Weekend events in Bangui

Driving out of town in a shiny USAID truck, things started looking very familiar: unpaved roads lined with lean-to boutiques and the hustle and bustle of walkers, bikers, motto-taxi men, half-naked children and agitated chickens. I could have easily been in Cameroon, particularly after having enjoyed a traditional Cameroonian meal of Koki and boiled plantains with Wendy, a fellow Peace Corps Cameroon volunteer turned USAID contractor.

And up until this point it was a normal day in Africa, but that changed abruptly as we turned into Bangui’s famous go-karting establishment. So there I was, taking in the scenery of rural Africa, surrounded by tree-covered hills dotted with mud-brick houses, while go-karts whizzed by at an alarming speed. The back-story to this aberration is not clear. While currently run from the mayor’s office, it is thought that some Lebanese businessman showed up with five or six cars and offered to sell them to the political elite for an exorbitant fee. One still wonders what would have possessed anyone to show up in Africa with a fleet of toy cars, however, Africa tends towards illogic in these cases.

So as CAR (no pun intended) slowly starts to open up to me, I have begun thinking more and more about development and its affect on a country. Saturday night I ate a wonderful Lebanese meal and then attended a lively expat party with food and drink and entertainment in excess. The hosts happened to live next to President Bozize’s girlfriend and we casually wondered whether our fête might disturb them. These are the things I find amusing; the parties, the social politics, the Saturday-night outings and the general dynamics within the lively expatriate community.

But in a larger sense, I continue to be puzzled by this place. Pre-go-karting I found myself at marché centrale, the city’s main market where I expected to roam about purchasing a few necessities and maybe indulging in a little fabric shopping. But I was quickly deterred by the ridiculously inflated prices of so many already second-rate Chinese goods. The plastic cup I would have bought for about 25 cents in Cameroon costs a dollar here. The cheaply made African dresses I love to accumulate are four times the price here in Bangui. And I was stunned to learn that it costs about 1,000 USD per month to rent a house here. Compare that to Yaoundé, capitol of Cameroon and a huge economic hub where you would be set back only about 50 USD per month…I was floored. A head of garlic is about 75 cents, a hunk of fish 5 USD and all in a country where the majority of the population lives on less than 1 USD per day. How is this possible?

As a grants intern, I am dealing with IRC’s finances at an extremely intimate level. As I watch the flow of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I realize that IRC is only a small fish in a very large sea of humanitarian aid that has absolutely inundated this country. CAR’s main source of income? White people. No joke. And it is so hard to feel positive about the role of development when you begin to realize how far removed the system has strayed from what I believe to be the fundamental reason for its existence – the improvement of people’s lives, specifically African lives. I’m here living in Africa. I spend 10 hours each day combing through reports about Africa. I engage coworkers in discussions about Africa but I have never felt further removed from a place in my life and it’s jarring to say the least.

So in order to prevent myself from succumbing to true gloom-and-doom I’ve been trying to throw out small lifelines here and there. One of the IRC chauffeurs has been teaching me a bit of Sango and I’m hoping to learn more. I replace merci with singila or ‘thank you’ whenever possible and have been rewarded with amused smiles from the Central African staff at the office. Likewise I spent a good half hour chatting with one of the guards at the guesthouse this evening as we discussed the nuanced flavor differences between pygmy goat meat and regular goats (whose legs are longer…pygmy goat is apparently tastier). It helps me feel a little more grounded and less apt to tear my hair out. It makes me hold out hope that the many thousands of dollars we might receive in September from the European Union might enact some small measure of positive change. After all, go-karts exist here so you gotta figure anything’s possible.