Basankusu: New Year 2019

Fr Joseph, one of our diocesan priests, who works 500 km from us, came to visit Basankusu.

“How are things with Mill Hill?” he asked.

“How are things with the Congo?” I replied. And so began our conversation.

Francis Hannaway

Fr Joseph had seen many changes in the country over the years. We sat with a cold glass of beer each.

“You’ll be happy that the presidential elections will soon be taking place,” I continued.

He looked cynical. “The elections are already two years overdue.” he said. “This imposter has stayed in power long enough. He’s either killed or imprisoned his opposition, or driven them into exile. Demonstrations are brutally stamped on; even in January 2018 his police entered churches and shot people.”

President Joseph Kabila came to power after the assassination of his warlord father, in 2001.

“But now at least we’ll have elections on 23 December,” I replied.

“Elections of a sort,” he said. “The opposition candidates are all prima donnas who can’t agree on a single candidate. The electronic voting machines haven’t been distributed to every village ... and there won’t be the power to charge them. Anyway, tell me about Mill Hill. Where is Fr. John Kirwan?”

“Fr John went back to England with a bad back, but I’m happy to say he’s completely recovered.” I said.

“I’ve known him over many years,” said Fr. Joseph, his eyes sparkling. “He has given great service as a missionary here!”

“Fr. John has been asked to consider retirement. It will be a sad loss after thirty-eight years.”

Fr. Joseph looked troubled, but then asked, “What about your colleagues, Fr. Stan and Fr. Otto ... and what about new missionary priests being appointed?”

I told him about Fr. Stan, having been ill but now on his way back to Basankusu, and of Fr. Otto in Kinshasa setting up our new seminary. As for new appointments, we have about thirty seminarians from Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, and Congo. So it’s quite possible new people will soon be sent.

“Ah, yes, I knew Otto and Stan when they were at school. And what about yourself?”

Francis Hannaway
with Judith Bondjembo

“I’m looking forward to continuing my work with malnutrition. In four years we’ve treated 2,500 children. Last week we gave our seventeenth wheelchair-bike - all paid for by kind donations sent by people from Middlesbrough Diocese.”

A broad smile spread across Fr. Joseph’s face as he lifted his glass.

“Well, here’s to 2019.” he said. “Let’s hope we have a new, good president, that your students do well, and people continue to support your work with malnutrition and wheelchairs.”

[Just before the election date of 23 December a fire destroyed 8,000 voting machines, solar panels and a dozen or so cars destined for the election in Kinshasa. The date of the election was moved to December 30.]

Basankusu Cathedral Inauguration

I’d never seen so many people at our local airstrip. The inauguration of the new cathedral was about to take place in four days’ time - not only that, but our new weekly air service is still operating with its twenty-eight seater plane. Thursday’s plane brought eight bishops for the celebrations ... it also brought several invited politicians, so their supporters were also among the crowd.

Basankusu welcomes the bishops

All the cars in Basankusu, which isn’t many, were commandeered, including our three, to carry the guests. A choir sang at the corner of our house and greeted the bishops as they passed.

I heard from our night-watchman that I would be leading the Grand Parade on Friday, representing Mill Hill. I didn’t relish the idea at all. Fortunately, Fr Otto, who had travelled up from Kinshasa, and myself were given seats with the bishops.We watched the different diocesan organisations march past to the raucous rhythm of the brass band. I was especially pleased to see my malnutrition centre volunteers joining in.

With so many bishops in town, Saturday afternoon saw several masses which included baptisms, First Communions and weddings. During the evening, we gathered to re-bury Basankusu’s first bishop, a Mill Hill Missionary called Gerard Wantenaar, who died in 1951.

Sunday’s inauguration mass lasted six hours! We waited a long time outside in the scorching sun. I eventually took my place with the invited guests ... but it was much a matter of ‘grab a seat if you can!’ It was packed! The new cathedral is built in the same style as the old red-brick cathedral. The interior plastered walls are painted pale blue and white. Much more light enters now ... it really is quite something, and right in the middle of the rainforest!

But, all good things come to an end. Some visitors only flew in for the day; others left on the Monday. I, myself, was called to a meeting in Kinshasa and secured a place on our Thursday flight.

