DRC Outdoors - First set of pictures from the DRC bunch...more to come

Update from DRC - II

Hi Everyone,

A little late as usual in updating but blame it on the internet and crazy schedule. Its been little less crazy this past week after my birthday but yet hectic. Sleeping has been a very good activity all through this month and I am very happy about it. Sound Sleep, I repeat Sound Sleep. After all the mental toil, sleep has been so easy. As soon as I hit my pillow at around 9 pm, next thing I realise is dawn of the next day. Love it!
So let me give you some news from DRC, although its a bit late for some of the news.
1. DRC celebrated its 50th independence day on June 30th 2010. It was a fun celebration, there was a huge crowd on the street all dressed up traditionally and dancing to the Congolese music.

2. MONUC turned MONUSCO on DRC's 50th birthday. I am not sure how things changed though with the name change. Oh yeah the boards and notice signs did change. Wonder what difference did the S and C made.

3. As I had written last time the UN vehicles still throttle at full speed. By the way not just UN but other organisations too drive at full speed. Sometimes they just have it all in them.. ;-)

4. Another thing that you'll find here in DRC is that the military practicing on the streets and moving around during the day with their guns, machine guns, rocket launchers (not kidding), hand grenades and lot of other things. So will you find the UN (MONUSCO) solidiers from different countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Belgiam, etc) shopping in the market with their guns. Not a bad idea I guess. What do you guys think.

5. What do you think you can carry on your head? Any guesses? Well let me tell you that you can carry a refrigerator, around 5-6 foam mattreses, a three seater sofa, huge hammer, pounds and pounds of charcoal, long stacks of Bamboo, stacks of firewood and endless other things. Don't underestimate your head, its very strong you only have to come to Congo to realise it.

6. I met more male victims sexual violence who refused to talk. I completely understand how difficult it is for a man in a patriarchal society to speak up of something like this. It is like reliving the trauma. The easiest way I think of destroying a man in a patriarchal society is to tell him that he is not a man. Here in this case they make him feel that he is not a man. There are many victims considering a holistic approach of being a direct and indirect victim, but they are so humiliated that they cannot speak up, they are made to leave the village or they themselves leave because of the shame and stigma or they are killed by the rebels. One of the major challenge is how do we identify and bring forward the male victims. There's more to come in my papers.

7. Completed my first phase of research with a total of 30 interviews and fgds with male victims of sexual violence, thier wives, community members and service providers.

8. Moved to Goma today for the next phase of research... Agenda will be developed tomorrow. From the initial talks today, it was known that the problems of rebel attacks in Goma is very serious. One of our community partners told us that there are a lot of victims of male sexual violence. Some of the examples of torture in general that she told us are very gruesome. Raping the men, torturing and then killing them, raping men and women with objects, squeezing the breasts of lactating mothers untill the blood starts flowing, tearing the stomachs of pregnant women and killing the foetus and so on...How can human beings do this to another human being. Some of this just shows how inhuman can humans be. Listening to all this makes me sad and also me angry at those sick f**ks. I cannot imagine this happening to anyone.

9. I celebrated my birthday on a new continent and it was fun dancing to the Indian songs sung by Congolese. The Congolese friends just made my day. It was one of the best birthdays ever. My birthday was shared with my colleague "Octav". We cut the cake together and danced together. A colleague of mine shot a video of my so called Indian dancing, believe me (and I'm sure you will) it's one of the most embarrasing videos ever. EVER. But guess what my dancing is too good here in Congo, as when they started singing and I started dancing there were whistles blowing and people giving a standing ovation. As Russell Peters would say the Indian way "Too Good, tooooo goooood, A1, Fantastic, Mind-BLASTIC..." Only if the Indians saw it! They would be so embarrased. "What a shame?" They would say.

