A passport to nowhere

A few weeks ago I received an anguished message from my friend Patrick, my co-investigator in matters religious in Bangui, as I mentioned in my last post.

Patrick works for an international humanitarian NGO that, with the exception of a horrid (but largely covered-up) sex scandal, has become one of the most steadfast of the aid groups present in northeastern CAR. The job was Patrick's first for an aid group, and thanks to the mentoring of his former boss and his own helpfully-inflated sense of pride in a job well done, he became one of the organization's most-trusted employees. He now has a dream: to work, just once, as an ex-pat. Partly, this is because he yearns to see some of the world. And partly, it is because he has noticed that expatriate employees earn exponentially more than national staff, and just one posting abroad would be enough to secure his dream of building a farm for himself and his family in the southwestern countryside.

Pride, excitement, and not a little apprehensiveness mixed in his demeanor as he told me that his bosses had nominated him to attend a workshop on gender violence in Nairobi. It would be his first trip outside the region. For my part, I was purely thrilled. As someone who has always adored going to new places, perhaps I over-value things like trips. But even if that's the case, I was happy that Patrick would get a chance to see a bit more of the world and expand the knowledge that would help him contrast his Central African experience with those of people elsewhere. Not everyone desires (or has the privilege of) this kind of anthropological perspective, but Patrick does. He put himself through college by spending evenings at the airport, where he could use the streetlights to do his homework while earning money watching travelers' cars in the open car park. Now he too would be taking off.

After a three-week work stint in the far Northeast, Patrick returned to Bangui to take care of passport formalities in advance of his trip. For the past two or three years, CAR has been in the process of switching out its old passport facilities for a new, biometric system. (Apparently, the US has pushed for these changes.) This has meant that the passport authorities have been shuttered for more than two years. The only passports obtainable during that time were those purchasable (illegally) at PK5, Bangui's big market. (The existence of such a large black market in passports is part of why people say there are more Central African diplomatic passports than regular ones.) If your passport expired during the past two years, tough luck. If you never had a passport before (like Patrick), also tough luck.

Fortunately, the new biometric facilities opened at the end of June. Unfortunately, the minister and his adjoint responsible for managing the office went en mission to Ndjamena shortly thereafter. These two lead the process of convening an audience at the presidency, and this commission decides whether the person should be granted a passport. In their absence, Patrick's completed dossier languished. His plane to Nairobi came and went. He remained in Bangui, and the passport officer remained in Ndjamena. “L'Afrique c'est le monde le plus compliqué, comprends” (“Africa is the most complicated place, you understand”), he wrote, and then refused to talk any more about it – the memory was too bitter.

Thus I found myself in the perhaps contradictory position of lamenting the injustice that one person could not go en mission and the injustice that another had gone en mission. A friend who used to work for an international organization in Bangui complained that she would continually get calls from headquarters asking her to name a Central African delegate to a global conference. (These junior staffers are judged on whether they manage to round someone up from every country.) She finally refused when the request came for a representative to the world conference on tigers in St. Petersburg last year: with no tiger within thousands of miles of CAR, why should some functionary be plucked from his office – where ostensibly he has work to do – to spend several weeks (given the paucity of planes into Bangui, any trip quickly becomes a long one) on a per diem-paid vacation like that? There is a small conference class in Bangui that trots around the world to round out attendance statistics. (One friend who is part of this select group admits that most people just show up each morning to sign the register and claim their per diem and then depart, a practice he decries) But for everyone else, even just being allowed to obtain the documents necessary to be permitted to leave the country requires a massive feat of organization and lobbying. (And let's not get started on the travails of those seeking visas to North America or Europe...) Everyone is shooting for those narrow holes – the “conference gaps” in the global immigration system. What would it take to figure out and make new openings?

From Hannah Arendt onward, much thought has been expended over the plight of the stateless, who have no one to approach for a passport; but what of the state-d who nevertheless are denied the basic rights of citizenship?

All this reminds me: time to renew my passport. I sure am lucky.

How to be a Winner

Over the past couple of decades the number and variety of churches in Africa have seen a major expansion. Led by West Africans, and especially Nigerians, the pentecostal churches have quickly gained ground from the staid outposts of the previous century's Christian missionaries. The new churches are the object of much fruitful anthropological study (Birgit Meyer's work has been ground-breaking; my friend and colleague at Duke, Brian Goldstone, studies the prosperity gospel in predominantly-Muslim northern Ghana). The churches arrived late to CAR, but their presence has been growing, so I decided I'd go and check one out for myself.

I picked La Chapelle des vainqueurs (Winners' Chapel) because I remembered puzzling over its name when I saw it while living in Nairobi in 2004. I brought Patrick, a Central African friend who works for a humanitarian agency. We sneaked into Sunday morning's service a few minutes late. Inside, the hall had little adornment. Signs with one-word inspirational-moral prods (“prosperity,” “faith,” “supernatural,” “wisdom,” “healing”) marked the places where other churches might have depicted the stations of the cross. Here, I saw not a single cross.