With the scarcity of flights, passengers were a bit panicky. They thought they wouldn’t all get a seat ... and they were right. People pushed and shoved to get up the steps into the plane. It was chaos! Eventually, they gave me and a local priest a place to sit on a cooler-box full of soft-drinks. The air-conditioning didn’t work and we were all dripping wet in the heat ... but two hours later we arrived in Kinshasa.

Congo Kinshasa: Busy Times at the Malnutrition Centre in Basankusu

We had yet another busy day, today, here in Basankusu. After my morning wash in a bucket of rainwater, I set off on foot. First I called in at the new centre to follow-up hospital treatment for Mama Julie - she's from Baringa, 120 miles away, where I worked in the 1990s.

Francis with Mama Julie

Next, we welcomed Sr Felicity and Sr Petronella, to our original centre for malnutrition, on the other side of Basankusu. The sisters are local nuns, both with experience in health and community development.They werevery impressed by our work in feeding malnourished children and teaching their parents. We’ll share our experiences another day with a view to developing a common project.

Srs Petronella and Felicity

Send a donation to Francis for his work

On the way back, we called in at the wake of one of Judith's grandmothers. The all-female meeting had women chanting and dancing mischievously in a traditional ceremony that distracts people from their grief.

Women chanting and dancing mischievously at the wake

This afternoon, back at our new centre, we made a further follow-up of the woman from Baringa. In her seventies, she has an enlarged spleen because of suffering from malaria so many times, throughout her life. We’re trying to convince her son, that she should stop working in her vegetable garden. Typical work in a garden includes chopping firewood with a machete, digging, and carrying huge baskets of wood and vegetables on your back. It’s not very good if you have a medical condition like hers!

Then, a woman arrived with four small children and a pair of new-born twins ... she needed help to get back home, 140 miles, after her husband died.

The mothers with their poorly children

At the same time, a woman appeared with a 6 year old child, who looked like he was two years old, who'd had severe diarrhoea for two weeks and decided to come to us in the evening. We took her next door to our hospital and they decided he needed a blood transfusion. We had to go and get the nurse from his house and watch the transfusion by torchlight. Then we went to find medication for three of the malnourished children at a nearby pharmacy kiosk.

Just as we were getting served, a motorbike pulled up beside me on the dirt track; it was Fr Franklin, one of our local priests, who asked if I would be opening our internet this evening ... I climbed on the back of the bike and soon found myself back at Mill Hill opening up the internet room for local priests and NGO staff.

Our Chinese shopkeeper arrived and asked to charge all his gadgets, one in each room, while our generator was running, and then talk a little business.

Finally I've been able to grab a sandwich and write this ...

Congo Kinshasa: Fr. Andrew Mukulu visits us in Basankusu

My first stint with Mill Hill Missionaries was three years beginning in 1991. I taught would-be Mill Hill candidates English and about the wider world outside the forest, in preparation for their entry to the seminary in Uganda.

Mill Hill have been present in Basankusu Diocese since 1905. Hundreds of our missionaries have been here to build Christian communities over the years. Even in the 1990s, there were about twenty five of us. I found only two members left in Basankusu in 2014 ... with me added, that made three of us in the whole country.

The isolation of Basankusu has made it more and more difficult for Fr. Stan and myself to select and teach students to the priesthood. We had a visit from, Andrew Mukulu, from our General Council, two years ago. He suggested that we move the teaching programme to Kinshasa, the capital city.

“The candidates would learn a lot in the city – there are more possibilities there,” he said. “Not only that, but we can extend the programme to include a degree in philosophy, the first cycle of studying to become a priest.” He continued with obvious enthusiasm, “We wouldn’t have to restrict ourselves to Basankusu Diocese for our candidates ... we have the whole country to recruit from.”

We stopped teaching in Basankusu two years ago with the idea of moving it to Kinshasa. That has freed me up to spend more time on my projects for malnutrition and wheelchairs, of course, but we’ve been waiting to see whether we would be teaching our candidates again.

This month we saw a development. Fr Otto Bambokela, who is Congolese himself, like Fr. Stan, arrived in Kinshasa to start looking for suitable accommodation for our students to live and to study. We’re all very excited about it.

However, our first glitch has been that Fr. John Kirwan, suddenly got a problem with his back, ended up walking with a stick and has swiftly sought medical assistance in England.