10. The food over here is so natural. No mass production, no pesticides, no additional additions. Just Pure Food!

I have not tasted chicken so good, soooo gooood as I have tasted here. Guess why? Exactly, its natural or as in India we would call it "It's Desi", there is no poultry industry and it tastes so good. So does the egg tastes amazing. So does the beef and the fish and the veges and everything else. Its just so different. I had forgotten what the chicken or beef tastes like originally untill I had it over here. Its just amazing how I have realised that the food that we eat is so crappy. Although I would say, I am kind of bored of eggs since I have been having eggs for breakfast all through the last whole month every single day, not a single day was missed when I did not have eggs. Just wondering about the breakfast in Goma right now. I am hoping that it will be different. Not looking forward to having eggs tomorrow morning.

11. Congo is a beautiful country abused by many in the history and at present for its natural wealth of minerals, gold and diamonds, it has one of the largest and deepest natural lakes in the world "Lake Kivu" on whose banks I lived last month in Bukavu and live presently in Goma, it is home to the few remaining mountain Gorillas, it has the second longest river in Africa "Congo River" or "Zaire River" after the Nile and it is the deepest in the world, it has some of the world's most spectacular natural beauty with majestic mountains that are also home to many of the rebel groups that spread terror in the villages and go on a rampage of killings spreading fear and death to the innocent and wonderfu people.

12. As usual internet remains crazy, but I am trying to upload some images and if it works out you'll see them, it it doesn't ofcourse you wont see them..But all in all its all good. I Am Loving It!

(Pictures: 1. I just thought that the "Cow" picture was really good, 2. Interviewing a service provider, 3. ONE LOVE @ the 50th Independence Day of DRC)

Thats all for now folks!

Best,

Mervyn

Update from DRC

Hi Everyone!
(There is no logical flow to this blog is what I realized after reading through it. I just wrote as I remembered things. Next time I will try hard and BTW this is the last sentence of this blog which I thought would be better if written first. Excuse me for any grammatical and spelling errors.)
Sorry that I have not been able to update you guys on a regular basis as things have been really intense and access to internet has been very limited. I have not had enough time to pen down my experiences and thoughts and so this comes as a quick update on what has been happening during the past 2 weeks.
First I guess most of you must be aware that I don’t know how to drive or maybe I should I didn’t know how to drive since I had my first driving lesson yesterday here in DR Congo and today I drove to the village out here right on the second day and it was fun driving on the dirt road with the dust surrounding. So now I know how to drive. It was just great.
Well regarding DRC, if anyone asked what would be something that you would notice being here that’s very vigilant? I would say you would notice the UN. Amazingly, lot of UN trucks and their brand new PRADOs with huge black “UN” signs cruising at full throttle. You will also see that all the organizations in the world are here, my only thought is that what are they doing here since you don’t see much happening in the villages out here. I could see the boards but when we asked people regarding services, it doesn’t seem like they are receiving services or care barring a couple that I have heard. Don’t know where all the money is flowing to…
People here are very warm and loving. The partners here that we are working with are full of ideas and understand the community very well. It’s a great learning experience. We work with two partners namely PAIDEK which does microfinance activities and Foundation Rama Levina (FORAL) that does health and development activities. They are empowering the communities through their activities.
Currently, I am here with Dr. Nancy Glass, who is a faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and also an Associate Director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. She is running projects for victims of sexual violence and also implementing a project Pigs for Peace through the two organizations I mentioned earlier. It is interesting to know that Pigs as a microfinance activity to support the livelihoods of the people is changing the household economy and also improving the relationship between community. It is also helping people send their children to school.
There is another PhD student from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Anjalee Kohli who is conducting a research on familial mediation for women victims of sexual violence. She is looking at how familial mediation could help reintegrate women within the community and households. When we went to the villages we saw huge numbers of women who are victims of sexual violence. I have never in my life seen such a huge number and many of them who have never received any services even though all the world’s prestigious organizations are present here doing something GKW.
Another student that has accompanied us is from the School of Medicine, Megan Rebarczyk (I don’t know if I have spelled her last name correctly.) She is doing rotations at the General Hospital at Bukavu and also looking at what kind of medicines and resources are available within the village clinics and General Hospital to provide basic services for victims of sexual violence.

