Supporter: Richard Jacquot

[Editor's note: Richard Jacquot, deputy director of Mercy Corps Global Emergency Operations, represents the agency on the Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) Project, an effort by seven global relief groups to increase the speed, quality, and effectiveness of emergency responses. Richard helped the consortium developed the Good Enough Guide -- a basic guide of best practices for people confronted with extraordinary emergency situations. What follows is adapted from an email Richard wrote to his ECB colleagues remembering how, 25 years ago, he was able to use a similar guide to help famine refugees in Sudan.]

Richard and Sudee taking djabana (coffee) at the local cafe. Photo: Courtesy of Richard Jacquot

In 1985, my future wife, Sudee, and I were waiting for the decision of the UNHCR on a Red Sea Hill study we had carried out in Sudan. Every morning, we would go jogging in the delta near Tokar, northern Sudan, where cotton was produced during the British colonial times. We started to notice huts showing up in the delta near the town. Soon five huts became 30 and then 100s. We stopped one morning to check what was going on.

These were Adandouha and Beni Amer tribe people who had exhausted all their resources and came down from the Red Sea Hills in despair to search for food and survival. They were destitute, sick and scrawny. Sudee and I and our two colleagues had never dealt with feeding programs but we had to do something.

In our small library, we found an old Oxfam Handbook that showed us how to conduct a nutritional survey and how to run a supplementary feeding program. My only experience at that time was 15 years as an airplane engineer in the French Navy; Sudee and her colleagues were two-year nursing college graduates. We took the book and did everything it said, line by line, page by page. What we could not buy, we built. We conducted the survey, just as the guide said, and took the results to the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) in Port Sudan. We got two Bedford trucks of food for a supplementary feeding program. We had no food for general feeding.

Richard oversees access to the feeding program to make sure each child is registered so they can track their improvement. Photo: Courtesy of Richard Jacquot

I enrolled the seven tribe leaders, one of my best memories, in building and running the feeding center, and the women from the tribes to run the kitchen. The nurses provided health care and trained mothers in tube feeding. We did not have bracelets, so we wrote numbers on the kids’ arms. The first day, we had so many deaths I would not dare to try to remember, but every one of them devastating nonetheless. By the end of the week, the deaths had stopped and the kids, who were pushing their food away because the malnutrition had weakened their perception of hunger, were now eagerly eating their meals and wanted more.

A few days into the feeding project, the UNHCR and Oxfam heads of office passed by Tokar on their way to Eritrea for an assessment and were amazed by what they saw.

Two days later, the Oxfam rep sent us two beautiful orange feeding kits with scales and measuring boards and bracelets to replace our makeshift supplementary feeding kit and he came to visit regularly to see how he could support us.

The Good Enough Guide, which Mercy Corps helped develop with our ECB partners, is not for the expert. It is a practical, simple, straightforward tool for someone inexperienced in relief work so they can do a proper job to make other people’s lives better and maybe to save lives.

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I recently watched as the rain fell for hours over Goma. From the comfort of a house, rain in tropical Africa is spectacular, even magic. But for the thousands displaced Congolese waiting out the storm in their twenty-four square foot huts made of sticks and banana leaves, it is hell.

What's happening today in northeastern Congo is one of the world's ongoing silent disasters. Since August 2007, Mercy Corps has been here helping distribute food, water and critical relief supplies to the area's displaced families. You can pitch in today to help us continue that assistance.

Thousands of displaced families have been living in camps packed with makeshift shelters since 2006 — but most of the people taking refuge here came in the second half of 2007 to escape the fighting in the Masisi and Rutshuru areas, north of Goma. There are about 800,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in northeastern Congo today and, according to a recent survey, at least 5.4 million Congolese have died in this war. That's nearly seven times the number of people that perished in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

Northeastern Congo has long been a place where violence and disaster have swallowed populations and cities whole.

A volatile land

Goma is a land of volcanoes and, when the weather allows, we can see from our house the Nyiragongo crater glowing at the northern end of the city. In 2002 the volcano erupted, adding a fresh layer of lava. There were three main veins, one of which cut the city and the airport in two. At the airport, the lava imprisoned a large plane on its parking lot. In the middle of town it swallowed people's houses and several buildings, including the cathedral and the main market. In downtown Goma, the street abruptly climbs five feet and half the front stores disappear underground.

This hospital was swallowed and destroyed by the lava flow from a volcano near Goma. Photo: Laura Miller/Mercy Corps

It is very difficult to dig through lava soil to build the emergency water and sanitation systems that are necessary to prevent or control a cholera outbreak. My Mercy Corps colleagues told me about the overwhelming working conditions they experienced in 1995, handling the cholera epidemic with both limited water supplies and inadequate latrines. It must have been a terrible experience for all those involved. Now, I walk on the same lava stones whose sharp protuberances cut shoes and feet of families fleeing the Rwandan Genocide.