Fr. Stan and I were planning to travel up to Basankusu this week, but Stan’s doctor has asked him to stay another ten days in Kinshasa to have some tests for a minor problem. So, I’ll be travelling alone to my malnutrition centres.

Well, so far, so good – we now total four Mill Hillers in the Congo and with a brand new project to give us national presence. We just have to pray for the speedy return to good health of Fr. John and Fr. Stan.

Francis Hannaway: Malaria strikes!

I started to shiver a bit. “Oh, it’s nothing,” I thought, and carried on as normal.

I’d been in Kinshasa, when I was called home to a funeral. I stayed for a week in Maidenhead, at Mill Hill Missionaries headquarters, before staying with my sister, Rose, in Middlesbrough.

The day after the funeral, which took place on a Monday, Rose said that I seemed a bit under the weather. “I know what it is,” she confided. “I suffer with hay fever, every year, myself.” So, she gave me an antihistamine. I took it – but I wasn’t convinced.

Tuesday, I started shivering and took a nap to overcome a fatigue which had gripped me. I lay in bed, still in denial about what this illness was. I pondered the days leading up to the shivers.

I take pills every week while I’m in the Congo, to stop me from getting malaria which I had 25 years ago.

Malaria is a parasite that lives in your blood and is Africa’s biggest killer. The day before I returned to England, I ran out of tablets - but having been free of malaria during my recent four years, I wasn’t unduly worried. “I’ll sort it out when I arrive in England,” I’d thought. But I didn’t.

Wednesday, I was as right as rain, and more than happy to join my brother and his children for a walk in the nearby hills. Thursday, I called in at my doctor’s to arrange more malaria pills for my return to the Congo. The same afternoon I started shivering again at my brother’s house, shivering so much that I ached. I walked back to my sister, Rose’s, and warmed up in the sunshine. I went straight to bed.
Eight o’clock, that evening, I texted Rose from my bed, “I think it’s getting serious!” Fifteen minutes later we were in the hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department.

Francis Hannaway with
his sister, Rose Lawson.

I was very ill – low blood pressure, low temperature, alternating with a high temperature, headache, nausea...

After spending the night on a drip and having countless checks throughout the night I was allowed to go home on Friday evening.

One week before,
in Saltburn.

Treatment continued for another week, followed by another two weeks of building up my strength.

The treatment was for Plasmodium falciparum  malaria, comprising quinine, which is harsh on the body, tiring, and makes your hearing become dull. Really, it was three weeks of sleeping, but at least I wasn’t dead.

Anophelese mosquito
- pesky little critters ...

I’ve now arrived back in Kinshasa, to yet more political upheaval and yet another Ebola outbreak, this time in the east of the country. The number of children in my centres for malnourished children is starting to go down from 72, as edible caterpillars become available locally.

The biggest wish I have for my return, though, is never to have malaria again!

Basankusu: Rainforest Cathedral by Francis Hannaway

They demolished our cathedral, in Basankusu, in 2012.

It was never intended to last so long. Built during the Second World War, cracks had appeared as long ago as the 1980s. I visited in 2013 and the building was progressing well. A new cathedral was slowly rising from the middle of the rainforest – but this time, instead of fired clay bricks, it was being built of reinforced concrete and cement bricks. The foundations would also be much more substantial to ensure that it would last much longer.

Francis Hannaway outside
Basankusu Cathedral in 2007

Now in 2018, after many stops and starts, it is almost complete. The inauguration will take place in October.

There are other churches and chapels in Basankusu, and mass is always well attended. But there’s always a need for a central place for everyone to come together. So, the construction engineers made a concrete hardstand nearby, with a corrugated metal roof over it, which became known as ‘the Hangar’. For the last six years a familiar sight on Sunday mornings has been people walking to the Hangar with plastic chairs on their heads for Sunday mass, so they’d have a seat when they got there.

The all new Basankusu Cathedral
October 2017

I started my work with malnourished children three and a half years ago. I’ve walked past the cathedral building site every day that I’ve been to my centre. I’m pleased to say that in that time, as the cathedral slowly rose, we’ve treated 1,800 children with malnutrition and got them back on the road to good health. It hasn’t been easy – and there have been many times when I’ve thought that the money would run out. Until now, we’ve managed to keep afloat – and the vast majority of donations I receive come from people in Middlesbrough Diocese. So, it’s your success as well! We can’t be complacent, of course, I’m always about two months away from running out of funds ... but someone has always saved me at the last minute!