As for me you know that I am conducting research on sexual violence against men and its impact on the victims and their families. I have interviewed eight victims. There were 6 victims who refused to talk. It’s difficult to identify victims as putting in the words of one community member “We don’t want to talk about it, the victim also doesn’t want to talk about it. It is better that this remains within the family and doesn’t come out. We are sad that this is happening.” When the community members are interviewed it did not seem that they did not know that this existed. The community does know that this exists. I will not write about my research findings here may be some other blog or when I write my papers from the research. But it is clear that this issue exists and it’s really a big problem socially, physically, mentally and economically.
Its interesting how our studies though different are supporting each other. My French is improving slowly slowly but as soon as I think that I am understanding it, I fail and sometimes its like epic fail. For example, very recently while we were invited for dinner at one of our partner’s house I by mistake told our translator that “You are eating your husband” But I actually wanted to say that “You are eating with your husband.” I forgot the “With” Big Mistake :-O How bad can it get? :-D. My colleagues here call that I am speaking Mervynese or may be Franglish.
After the 3 weeks of intense field work, which has yet not ended, we were invited by our partners to their homes for lunch and dinner and that was some amazing food that we had. People here are amazing. I feel so much at home with our partners. Really nice people. They also took us for dancing and it was so much fun. Surprisingly, people here are fans of Indian movies and they know all the stars of Bollywood – Amitabh Bacchan, Dharmendra, Amjad Khan, Shashi Kapoor, Sharukh Khan, Dileep Kumar, Hema Malini, Rekha and the list goes on. I was like really? So we went to this place called Saint Laic and they played Hindi songs “Ye duniya hain dilwaalo ki”, “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, Aaja aaja aaja” and “KAAAAAANTA LAGAAAAAA” J and we danced to it. It was hilarious. I guess the overdose of wine was working for all of us. After we danced to these songs people around applauded and came to congratulate us J Oh it was so hilarious. Also, I would say I love Congolese music. The Congolese dance movements are more concentrated on the hips for both men and women, it’s fun watching people dance too.
I am tired of writing and will write again later. Take care all of you folks! Best wishes…
Love,
Mervyn

Who'll cover your back when your pants are torn?

Recently I was on a trip to Bombay and was travelling by the local train from Vile Parle to Churchgate. One of the stations I saw a man climbing from the wrong side despite of announcements for not crossing over the railway tracks. But here I am not writing about rules and regulations its about a thought that crossed my mind when I saw that man climb over from the tracks on to the train. Now whoever must have travelled through these local trains would know that the coaches are pretty different from the regular trains as in they don’t have steps to climb. So if one has to climb from the wrong side he has to jump over the coach with the support of his hands first and then one of his feet and then the other or else the fellow passengers help you by pulling you up.

Now this man, really stout , tight pants and big butt climbed in an earlier manner, hands first then the foot and then the other foot kneeling on the coach’s floor, and at that very moment I thought “Shit! His pants are going to tear.” But fortunately they didn’t. I was reminded of my childhood days when once during school holidays my friend and I were up to regular mischief. During afternoon after knocking his neighbours doors and waking them from sleep, we were running to climb a wall to hide and as we were climbing the wall, my pants went “trrrrrrr....” and I was like “noooooooooooo...not at this moment far away from home how am I going to reach home? And plus the guy whom we have managed to piss off enough”. Everybody on the way back home would see my torn pants and laugh at my ass. Well not to say that my friend himself was into fits of laughter and needless to imagine how others would be reacting. We were the ones who used to play pranks and it’s taken a U turn. He could see the worry on my face and told me “You start running home and I’ll run right behind you and cover your back, won’t give a chance to anybody to see that your pants are torn.” And we did exactly the same and what a relief it was when I reached home. My thoughts just ran across this incident when I thought about that man’s pants tearing in the middle of his journey. It would have been an embarrassing situation and he would have no one to cover his back. At that moment, while Churchgate was 30 minutes away, I asked myself how many friends do I really have who  would stand behind me to cover my back? I was a bit afraid at the thought that the numbers would be few. So I started listing one by one and I was amazed, there were so many on whom I could actually count on and believe me what a relief it was. The same relief that many years back my friend gave me by covering my back. I was happy at the end by remembering each of these friends on whom I could rely unthinkably. Just stand at their doorstep in the middle of night and they wouldn’t mind a bit. All the more they would ask me what took you so long in coming to me. During that journey to Churchgate I was happy at this very thought, that I have quite a few friends. Then I thought how many people do actually have the privilege of having such friends who’ll cover their back when their pants are torn? Even if we have one such friend, believe me life will just sail through. These are the ones that we remember when life is at stake.  We could have a lot of friends with whom we share our happiness but how many do we have to share our troubles. Over the period of years, I have realised that the ones with whom we share our troubles are the ones who’ll stick around to cover our back.