Some of the camps for this latest human crisis are built on that new layer of lava. This time, the movements of populations took place more gradually, unlike the human wave that entered Congo over the course of just a few weeks in 1994. The emergency water points, latrines, showers, rubbish pits, and communal infrastructures are in place. When a cholera outbreak started last October, it was quickly stopped by reinforcing hygiene practices and organizing communities' responses.

Now, our team is taking the hard lessons we've learned in the area around Goma and applying them to an even more isolated area — the town of Rutshuru, about 50 miles north.

Too little land, too precarious to farm

Rutshuru and its surrounding villages have seen the arrival of thousands of displaced Congolese over the last three months. As it is often the case in emergency situations, the IDPs arrived in Rutshuru on October 2007 and were placed in temporary camps. The local authorities thought it would be for a few weeks and then they would go back home. But, because of violence and uncertainty, they have remained here.

One of Mercy Corps' tasks in Rutshuru is to contribute to the water and sanitation infrastructure of the more long-term sites that will absorb these IDPs. We're building a piped-water system and other sanitation infrastructure for more than half a dozen displacement camps here.

Rutshuru used to be one of the major farming regions of Congo but, with the war, its agricultural production fell drastically and its linkages to markets throughout the country have been disrupted. Ironically — and perhaps providentially — today farming families depend on humanitarian assistance from the surplus productions of other farmers, thousands of miles away, to survive.

Small "kitchen gardens," planted wherever displaced families can find land, are helping feed those who have little land to farm. Photo: Laura Miller/Mercy Corps

It is hard for any farmer to be deprived of land. When we arrived at the local hotel in Rutshuru to rent our rooms, there were a dozen individuals, women and men, held up by local policemen. They were displaced individuals who had been caught farming in the Virunga National Park, west of Rutshuru. It's against the law to cause any type of damages in the park and they had been arrested — a meeting has been scheduled in the hotel to decide their fates.

Some camps have enough space to provide for small farming plots. Unfortunately, with the recent influx of even more families into the area, as soon as a plot has been harvested it is repossessed to build shelters for newly displaced families. Displaced families say they wish they had opportunities to grow their own food, but the problem is lack of land, seeds and farming tools.

Local landowners have some available land to lease, but they charge from $10 to $20 per harvest, in addition to one bag (about 100 pounds) of whatever has been harvested. In normal conditions and on a typically sized plot, a single harvest yields about 3 to 4 bags of beans, corn or potatoes. The risk for a displaced farmer is enormous: if he or she harvests less than a bag, she still owes cash and crops to the landowner.

And so even trying to work the land to provide for family needs becomes a risk. Mercy Corps is helping displaced families establish small kitchen gardens to provide for some of their needs, but more land is needed.

Fetching firewood at a tragic cost

One of the biggest tragedies of this war is violence against women and girls. There are frequent and consistent reports of this throughout the camps, and fetching firewood for their families is one of the riskiest chores.

Mercy Corps often holds meetings with displaced Congolese women, one of the most vulnerable groups, to discuss their particular challenges. Photo: Laura Miller/Mercy Corps

In just one camp where we work, there have been 70 cases of reported violence against women and girls since 2006, and five for the month of December 2007 alone. With no open land available, all trees are either on private land or on national park land; it is illegal to cut them.

Displaced families live on less than $1 a day. In the local market, a bundle of small wood sufficient to cook one meal costs about 20 cents. One bag of charcoal that will last a month costs $8 to $10. Unable to afford these costs, many women and girls go fetch wood wherever they can find it, but at great personal risks.

We asked men if they could go and fetch wood themselves so that women and girls would not be exposed to violence. Together, we discussed the possibility that they could organize themselves in large groups to dissuade attackers and protect women while they are collecting wood. "But they would not hesitate to kill us," the men told us. "We have nothing they would want."

In addition, since cutting wood on private or government land is illegal, IDPs usually undertake this activity individually and in secret, both to secure their source of wood and to reduce the risk of being caught by landowners or government agents.

Mercy Corps is addressing this issue as well, through teaching women how to build fuel-efficient cookstoves that use only a fraction of the firewood as traditional cook fires. It's an approach that has saved hundreds of women in Darfur, and will hopefully do the same here.

Water is a precious commodity in the camps. Photo: Laura Miller/Mercy Corps

A generation without classrooms

The first thing one experiences when arriving at a displacement is the swarming of children around the car. They touch my arms with one finger, either to discover why my skin is light or how body hairs feel, and eventually a few of them capture my hands.

