Ndagala anyone?

Ordering from a lunch menu in French is a slightly daunting task, if you don’t read or speak French. When the writer starts to throw in local words, it is even more challenging. The dish title was “Plate Tanganyika,” and the line underneath read Ndagala. When my host asked what it was for me, the response came back fish, even though we later discovered the waiter could barely speak French. Since we were at a lunch/sandwich type of place, there were not a lot of non-wheat options for me besides salad, so I said, "Ok let’s try the fish and chips" (fries for Americans).

When the plate arrived, we were both surprised, if not a little shocked.
Ndagala is the local word for what could best be described as a larger than life, fresh water anchovy (and they were slightly breaded too). Well, I ordered them, so I may as well try to eat them. My first response, not too bad! It tastes a little like a cross between a French fry, potato chip and some crisp drippings from a mild flavored meat. Add a little mayonnaise and wala, they just go right down. It was a fully deep fried meal.

I offered some to my host and he politely declined. Afterwards he said he would have sent them back. He is not that adventurous with his food. First time for everything and maybe a last.

Rwanda, Congo, Burundi

The last two weeks I (Steve) have been on my new assignment with WR in East Congo and Burundi. It has been a great experience.

Travel. The planes were normal, but the airport in Nairobi was small and cramped. It is a half circle with lots of shops packed between the relatively narrow hallway and chairs. The transfer desks (if you can call them that) are stuck in a corner with no lights and limited signage. In fact, the first time through, I missed it entirely, but when I went to enter the gate, the agent rejected me saying that check-in had closed and I did not have a boarding pass. I had asked at the information desk and they said, just go to the gate and get your pass. We discussed, I ran back to get a boarding pass and made the flight. Phew! I did not want to spend an unnecessary night in the town some call Ni-rob-u.

Driving in Cars. This was not normal. The first car I got in seemed perfectly normal (steering wheel on the right, normal for Southern Africa). But, when the driver pulled out onto the road, he also drove on the right! (normal for the US). This puts the driver on the shoulder side of the road, not the center line, making it really hard to see around big trucks when you want to pass on a 2-lane road. I can do left side steering wheel on the right side of the road, and right side steering wheel on the left side of the road, but not right on right. I was afraid it would scramble my thinking too much. Needless to say, I let others drive. After the first week, all the cars I rode in drove on the side of the road they were designed for. (If you look in the side mirror you can see the driver on the other side.)

Rwanda. It is a beautiful country. Green and clean. The roads are in good shape, being upgraded and in the capital, there a lots of 4 lane roads, with lots of room. I was there on two weekends, so maybe the traffic was lighter. At the airport, there is a sign, “no non-degradable plastic bags allowed.” If you have shrink wrapped your luggage, it must come off before you leave the airport. Once they checked my suitcase crossing the border back in and someone said they were looking for plastic bags. There is a designated work day (couple of hours Saturday morning) when all citizens must be involved in community help projects. If you are found driving about during that time, the police will stop you and put you to work right along the road. One visiting U.S. church team had that opportunity. Overall the country side was gorgeous.


DRC (East Congo). The town of Goma is right on the border with Rwanda. We stayed in a hotel that was literally built on the water’s edge. There was no beach and if you looked closely enough, you could see where the volcanic lava flow cooled as it hit the water. It was right beside the foundation walls. According to the web, Goma had a volcanic eruption in 2002 that destroyed the city. Apparently several large fissures opened up right in the commercial center and vented towards the lake. It destroyed everything including a large majority of clinics, hospitals and pharmacies. It sounded like a disaster of biblical proportions. That explained why everyone was building, everywhere. Why they are building 3-story, 3-4,000 square feet per floor in this undeveloped town in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know. Just dig down to get your building materials.

It is a stark contrast to Rwanda. Most of the streets are volcanic gravel and ash, with lots of litter. The paved roads are in poor shape, with no traffic lights in evidence. The UN has basically occupied the region as the government does not have enough resources to deal with the rebel fighters who still regularly stop cars to take cell phones and valuables. Go jogging and you meet soldiers carrying machine guns on their morning exercise in sweats. It does give one pause.

We avoided the remote stretches of roads during a visit to the neighboring city of Bukavu by taking a speed boat (2.5 hours) across Lake Kivu. It was a long ride, especially the outbound trip as the lake was rough and it really jarred us hard. Plus you are cramped in small seats with your fellow passengers. Coming back was smoother, but I was ready to get out of the boat.
Lake Kivu is one of the three exploding lakes in Africa. It is extremely deep (18th in the world) and loaded with methane and CO2. Every millennia or so it explodes and causes mass extinctions in the surrounding area. Presently 2 million people live in the area around it. Rwanda has a project that is harvesting the methane and generating electricity. I figured the chances of it not exploding while I was there for 6 days were pretty good.

My primary reason for being in Goma was to participate in two full days of meetings with the WR micro-finance board and review the agricultural loan pilot project. I learned a lot and still have more to learn.

Burundi. Here I never made it out of town, except to go to the airport. Partially because I was in meetings for four days (two days for microfinance called Turame and two days with WR. It did not make a lot of sense to travel with WR when we needed to talk and set some direction first. They were all good meetings even if they were long. I met some great folks and learned lots more.

There is not a lot of adventure when you stay in the same hotel for six nights and just go to meetings, but the people I spent time with said that the rebels still come into town at night and attack the police posts with grenades and machine guns.