Nowadays, social networking sites have changed the way how people see their friends. Most people see their friends in numbers. It has increased the number of people shown in the profile pages. Some of them have huge numbers in hundreds and thousands. I remember one such incident when a friend new to this whole business of social networking was actually worried that he just had a few numbers in his profile and rest all people in his profile had huge numbers. He felt low when he compared numbers. Do these numbers really matter? We are lost in facebooking and orkuting and numbers in the profile have started mattering so much that people really feel low by seeing less numbers in the profile. We have forgotten that what matters in those numbers are the ones who’ll stand by us and if we do not have a single person in those numbers who’ll cover our back then these numbers are just hollow as good as ZERO!

Cheers,

Mervyn

Leaving and not...

There are different kinds of disasters that we face in our life-time, the worse are the emotional ones which never leave you alone. These are again natural and manmade and there’s a very thin line between both of them it’s really hard to distinguish. Sometimes these are results of haste and sometimes due to delayed decisions or realisations.

Sometimes we are in situations that never leave us alone and sometimes we are so fucking lonely that nobody howmuchever we are surrounded can fill up that loneliness. Sometimes people come and go and we hardly feel the pinch and sometimes people go away and they never leave us, they are all around us. Sometimes you want some people to leave and they don’t, sometimes you don’t want some to leave and they do, only not to know when you would meet them again and then the waiting period starts. All the emotions are so stronger that even when they go away the bloody mind plays a trick by surrounding those very people in each and everything you do, say or feel, making it all the more heavier and unbearable and you want that waiting period to finish at the very moment you are living. Even though they have gone they are present and you can feel them there with you, making other people wonder as to “Lost”. Even sometimes when you are speaking to that someone you are lost with words, sometimes the feelings are so overwhelming that you want to say something and you blurt out something else. 

Slowly you tend to get involved with all the things around you but deep inside you are aware that it’s not changed sometimes it feels like no its gone but the next moment it just comes back. I don’t know what to do in such situations. At the very moment of realisation all we are able to say is “FUCK” or “SHIT”! I don’t know if there are any better or should I say polished words to put here. It’s not about the words, it’s about the aggression, the wrong timing or the right, it’s the helplessness and a lot of other things that we feel at that moment and continue to feel. These are the situations of which you have to endure.

Sometimes people whom you never wanted to leave they go away never leaving you alone and once you accept that they have left they come back with a bang and the bang is so fucking hard and in your face that you don’t know how to deal with it all you can say is “FUCK” or “SHIT”!

These are all different kinds of situations which are in most cases disastrous. I don’t want to elaborate or extrapolate on anything right now but I would want you to imagine these situations and when you imagine, I am sure it would turn so complicated and confused and you would say “This whole thing is so complicated confused or may be it doesn’t make sense” . May be I don’t want to make sense, may be whatever I have written is complicated and confused, may be its like yeah! That is the reason why I wrote this blog twice and deleted it alltogether. This is the third time and still I dont know how complicated or how much sense it makes...but whatever it is I would like you to know that I am in all this situations right now all at once....