At first I didn't recognize the preacher's language – his screaming and the microphone's distortion made deciphering words difficult. A translator quickly repeated his every phrase into crisp French. It dawned on me that the mysterious language was a heavily-accented Nigerian English. “Eh-ta-do!” became a clear “C'est fait!” in French. Only thanks to the French version did I figure out that the preacher kept repeating not “the war of God” but “the word of God”.

Despite the continual references to the word of God, God's actual words were notably absent from the service. I counted only two direct biblical references – to Matthew (Jesus as healer) and Romans. And we were treated to only one song. Instead, the preacher and translator worked themselves into rhythmic, repetitive incantations: “Heey-too!” “Il a pris!” “Heey-too!” “Il a pris!” The themes of health and wealth ran through it all.

Testimonials (my favorite part) punctuated the sermon. One man came forward and told how he had been preparing a dossier to submit for a Termes de référence (a contract bid). He lacked some of the required paperwork, but when he went to drop off the folder the person told him it didn't matter. And he got the contract! Everyone cheered and clapped. Another man told how he was en mission (the terminology used for trips outside the capital) to Paoua when he got in a car accident and broke his arm. He made it to a healer in Bossangoa, who set the bone and handed him a piece of string to tie around his wrist and protect him from the town's witches. He tossed away the man's string. And look at him now – his arm is fully healed, and no witches were able to come near him!

Later, the preacher asked “all the businessmen” to come forward. Patrick whispered to me curiously, “It looks like everyone is going forward.” Indeed, the pews had emptied. This is really strange in CAR, where there are very few businesspeople. The small salaried class all draw their paychecks from the state or aid agencies. Most of the businesses are run by expatriates – Chadians and Cameroonians in the markets; French, West African and middle Easterners in minerals; Lebanese in imports – to the extent that “businessman” is almost synonymous with “foreigner” here. I wondered if perhaps Winners' Chapel encourages people to think of themselves as entrepreneurs in order to attain wealth. If so, the arrival of these churches here can only count as a good thing, for an expansion of people's imagination of the realm of paid employment beyond the state is sorely needed.

Toward the end of the three-hour service, the preacher turned to public health. He called on people to avoid exposed food (flies can come and set up on it, he explained), turned that entreaty into a spiritual metaphor (you have a doctor in you!), and then finished on a bombastic note: “Destroy diabetes! Destroy AIDS!”

Once the service had wrapped up, all of us first-timers were invited to stick around and fill out cards with our contact info (I gave my real info and have yet to be contacted) and sip warm sodas. I guess even I won something.

Typo

One typo in my SWP Comments piece -- where it says "UN Peacebuilding Fund" it should read "UN Peacebuilding Commission."

CAR: Peacebuilding Without Peace

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Denis M. Tull, I enjoyed a couple of months as a guest researcher at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (the German Institute for Security and International Affairs) in Berlin this spring. One outcome is my (short) piece "CAR: Peacebuilding Without Peace" for their "SWP Comments" series.

The 'gerund defense,' alive and well

L'universitaire Roland Marchal a été abondamment cité à Bruxelles, les 16 et 17 juin, lors de la table ronde des bailleurs de fonds sur la Centrafrique....ce spécialiste des conflits a produit un rapport très critique sur le niveau de fraude enregistré lors des élections couplées (présidentielle et législatives) dans ce pays, le 23 janvier. A croire que cela n'a pas convaincu. Au cours de la rencontre organisée au Palais d'Egmont, en présence de quinze ministres centrafricains et de l'homme d'affaires Hicham Kamach, roi des forêts en Centrafrique, le Banque africaine de développement (BAD) a annoncé le doublement de ses engagements à 180 millions $. Et la Banque mondiale, qui a salué "les efforts considérables en faveur de la paix", devait augmenter de 20% en volume son portefeuille de projets.

(From La Lettre du continent, No. 614, 23 June 2011)

Translation:

Professor Roland Marchal was often cited in Brussels during the donor roundtable for the CAR on 16-17 June. This conflict specialist produced a report that was very critical of the presidential and legislative elections in this country on 23 January. Apparently it did not convince. Over the course of this meeting at the Palace of Egmont, in the presence of fifteen Central African ministers and the businessman Hicham Kamach, King of the Forests in CAR, the ABD announced that it would double its investments to $180 million. And the World Bank, which saluted the country's "considerable efforts in favor of peace," will augment its portfolio in the country by 20%.

What it really means:

The 'gerund defense' is alive and well.