More good news from Basankusu is that our own Mill Hill Missionaries house, which burnt down two years ago, is almost rebuilt. And ... to top it all, we have just seen the ordination hįof the first Congolese Mill Hill priest since 1998 – with quite a few more coming up in the next few years. Fr. Placide Elia MHM just missed being ordained in the new cathedral, but the inauguration was delayed because of the Ebola outbreak in neighbouring Mbandaka Diocese (which, I’m pleased to say, seems to be over).

Congratulations to him!

Kinshasa: Mugged on the Boulevard 30 Juin

I got a phone call from a friend while eating at Kinshasa’s well known Lebanese diner, Al Daar, with Judith, the coordinator of my centre for children with malnutrition in Basankusu.  It’s on the Boulevard 30 June, in central Kinshasa, a busy city road with four lanes of traffic in both directions. It’s only a short walk from Procure Saint Anne where we’d been discussing our work.

The Boulevard 30 June in downtown Kinshasa

“There’s been an incident in the Grande Marché, Kinshasa’s central marketplace,” my friend told me on the phone. “The market’s administrator and two policemen have been shot dead. It’s the same group that sprang people from the central prison to release their members. There’s a small prison at the market and they were probably trying to do the same there. Everyone has fled. I’m in Kintambo Magasin and the people fleeing have already arrived here. Do you notice anything happening in the street outside?”

I’d noticed that the Boulevard was very busy; there seemed to be a buzz going on ... but nothing really unusual.

“Go straight back to Procure Saint Anne,” she said. “Everybody is going home – there’s a big panic spreading across Kinshasa because of this!”

Judith in the same restaurant the previous year

I agreed that we would go straight back and wondered about calling our taxi-driver, Petit-Jean, to avoid going out in the street to find a shared taxi.

We had arrived by a little back road, because it’s a bit quieter, and decided to go back to the Procure by the same route. The Boulevard, always teaming with people, is crossed by the Rue Equateur at the next crossroads and we came to this junction in only three or four minutes. The road was busy with traffic and the pavement was crowded with people passing in both directions avoiding cars parked on the pavement and advertising boards placed outside little restaurants and internet cafés. I was carrying a satchel with my laptop, camera, money, tablet, accounts ledger and so on. Judith was carrying a laptop and handbag.

As we got to the crossroads, I became aware of a number of street beggars, known as Sheggy, very close to me. One of them said hello, and the others closed in around me. I walked faster – Judith was a few yards away from me. They kept up with my pace and I realised that I was in trouble. I turned on the one closest to me and shouted at him to leave me alone. My shout attracted some attention from other people passing by, but not enough for them to intervene. Judith said, “Just give them a little bit of money and they’ll go.”  I continued walking but realised it was more serious than just a small offering - they were about to grab my bag.

I would normally think of the Sheggy as small, underfed urchins. But these were physically bigger and stronger than me – I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance. Judith told me later that there were seven of them. I let out one last shout and ran into the traffic across the junction. As I got to a grassed traffic island I saw a group of uniformed security guards sitting on the opposite pavement. They beckoned to me – and I took their offer of sanctuary.

Once I got to them, they reassured me and told me not to worry. “They’ll go past in a minute,” one of the guards said. I looked back to see what had happened to Judith. I’d assumed they’d targeted me because I was white and that they probably hadn’t connected her with me.

The place I’d run across the road from had a row of little businesses separated from the main pavement by a high metal railing. Several men, two of them Lebanese, stood at the entrance to this enclosure and waved for me to go back to them. I saw Judith being led to them as well and the security guards told me they would look after us.

“Don’t worry,” reassured one of the Lebanese men, “they’ve gone now and we have security guards here. The guards gave up their chairs and we sat down.

“Did they go after you,” I asked Judith. “Yes they did – they stole my money. I tried to open my bag to give them a small amount, but they just reached over with a knife and cut the zipped inside pocket open and took the money.” It was the equivalent of $20 US.

She assured me that she was all right and that I shouldn’t worry. “They didn’t take my camera, phone or laptop,” she declared, “and after all, it’s only money.”

One of the men asked if we would accept a motorbike taxi and we said that that would be fine.