Only 35 percent of children living in Congo's urban areas go to school. Out here, it's a fraction of that fraction. In these camps very few parents have money to pay for the fees, uniform, and supplies it takes to attend local schools. The camps have no schools, and it is terrible to think that many of these curious children will never have the opportunity to realize their potential. They are like fertile, yet fallow fields in Congo's overcrowded violent lands.

One also wonders how change will reach this land, where generation after generation has known nothing but endless war and lack of opportunity. According to some international observers, the recent peace conference may be the successful historic opportunity this region of Congo has long needed to find peace. But when the weapons fall silent, the hard work commences and harder choices will have to be made than those made at the conference.

We need to think about how best to help the farmers, women, girls and children of this wounded country.

You can help Congo's displaced families strive to not only survive, but thrive by donating to our Emergency Response Fund today. Thank you for your support.

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Central African Republic (CAR) is a former French colony, about the same size as Texas. Located in the heart of Africa, its neighbors are some of the continent's most unstable and violent countries: Sudan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although CAR itself has always been unstable, it has been further ravaged by a succession of crises starting a decade ago. These events, including coups and epidemic violence, have destroyed the little infrastructure the country once had and brought the economy to its knees. Instability is partially coming from its neighbors, including an onslaught of refugees from Sudan's Darfur region.

The crisis in CAR is what we call a forgotten complex emergency, which means it falls in between the mandates of the major institutional donors. It is neither a development affair for American or European government funding agencies, nor a traditional emergency like Iraq or Afghanistan for the emergency branches of these agencies. As a result, it gets little attention.

Despite its vast natural resources, CAR is not strategic for anyone. It has diamonds, gold and precious woods, but that is more a tragedy than a blessing, often leading to conflict over who controls and exploits them.

Unfortunately for Centrafricans, the Central African Republic continues to experience both underdevelopment and emergency. In the northeast and northwest, the population is caught in the middle of fighting between the country's armed forces and the rebels contesting the current administration in CAR's capital, Bangui. In addition, villages are raided by bandits from both within and outside its borders who kill villagers, steal their possessions and destroy their villages.

The consequences of these constant harassments are that the populations, in majority farmers, have lost their farming implements, food supplies, livestock and - indeed - dignity as they're forced to flee into the bush. They experience human rights abuses at the hands of the fighters on all sides and women and children are the most vulnerable, often surviving brutal physical and sexual abuse.

The statistics echo the grim reality of a population under severe stress: the country's average income is below $1 a day; life expectancy has fallen over the last decade to 40 years for a male and barely above 41 years for a female; and HIV/AIDS is ravaging the population. While the statistics place the percentage of the population living with HIV/AIDS around 6.5 percent, the anecdotal evidence we have from our assessment in the suburbs of Bangui indicates that, for that area, the national rate for HIV/AIDS is a gross underestimation.

Visible signs of crisis

I am here with Mercy Corps colleagues - some old, some new - on a team assessing how our agency can best help families deal with CAR's multiple crises. We are meeting with other agencies, local organizations and, most importantly, people in Bangui to have conversations that will lead to action.

While there are emergency responses going on in CAR's northeastern and western reaches where there is fighting, there is little immediate attention given to the 600,000 people living in and around Bangui. Some of the conditions we've found in the suburbs of Bangui are as dramatic as in any conflict zones in which I've worked in the past - except that, since Bangui isn't in a conflict zone, it is not getting the attention it needs.

In a recent meeting, we asked those Centrafricans gathered "how many of you have lost a family member to AIDS in the last year?" Six of them raised their hands.

"How many of you have lost a family member to AIDS in the last three years?" Ten out of 12 raised their hands.

"How many of you care for a child who lost her/his parents to AIDS?" All twelve raised their hands.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is only worsening the country's already deep, endemic poverty. Among the population, opportunities are rare due to the disappearance of businesses that did not survive the last ten years of instability and fighting. There are entire households of HIV/AIDS orphans with no assistance of any kind, because they have been stigmatized and rejected by their extended families. There is also a noticeable decline of people between the ages of 30 and 45, who are dying from HIV/AIDS at an alarming rate.

Poor families - including those living with HIV/AIDS - are unable to keep their children at home and the number of street children is rising, particularly in Bangui. One cannot walk even a short distance in town without being asked for some change by children. There is only one center for street children in the whole capital city; as a result, most children are left in the streets of Bangui to the mercy of passersby.

According to one international organization there are 5,320 orphans in Bangui alone, and recent media reports indicate more than 3,000 children sleeping on the streets of Bangui each night.

Homeless children, HIV/AIDS, continuing violence and spillover from neighboring countries' conflicts: these are just a few of the woes gripping CAR's people. We cannot do everything here, but must do something here.

I will always remember the raised hands of those who'd lost family members to HIV/AIDS. I hope you will, too, and help us act now.

Please give today to help children and others affected by HIV/AIDS, violence and deep poverty in Central African Republic.

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