Monday's Tidings

I was happy when I looked across the compound yesterday morning and saw Carine walking toward me, her small frame engulfed in a billowing West African boubou. I had thought of Carine and her sister, Berenice, often since I left CAR in December. Two of twenty-eight siblings, they were due to give birth within days of each other.

I asked first after Carine’s baby, who I’d heard had been sick last week. He’s doing better now, thankfully. Then I asked after Berenice. I’d only met Berenice a few times, but she’d quickly won me over with her vibrancy, generosity, warmth and smarts. I’d brought some baby board books for her and hoped to meet up with her soon.

“Elle est morte.”

Carine’s response made no sense to me. My first thought: she’s joking. My second thought: “morte” must have some alternate meaning that I’m not aware of. The idea that such a strong, healthy woman could just die seemed absurd.

Once I’d sat down, Carine explained. Berenice had gone into labor. At first, it seemed things were OK. But the doctor said she would need an operation. Sometime while she lay there, her abdomen gaping wide, she and the baby passed away.

I suppose I’m naive to be so shocked. CAR has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. But I realized that I had thought of those statistics as the statistics of other people, of people without access to doctors or people unable to take various precautions during pregnancy. When I last saw Berenice, a professor of geology at the University of Bangui, she explained how she was watching her diet and avoiding sugar and caffeine and visiting her physician regularly, all for the sake of her baby-to-be.

I had met her at a workshop of political “fragility”. Of the few women present, she spoke with the most passion. I’ll always remember her heartfelt monologue on the challenges of living with pervasive witchcraft. She joked comfortably with even the most senior people present. She had not just confidence, but confidence back up by intelligence. All that energy. Gone.

I went through the day with half a brain. The rest had clouded over, preoccupied and foggy. When I discussed Berenice’s passing with friends, many responded with some variation on “Si elle est morte, c’est que Dieu l’a voulu” (“If she is dead, it’s because God wanted it to happen”). I don’t buy it. But if I wanted to pull a shred of personal meaning from what was essentially a meaningless death -- that is, an unncecessary, preventable one -- I might take it as a stark reminder of the limits of anthropological values of relativism. I often find myself trying to explain -- to frustrated aid workers, for instance -- how people here aren’t just irrational or backward, and how their ways of life make sense if only you stop to try to understand the world from their perspective.* But deaths like this one are not to be understood. They are to be decried and abhorred and mourned.

* This is something of a caricature of both the aid workers’ and my own perspectives. For instance, recent anthropological work both important and fascinating (such as that of my adviser, Charles Piot) has tried to take the experience of radical uncertainty -- including the fragility of life in a place like Bangui -- seriously as a mode of sociality and understand the struggles it engenders.

Update: Bangui on the Potomac

Last week I trudged through the Washington humidity to embassy row. The facade of the CAR embassy looked even more derelict than usual. Some indeterminate building material (paint?) hung precariously, like the bark of a eucalyptus tree. A piece of paper was taped beside the door. It bore the handwritten message that “The Ambassy of the C.A.R. has moved.” Well, I thought, it has happened. It was only a matter of time.

The CAR government bought this prime real estate shortly after independence in 1960 and then left it to decay. From its innocuous beginnings, the building metamorphosed into a fun house of dangers: rusty springs booby-trapped chair seats, stairs warped so drastically they led climbers downward as they attempted to ascent, light fixtures sprouted colorful exposed wires. Staff learned to pick careful paths through the hazards. Instead of fixing the place up, the CAR government decided last year to put the building on the market. A private couple paid $1.099 million -- cash -- to purchase the house and will likely spend a similar sum to return it to the kind of habitable space they desire.

Meanwhile, nestled between the ‘Sandinista Safeway’ and Chief Ike’s bar, the new CAR embassy announces itself not with a flag (they moved in only a month ago), but with a gaggle of young men hanging out on the porch watching the world go by, just like in Bangui. Inside, employees debated the proper positioning of presidential portraits amid the plastic ficus plants and shiny, lightweight pleather couches. France 24’s talking heads blared from a small flatscreen. The government bought this 2704 Ontario Rd. edifice for $800,000, which, after adding a couple thousand dollars’ worth of furniture, still leaves a tidy margin. The new embassy is not without its oddities: the waiting area abruptly gives out onto a linoleum-floored space, the ghost of a kitchen or bathroom. And here, too, the gaping electric sockets spit wires.

Still, it was heartening to see the evident pride with which the receptionist inhabited his sprawling desk in the entryway. What would it take to transform that pride into a broader sense of responsibility for the building and the institution it represents? Regular cash flow would be an obvious factor; but if it were that simple one would think the $200 visa fee (a $50 hike since last time I checked) would help in that regard, and this doesn’t seem to be the case.

I managed, through no more nefarious means than a little pleasant schmoozing, to obtain my visa within an hour, rather than the official 48-hour processing time. And, by the time I post this, I will be back in Bangui la Coquette.