The police by this time were busy checking every passing car at road junctions for the marketplace killers. The Boulevard is normally full of police – but the gangs of thieves recognised that the police were busy with a major incident and chose their moment.

Grattan - our good friend from the United Nations who took us home

We soon got back to the Procure. It was 2:30 pm and all the day staff were being told to go home early because of the marketplace incident. When things like that happen, a wave of tension, panic even, spreads through the population. It’s never possible to know if it’s the start of something bigger.

My taxi-man soon arrived and told us that 28 police had been killed. We have no way of verifying that, though, because the TV is State controlled. I let him go, because one of the United Nations people, who we’re friendly with, said he would take us. So we had a little beer in the Procure bar. One of the people who is staying there showed us a video on his phone of one of the policemen who’d been shot. The video showed his body being carried away in a hand-cart.

https://twitter.com/CleasN/status/885863156144275456?s=20

A video showing the policeman's body being taken away in a handcart

The roads were quiet. People take these things very seriously and had already gone home ... and we will see over the next few days whether there will be more incidents like this.

Grattan with Judith

The political situation continues to be tense. The president has stayed beyond his mandate after promising elections would take place this year. This week the electoral commission declared that because of unrest in the east, elections couldn’t take place this year. On top of that, the value of the Congolese currency has almost halved in value against the dollar. Wages are paid in Congolese money, but rents and imported good are paid for in dollars. There may be trouble ahead. 

This article was written about events in July 2017 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mbandaka: Ebola menaces Congo again

They arrived at the Ebola isolation ward in Mbandaka in the evening.

Six taxi-motorbikes carried family members of two Ebola victims. The traditional witchdoctors have slowly been replaced by religious sects, whose pastors and prophets cast out sickness-causing demons – often for a fee. The two sick people, in the most contagious phase of the disease, were taken to one such prayer group of fifty people. After a while, they went back to the hospital because they felt so bad. Within hours of returning, they sadly both died. It was then necessary to trace everyone they’d been in contact with – including the motorbike drivers.

Fr Stan and Francis Hannaway onboard the flight Mbandaka to Kinshasa.

Mbandaka is usually our only route from Basankusu to Kinshasa. Fr. Stan Bondoko was on his way to a meeting in Rome. I thought it would be prudent to travel with him as far as Kinshasa to avoid the outbreak, until it was contained. We arrived in Mbandaka a few days before the two patients escaped.

People seemed quite relaxed about the whole thing. Greeting friends with a clenched fist instead of a handshake became a bit of a joke – people would do it and then shake your hand anyway!

Meeting our East African students in Mbandaka on their way home to Basankusu.

The centre of the outbreak is in a rural area just outside of Mbandaka. A few people, returning from the infected area have succumbed to the disease in Mbandaka. The town lies on the Congo River and is an absolute crossroads – especially for river traffic – for the north-west of the country. Symptoms don’t show for up to twenty-one days, and so it’s quite possible to board a plane to Kinshasa with the illness.

At Mbandaka Airport we were obliged to wash our hands in chlorinated water before boarding our plane, but that was all.

Getting off the plane in Kinshasa every passenger’s temperature was taken. We had to quickly fill in a form declaring that we weren’t suffering from certain symptoms, such as headaches or fever, and that we hadn’t touched any dead bodies lately. Whew! ... and then we were allowed to enter the airport building.

At the time of writing, there were still new cases of Ebola in the rural area where it began. At least fifty cases had been reported from the beginning. Basankusu, where I work, is the next substantial settlement along the river – no cases had been reported there. The World Health Organisation is working hard to end the outbreak.

Basankusu: The Hunger Games Reloaded

It seems like yesterday that I was writing about the ‘Hungry months’.

Children eating at the centre.

Well, they’re here again. This time we hope that it won’t be as bad – but nevertheless, more and more malnourished children are entering my two centres in Basankusu.

The first centre, on the other side of town to where I live, started to fill up at the beginning of last month. There are now thirty children being treated there.

The new centre, next to the Catholic hospital and for children with severe malnutrition, began last month fairly quietly. One day, I was there to see Judith, who runs the whole programme, to talk about improving the new house. While we were talking, she looked out of the window.

Francis Hannaway at the centre.

“Oh no,” she exclaimed. “Look! The garden is full of people!”

