uwehorstmann.de » Africa

Condition: Critical – insights from Congo

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:12:53 +0000

My dear friend Teresa, who herself worked as a doctor in Rwanda and will go back to work in a hospital in Nairobi soon, showed me this impressive video about the situation in eastern Congo today.

Unfortunately, the embedding doesn’t work properly – the video can be found here: http://www.condition-critical.org/

It is taken from the website Condition: Critical, published by Medecins sans Frontières. While it doesn’t contain a lot of background information, it gives a depressing impression of individual situations in the Kivus.

I wrote some more about Congo here and here.

Fighting in Congo

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:42:00 +0000

Fighting has errupted in the past week in the area around Goma, located in the Nord-Kivu region bordering to Rwanda. Having spent a big part of 2006 working on the UNICEF and UNHCR transports going from Dar es Salaam (in Tanzania, and a major port, more information see here) to Goma makes one feel even more desperate.

However, the Maniema region and its capital Kindu seem to be largely unaffected. In fact, the provincial government has enacted a deescalation strategy which apparently seems to work fine. As it looks right now, my stay in Congo from January to March will not be affected.

Some more facts and photos on Africa

admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:02:43 +0000

I found some more shots from Africa in my picture folders and uploaded them to my flickr account. Also, I created a small overview site on my stays in Africa, which can be found either here or in the top navigation bar.

Back to the Democratic Republic of Congo – January to March 2009

admin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:45:52 +0000

UPDATE: As of late October / early November 2008, fighting has errupted in Eastern Congo, especially in the Kivu region, which borders the Maniema region, where I will be going in January. in the General information about my stays in Africa is available.

News concerning 2009: I’m most likely going to finish my studies with a final stay in DR Congo. I’ll be stationed with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in Central Congo, namely the Maniema province and its capital Kindu. I got some first impressions – as seen below – out of the great flickr photo stream of Julien Harneis.

My task there will be in the microfinance area and I will be writing my final thesis about this topic. I’m looking forward to an excellent first hand experience on the ground, as well as hopefully being able to help developing this activity further. The region is also home to some United Nations presence, including Nepali peacekeeping forces, if I’m not mistaken.