As such, we were using the generator basically all day. So, when I got home last night, there was no power there either (alas, no generator at home). Because there was no power, there was no running water in the UNDP building either . . . It was the same story at home too. boo-hoo.

The difficulties around power stem from the fact that all of CAR is powered by two hydroelectric dams. There are 5 turbines between them, 3 of which absolutely do not work — and I don’t believe that they ever did. And then the other two turbines only work part of the time. Obviously, this all puts an enormous strain on the grid — and as you can imagine, it makes running any kind of operation at all basically impossible without paying for a generator and fuel . . . And fuel isn’t particularly cheap here either . . . so this is just one of the most obvious limitations of trying to get things done in CAR.

Anyway, when we got to work today, the whole building was flooded because someone had left a faucet on on the 6th floor. So when the power came back this morning, the faucet that had been left in the on position started gushing water. And gush it did: it ended up creating a small river from the 6th floor all the way down the stairs to the ground level and out the front door. So, today, they had to turn off the power to the whole building while they fixed the electrical circuits and squeegied out all of the water. That took about 5 hours . . . So I read.

That said, things are pretty easy for us (as in those who work at the UN) compared to your average Central African citizen (who lives on slightly less than a dollar a day). To give that number some perspective, if I had to pay for everything that I used today, my day would have cost somewhere around $30 (electricity, phone, water, A/C, gas, food, et cetera).

…next up is centre-ville. get ready for a lot of red dirt.

After 24 hours of flying from JFK through London and Tripoli, standing in several seemingly interminably long lines, and sitting in airports for hours on end, I walked off the final airplane and into the open-air customs area, only to stand in one final line: customs. . . thankfully there was a UN Driver, Dieudonne, waiting for me in the customs area. Unfortunately, he smelled like he’d been drinking . . . but far be it from me to tell anyone who picks me up at the airport at 11:30pm in Bangui, walks me through the customs process, and then drives me home that he shouldn’t be entitled to a nice cold alcoholic beverage before he does it. Telling him not to would frankly be un-American.

Here’s a video of my arrival, taken by a monkey on stilts:

(I had to cut it short because the police and army are VERY touchy about photos and filming)

I got a little bit of static from the customs agent because I didn’t have a visa, but the attestation I had gotten from the UN that said that I did, in fact, have a reason to be there did the trick. That said, they took my passport from me and said that I’ll get it back in about two weeks . . . my fingers are crossed — but that probably won’t do much good.

I got to my boss Kersten’s house at around 12:00am (where I’m shacking up). Kersten is away for the next week and half, so I have the place all to myself. Of course, I’m sleeping in his roommates bedroom, so I’ll get kicked out in four weeks, but that’s a whole other story.

Dieudonne gave me a small tour of the place: the grounds are surrounded by a wall and gate, and are guarded by at least one person full time (two people at night, one during the day). Inside there are three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. The bathroom has hot water and a shower/bath. All-in-all, it’s much better than some of the places I’ve paid to stay in before. I do think it’s a bit weird that its so heavily guarded, but I was talking with one of my co-workers this morning who said that his flatmates got together and bought a satellite TV box for $300 only to have it stolen the same night they installed it — and they had two security guards working at that time. So, the moral of the story is that if you buy something expensive, don’t tell your security guards because they will steal it.

After about five minutes of walking around the house in a bit of a stupor, I tried going to sleep. I had so many thoughts racing through my head it was a bit difficult, but eventually, after two episodes of This American Life, I passed out under the mosquito net and to the drone of the fan.

The next morning I was awoken by the entrance of Thoma, Kersten’s chef, who was preparing my breakfast. I walked out into the living room and sitting there on the table was a fried egg, toast, milk, hot water, coffee mix, and cold water. Wow. I had thought this was going to be rough. Apparently, as it turns out, I’ll have a relatively nicer life here than in New York.

After breakfast, Dieudonne showed up to drive me to work. Kersten lives pretty far away from the UNDP (probably about a 20 minute walk), so I guess he prefers to have a driver. Hopefully, when I find a place, it’ll be closer to the city center or at least closer to the UNDP. I don’t want to be using a driver or taking cabs every day (they’re about $3 a pop).

I’m getting mixed reviews on the security situation: on the one hand, no one seems to be concerned about safety and thinks that Bangui is very nice and quite liveable. On the other, everyone has security guards and they’re not so sure about walking 20 minutes to work. I can’t really make heads or tails of it.

To make a long story short, this is going to be interesting. Virtually no one speaks English here (at the UNDP) except the people that I’ll be working with (that is, Kersten, Nick, Matt, and Jon). So, if nothing else, I should have a really great opportunity to finally learn French. The French speakers here are also very forgiving of my weak skillz, or so it seems — this is a nice touch and should make the process easier (compared to my racist, unsympathetic, money grubbing home-stay family I had in France [they really weren’t that bad]).

That’s it for now — I’ll post video of the city soon. Since Jenna and I only have a single camera, she took it for her cousin’s wedding (since she’s coming here in about 9 days anyway). So, look for photos next week! Later.