It was actually only five children who needed treatment, but they of course came along with their mothers and (a few) fathers, as well as brothers and sisters.

Families arriving at the new centre.

At the other centre, the children are brought along by their parents for each of the three days we feed them. At the new centre, all the children, parents, and brothers and sisters, will sleep at the centre, because they’ll be fed every day and need round-the-clock care.

“We don’t have enough chairs, let alone beds,” said Judith. “What are we going to do?”

We quickly sent people to buy wood and raffia chairs, which are made locally, as well as a large tarpaulin and raffia mats for people to sleep on.

We continue to improve the new centre. A strong fence has been built around the whole plot. We have a well for water and we’ve built it up with concrete to keep it clean. Today we extended the kitchen by building a palm-thatched shelter to keep people dry when it rains and out of the sun when it’s too hot.

So, all together we have thirty-five children – by the end of June, it’s bound to be around sixty.
When everyone was settled, and being fed, Judith looked out again.

“It’s very sad,” she said. “The mothers are often just as hungry as the children.”

Mending the fence at the first centre.

We watched one mother who ate every second spoonful herself.

“Yes,” I said, “the hungry months are very sad indeed.”

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Basankusu: Francis Hannaway's centre for severe malnutrition

I walked around the garden amongst the many fruit trees: mangoes, avocados, bananas, a savoury fruit called safou, lemons, and others I don’t know the names of. This was in the grounds of the new house that we had just bought to cater for the most severely malnourished children at our centre.

The house was made from fired bricks and had a palm thatched roof. As well as the main house there was also another small building which served as a kitchen and a couple of extra rooms.

Judith, who runs the project, gave it a critical look. “It’s too small, Francis, so we’ll need to extend it ... and we’ll need a proper metal roof,” she said. “The roof is too low, it’ll trap in the heat, so that needs to be raised and the walls built up.”

The house when we bought it.

Laying the concrete floor.

Raising the roof and extending the walls.

The new roof is on and the extension almost complete.

Centre volunteers trying out the new house.

The house that we’d bought for £2,000 was starting to go up in price before my very eyes. “We’ll extend the building to make a good sitting room, and you know the floor ...?” she continued, “It’s lined with bricks, but impossible to clean. Hygiene is very important with these delicate children; we’ll need to lay a concrete floor – the same with the bare brick walls, they’ll need plastering.”

Little by little, we came up with a plan for making the building suitable for feeding severely malnourished children. New windows and doors would complete the plan - and a sturdy fence, made from strong sticks from the forest, held together with ever-versatile mosquito nets.

Once the new roof and extension were complete, we welcomed a little girl called Gracia. She was being treated at the nearby St Joseph’s Hospital. Her malnutrition was so severe that we really thought that she would die. Mama José, our nurse, visited her in the hospital. “She needs cheering up, as well as feeding up,” she said. “Even though the new house isn’t finished, we can buy some raffia mats for her to sit on. It’ll be better than the dreary hospital.”

Poor little Gracia with her swollen body and peeling skin.

So, every day, for more than two months, Gracia came to eat at the new house. As well as our nutritious corn, peanut and soya-milk porridge, our volunteers talked and sang to her to try to cheer her up.
Gracia made a full recovery, partly, we believe, because of her own determination. After several weeks of listlessness, she picked up the cooking pot herself to help with the cooking. I’d like to think that the dedication of our volunteers also helped her recovery. Let’s hope, too, that the new house will provide a calm sanctuary for these vulnerable children, and a safe place for the volunteers to help these little ones to get back on the road to health.

Gracia - at the new centre ... and almost better.

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Basankusu: Pineapples, fish and a broken tooth

During the past month, the “Rural Women Determined Against Malnutrition”, the registered name of our association, were pleased to see our numbers drop to only five. They didn’t waste time, and were soon planting pineapples and soya beans in our garden. These crops will provide food for the children and an income to support our work. Pineapples grow on the ground and send runners through the soil to make new plants, like strawberries do.

“The pineapples will take more than six months before we can pick them,” explained our nurse, Mama José, “but the soya will be ripe in about two months. We’ve got to be ready for the next wave of malnourished children coming to us.

Francis with pineapple plant

At the moment, there is some fish for families to catch in the small streams. That’s quite easy, lots of children go with their mothers to catch catfish, which slither along in the small streams.”

