Hanging Out with The Stars

For the past week I’ve been waking up every morning in the amazing Orchid Hotel in Bukavu, overlooking from a high terraced garden the incredible lake, and then hanging out with the stars. Quite literally. And quite amazing for a first field assignment in this new job…

On paper I will be based in Goma (which is the most important town in the North Kivu region), but in practice I will be traveling pretty much all the time all over the place to see and write about the different programs we are running in this HUMONGOUS country. Bukavu is the capital of South Kivu, so last Saturday I took this short, two-hour, $50 trip on the speed boat (the normal, ‘popular’ boats take more than twice this time), deep in the heart of the most amazing scenery. The only other place I could somehow relate this to: the Norwegian Fjords, only with actually beautiful weather as a plus. The Kivu Lake is simply breathtaking, with small islands and mountainous shores, and with the tropical spin of banana plantations and amazing forest brushing the water. It is so spectacular that I developed a kind of boat-addiction from the very beginning, so during the week I hopped on our own speed boat a few times, both for pleasure and for traveling to remote islands and visit some of our health programs.

The reason why I actually traveled to Bukavu, though, was to entertain some Hollywood, NFL, Nascar and private sector stars, who have come together to find a project and save the Congo… Easy to do, right? Well, actually kind of wrong. This country is SO big and complex, and has such a twisted post-colonial history and so many actors at play on the ground, that a ‘REAL’ solution is just not within anyone’s grip. Our stars, however, have been adamant that they can do something beyond the obvious pattern, so it has been quite entertaining in turn to see their thought-process related to this, accompanied by the most interesting comments and questions: “So this land was Belgian, right? And then what?”; “We should invest in conflict-free wine and call it ‘Delicious’”(they don’t grow grapes in Congo); “There are so many pregnant women around here, were they all raped?” (Bukavu happens to be known also as ‘the rape capital’ of the world); “So we're here to see some refugee camps, why are they not on the schedule?” (because there are none…); “I was thinking a few months back that I’d like to drive around here, but I’m glad I changed my mind. Man, these roads are bad!”, etc. etc… It will definitely be interesting to see what they come up with in the end. So keep your eyes on the media in the coming months, and you will certainly hear/see some big names talking about saving the Congo!

As they are heading back to their luxury homes later today, I will also take the boat back to Goma and hopefully have a few days in the same place to get my head around this new job – which from now on will hopefully only involve stars with shiny solutions on a NOT regular basis... Luckily my luggage also arrived (both from Kinshasa and from Rwanda), so I can envisage a couple of days of unpacking and decorating my new home. Very down-to-earth, star-free environment, to recalibrate and start anew. (Although I must confess that I definitely got hooked on one starry thing: an exquisite Chanel diamond white ceramic watch – which I duly googled and found that it costs around $10,000)…