One morning I went running and as I headed down the dirt road just beyond the hotel, I heard the guard whistle. Was that for me? I stopped and looked back and sure enough he was running toward me, jabbering in French. So I said, “I don’t speak French.” Then he grabbed his throat and said bandi, bandi, making a choking sound. Even if I didn’t speak French, I sure got the idea that that particular stretch had some potential bandit risks and I should jog on a different set of roads.

Bujumbura is the capital and perhaps the only capital city in the world without a single stop light. The drivers are nearly as crazy as Mozambique and the traffic is worse than Lilongwe in Malawi during rush hour, with long lines of traffic. Most main roads are paved, with some in cobblestone. With all the mountains, there are plenty of resources for that. They say the Chinese are putting these in more residential areas. What is really tough is seeing the cobblestone speed bumps since they blend in to the rest of the road so nicely. For real!

Bujumbura is located on Lake Tanganyika, not exploding, but one of the great lakes in E. Africa. You can read a little more about it in my next blog.

Lots of construction here too, but since labor is cheap, most work is done by hand. Check out the cement pouring crew. Another site had more than what looked like more than 100 men, just on top of the building.

Rainbows all around, Victoria Falls

At the end of our team trip to Zambia, we spent some time at Victoria Falls, debriefing and having meetings in a wonderful and relaxing setting. While I have been to Zambia numerous times, I never really took the time to seriously consider visiting the falls as it is quite out of the way from where I normally travel. First, some interesting facts about the falls. It is considered one of the 7 wonders of the world. It is not the world’s highest waterfall, nor the widest, but claims to be the largest sheet of falling water in the world. It is more than a mile across the face and the water drops 354 feet. The local name for the falls is “the smoke that thunders.” If you see the falls from the back side, and you don’t know it was water, you might think it was just another fire in an African field or bush.


The first morning a group of us set out to visit the falls. As we left the hotel, someone said we should take a rain coat or umbrella as you might get wet. I thought, OK and retrieved an umbrella. As we approached the falls, we saw a place where you could rent rain coats, but we had an umbrella. There is a deep gorge that the water drops into, but the gap across the gorge is not that wide, so we set out on the path to look at the falls from directly across from it. A short way down that path, it began to sprinkle. A little further it began to pour and then blow the water sideways. Lots of good an umbrella did. As we continued, we soon realized that we were going to get soaked no matter what.

Coming to a small bridge, we met a group coming from the other side. As we passed, one woman soaked to the skin and wearing a rain coat shouted above the roaring of the falls, “It is not for the faint of heart.” The stairway itself was a series of small waterfalls, with 2-3 inches of water flowing down the pathway. We continued on across the face of the gorge, only about 200 feet from the falling water. It was amazing. The rain was created by the rising mist (smoke) and the wind was generated by the falling water as it pushed the air out of the gorge. We were in the midst of a tropical rainstorm on a sunny day. The effect around the edges of the falls it that you see rainbows almost everywhere you look, particularly if the sun is behind you.

Fortunately the water and the day were warm, but it still took hours to dry out our clothes. If I had known, I would have worn swimming trunks and a tee shirt with crocs. (Some people did, but not in our group.) Fortunately I had taken a plastic bag to wrap the camera in or it might be in the repair shop by now.

We also climbed down the backside of the gorge to the area called the boiling pot, a half mile long trail that dropped the full 530 feet and was a bit challenging in places. From there we had a good view of the bridge to Zimbabwe where people with money and courage bungee jump into the gorge (not on my bucket list, but fun to watch). This gorge is not very wide, but must be quite deep and the water really moves along. We thought we would be gone maybe an hour, but it ended up being a 3 hour visit overall.

The first part of the trip was a combination of excitement of visitors and boredom of long rides by car. We did take advantage of one day in the car (7 am until 11:30 pm) to have a long and detailed management meeting for the business entity ZambiaWorks. We were mostly done by dark and just watched the brush go by or dozed for five hours. The team was mostly from Chicago, with two WR leaders and a videographer from California thrown into the mix. The videographer missed the first leg of his flight and had to come by himself in a small car the second day. The car had two flats and rolled the last 50 km on the steel rim. He was saying his prayers and telling God to take good care of his family should he not make it back alive. We all got a chuckle out of that, but if it was my first time in the middle of nowhere, I might have felt the same way. He was a great guy and very talented. If you watch CNBC or Fox documentaries, you have probably seen some of his work.

One very unique event that happened on this trip was an audience with a second level chief in Mongu. He hosted us in his “palace” as ZambiaWorks and Hands of Hope, our Chicago partner, had build an 8-classroom school block in one of his villages. We had to follow the traditional customs where men and women used different entrances. The ladies said they had to kneel on a mat before entering. We were allowed to sit in chairs, but the under chiefs sat on reed mats and bowed and clapped to call the chief from his home. He came out with a military guard, a very English hat and some kind of animal tail, wisp, whip or scepter that is his symbol of power. The guard is assigned to protect the tail as if this is stolen by the people, he loses his authority and power.

We had a good conversation with him and talked about the school. He mentioned that he would love to host us in his office and not keep us out in the hot sun, but it was too small and falling down (a subtle hint that we could build him a new one). We also had all our bags with us as we were switching hotels that morning. The guard thought these were gifts and told us we could unload them around back.

The school handover celebration was a big deal and quite political as all the “big” people showed up and had to introduce each other according to seniority/protocol. We had four such introductions to get to the main speaker of the day. There was lots of traditional dancing and some of it quite interesting, but not very edifying. It took the better part of five hours to complete the ceremony. Lesson learned: we won’t do it the same way next time we build a school.
All in all it was a great experience.