Rural Women Determined Against Malnutrition ... working hard.

She explained further, “The women dig a hole and scoop out the water; they put a basket into the hole and the fish come down the stream and fall into the basket. That’s an easy way to feed your children for free,” she said. “Towards the end of April, heavy rains flood the streams and the fish swim off to deeper water. So no more free food! That’s when we always see lots of malnourished children at our centre. The hungry months continue right up until the end of August when the next free food arrives: that’s the edible caterpillars! Just like the free fish, they are very rich in protein, which helps the children to grow.”

As I walked home from our vegetable garden, I walked underneath the branches of an avocado tree which leant over the path from someone’s garden. I counted twenty ripe avocados hanging on the tree. It just shows what people can have to eat if they just think ahead – sadly, some people fall on difficult times, or times of illness, and end up not being able to feed their children.

The very same day, at our Mill Hill Missionaries house, I enjoyed some tasty catfish like the ones I mentioned.

I tried to be like the locals and crunched hard on the small bones. It wasn’t very wise; I broke part of a tooth! In Basankusu you might be able to have a tooth taken out, but I didn’t want that and to find a proper dentist I needed to travel to Kinshasa.

The routine has now become familiar. I was able to get a canoe ride with the visiting Provincial of the Daughters of Jesus sisters. Two days on the river was followed by two days waiting for a plane which failed to turn up the first day ... and I arrived in Kinshasa.

We were eventually reunited with our suitcases three days after arriving, but didn’t complain (well, not too much anyway).

I will be back in Basankusu soon – in time for the malnourished children who we know will soon arrive.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers ... and even better, send a small donation to help with this work.

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Basankusu: Francis Hannaway thinks about his time in the Congo

Time goes quickly in Basankusu, in the Congo. My three years have spilled into a fourth year committed to missionary life with Mill Hill Missionaries.

The students I started teaching at the beginning of 2015 are studying Philosophy in Uganda. They will eventually become Mill Hill priests.

A little get-together after mass for extending my time in the Congo

My centre for treating malnourished children and advising their parents has passed its third birthday. Some volunteers have moved on but have been replaced with new, even better ones. We have now successfully treated over one thousand children at the centre.

Further to that, we’ve taken on a second house to concentrate on the more severely malnourished children. It’s right next to our Catholic hospital for easy access to medical services (such as they are!).

The rebuilding of our Mill Hill house, since it burnt down, is almost complete. And we’re just saying goodbye to our visiting eye-doctors, from Belgium, who have just spent another two weeks treating Basankusu people, their fifth visit!

More anniversaries come to mind: this year will mark 25 years since I first came to Basankusu as a Mill Hill Missionary, for three years.

I found this photo from 1992 of myself and a young woman from the Ngombe tribe.

She’d given birth to her first child and was following the tribal tradition of “First Birth”. She was accompanied by two younger sisters, or cousins – one carried the baby for her, the other carried a small stool for her to sit on to feed the baby.

For at least one year, – without her husband – she visits her extended family in neighbouring villages, who should feed her up to keep her in good health. She avoids washing in the river, in case she catches a chill – instead she’s covered in palm-oil.

She wears several different charms to keep away evil spirits, including: a leopard’s tooth, a leopard’s skin, a traditional raffia skirt, cow-bells (they’re behind her on a belt) again, to keep away evil spirits, and several marks and bracelets from the traditional healers to protect her.

This all seems very extravagant – and very hard on the poor husband – but it ensured that mother and child survived in possibly harsh conditions.

Mobile phones, solar panel lights, and a shaky internet connection have since arrived in Basankusu. Sadly, the tradition of “First Birth” has all but died out. My work, these days, working with malnourished children, gets me thinking that perhaps it should be reintroduced.

Kinshasa: avoiding trouble!

A battered old mini-bus in Kinshasa

It was already 9 o'clock, this morning, when I set off from the outskirts of Kinshasa to go to my makeshift office at the 'Procure des Missions' in central Kinshasa. I’m staying in Kinshasa for a few weeks, to sort out accounts and such like for our Mill Hill Missionaries community, here in the Congo. 