Wanna "Make Water"?

Have you ever given ‘making water’ a thought? Well what if I told you that you make water every day, not once, twice but a lot many times. Yet we are still worried about water crisis. But it’s not the water that you think you are making it’s the other kind of water .

It’s been around 10 years now that I first heard about making water. I was out with one of my friends to a beautiful place full of trees and a small water body. When we reached the water body my friend told me “Mervyn, I want to make water, do you want to?”. I was so amazed that I had to rehear as I doubted what I heard, I said “Sorry?” At one point I thought this guy might be getting a little emotional about nature and stuff. And he went again “I want to make water”. Curiousity gripped me totally I told him “Dude that’s an amazing thought and I would like to make water too but that’s not possible. How in the world will you ‘make water’? And he realising that I didn’t understand, kind of broke it for me, showed his ‘little last finger’ and in a strained and loud voice “MAKE WATER F**KER”. I was like ok, good, go ahead and once he left I was laughing out myself. “Make water” how in the wildest of thoughts could one imagine bringing out such a phrase for “Pee”. Once he was back I told him “that wasn’t water Asshole that was ACID...” How can one just say he wants to make water and make acid?

I had completely forgotten about this whole “making water” thing until recently when I heard it again. Well this time I got it completely alright and was not able to laugh as the guy was not my friend nor was I able to tell him “Dude that’s acid not water”.

With this kind of English language skills I wonder where my Gujju brethren will go. I guess they’ll go “make water” J. The English language classes are mushrooming in Gujarat with big hoardings “Learn to speak English in just one month”. I guess such a phrase can only be their invention. I would like to suggest them to change their advertisements and put up “Along with English in a month also learn to ‘make water’ in just few minutes J”. These classes are screwing the language and they are doing it so very well that people cannot make the difference between pee and water. I hope nobody gets thirsty when my fellow Gujjus want to ‘make water’ J.

By the way now that you guys know about “Making water”, don’t misunderstand just give them way, let them ‘Make water, Peesfully.’  

Cheerios – Happy 'Make Water' times! J

Happy "Velan Time"!

Received an interesting and funny email related to Valentine's Day! I am sure you guys will enjoy this as much as I did. 

In spite of what you have been told by everyone, the truth is that Valentine's Day originated hundreds of years ago, in India, and to top it all, in the state of Gujarat !!!

It is a well known fact that Gujarati men, specially the Patels, continually mistreat and disrespect their wives (Patelanis). One fine day, it happened to be the 14th day of February, one brave Patelani, having had enough "torture" by her husband, finally chose to rebel by beating him up with a Velan (rolling pin to make chapattis). Yes....the same Velan which she used daily, to make chapattis for him.... only this time, instead of the dough, it was the husband who was flattened.

This was a momentous occasion for all Gujarati women and a revolt soon spread, like wild fire, with thousands of housewives beating up their husbands with the Velan. There was an outburst of moaning "chapatti-ed" husbands all over Anand and Amdavad.

The Patel men-folk quickly learnt their lesson and started to behave more respectfully with their Patelanis.

Thereafter, on 14th February every year, the womenfolk of Gujarat would beat up their husbands, to commemorate that eventful day - the wives having the satisfaction of beating up their husbands with the Velan and the men having the supreme joy of submitting to the will of the women they loved.

Soon The Gujju men realised that in order to avoid this ordeal they need to present gifts to their wives....they brought flowers and sweets. This is how the tradition - Velan time - began.

As Gujarat fell under the influence of Western culture, the ritual soon spread to Britain and many other Western countries, specifically, the catch words 'Velan time' !!! In course of time, their foreign tongues, this got anglisized to 'Velantime' and then to 'Valentine'.

And thereafter, 14th of February, came to be known as Valentine's Day and now you know the true story of Valentine's day.

BTW Wish you all a very Happy Valentine's!!