There were plenty of people waiting for shared taxis, too many, in fact, so I boarded a crowded mini-bus, with its tattered seats and hanging-off sliding door. Holding tight next to the open sliding door, we set off, with a fair breeze wafting in and cooling us down in the overpowering heat. Depending on the traffic, we should have arrived in Kintambo in about twenty-five minutes. From there I would look for another shared taxi or minibus to the centre of the city.

We'd only gone about half a mile when we came to a halt. 

Perspiration soaked through my shirt as the breeze disappeared. The driver decided to do a three-point turn.
"There's trouble ahead," he said, pointing down the road. "They've killed a teacher at a secondary school - there's mayhem! We'll go a different route."

Every vehicle followed suit. An elderly couple, sitting next to me, decided to get off. I asked where exactly the trouble was. Was it everywhere...? No-one knew. We were very soon in a solid traffic jam - it was like a quiet panic.

I passed the place I'd started. I had three appointments today at the ‘Procure des Missions’ ... perhaps they could wait. Arriving in a place is one thing ... but if things got out of hand (and if it was linked to oppression of opposition supporters it could get out of hand) it was possible there'd be no way back. Being a white foreigner, I could easily attract the wrong type of attention: attention from rioters, corrupt police, and the local thieves who hang around and wait for distractions like this. 

I touched the ticket man's arm ... "I've changed my mind,” I said, “I'll get off here."

Armed police appeared - a soldier with his Kalashnikov appeared. I went back to the house where I'm staying. 

After a while a friend, who’d heard of the trouble, called to see where I was. 

"Don't worry," I said, "I didn't go." "That's good," continued my friend, "because this is a riot caused by the halving of the value of the currency against the dollar ... but school fees are in dollars. The police and soldiers are now shooting at the crowd in Kintambo!" 

Kintambo is where I was heading. It's where I would look for a second shared taxi.

Well, it's a wasted day - but I think I made the right decision, don't you?

Basankusu: Catherine's story

“Help me!” whispered a young woman as she gripped my arm, her voice barely audible over the noise of the jostling crowd. It was a full year ago, during the eye-doctors’ annual visit. The hospital compound was buzzing with crowds from far and wide who had come to have eye problems treated.  Her name was Catherine and she looked frightened and desperate. I’d helped several elderly people to get seen quickly, but this girl looked barely twenty.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, as her grip on my arm tightened. She showed me one eye that was closed and sunken. She moved closer to tell me, “Last year I had a cataract operation – but a few weeks later it went wrong. Help me to see the doctors so that they can fix it for me.”

I took her swiftly through to see Dr Pauline, who quickly saw that an infection had damaged the eye beyond repair. The only thing to do was to remove the original implant – but she would be permanently blind in that eye.

We were all very upset about the prospect. Catherine started to cry; she didn’t want to have another operation. By this time, Dr Pauline and I had tears in our eyes as well; fortunately, Hilde, one of the nurses, came to put an arm around Catherine and calmed the situation. It was all over in fifteen minutes. I summoned two bicycle-taxis and took her back home.

“She’s been miserable all year,” her brother said. “She’s 29 years old. Her husband left her saying she was no longer beautiful – alone with five children.” Their simple house was made from planks and stood on stilts in the riverbank mud. “She’ll have to be brave,” I said, not really knowing what to say. “Her life has taken a different path to the one she’d envisaged, but I’m sure she’ll do well.”

I didn’t see her again until this year. I took her to get her other eye checked. Fortunately it was in good condition. “I’m so down about the whole affair,” she confided. “Being left alone is a huge burden.”

She visited again, this time with her brother and a local politician. They started demanding compensation of £700 (which is a fortune here!).

During their five visits the eye doctors have performed 1,300 cataract operations – this is the only one that didn’t work out well. I felt as if she’d betrayed me ... I still had a lot of sympathy for her condition, but it had suddenly turned sour. I avoided them for over a week.

Eventually, she came back by herself. “Forgive me,” she said. “My brother and his politician friend are only looking to profit from my situation and I should never have allowed them to come along. If they phone you, just ignore them. All I’m looking for is a little money to survive on.”

“With a small amount of money, you could sell things,” I suggested.

“Yes,” she replied, “I’ll go along the river and buy fish to sell. There’s a boat coming next week, so please keep the money until then.”

We agreed an amount of £50. Catherine seemed very pleased.

“I’ll ask the good people of Middlesbrough Diocese to help us,” I added, thinking that I should try to pay for her children’s school fees as well.