Going to Impfondo

In order to observe INCEF’s program implementation and the application of their communication methodology, I am going to the northern town of Impfondo, about 500 miles from Brazzaville, along with one of INCEF’s educators. There, we will meet with another INCEF educator who lives in Impfondo, and we will visit an outlying village to screen films on basic health as well as violence prevention, part of a UNICEF-funded project on which INCEF is currently working. The purpose of this trip, from my research perspective, is to give me the opportunity to observe INCEF’s communication methodology in action. While it is always valuable to listen to the descriptions and explanations of this methodology from other INCEF staff, observation is a key part of my research, and this current project around Impfondo is the only one I will have the chance to see on my visit.

We must fly to Impfondo, since it is not possible to drive there and a journey by river would take at least three weeks. It is a short flight, just about an hour, and uneventful. On its approach to land at the Impfondo airport, the plane swings wide over the river and lines up on a runway that ends in a green wall of vegetation. There is the usual noise and confusion inside the airport, and more official steps to take in order for me to be allowed to enter – I must hand over my passport, and wait as our “letter of mission” is scrutinized by a local official. Although this is a domestic flight and I have already been through visa and immigration procedures when I arrived in the country, this trip to another city must also receive official sanction and my planned activities in this area – along with those of the INCEF educator accompanying me – must be understood and approved by local authorities.

While waiting for the paperwork to be completed, I sit in a plastic chair in the lobby, watching the crowd of people meeting other arrivals on our flight. There is no other flight arriving today, and no flight departing. The airport reminds me a little bit of the old airport in Ithaca, NY: Gate 1 and Gate 2, arrivals and departures, and not a lot of chance for confusion or mixed up bags given the low volume of passengers. Then, one of those encounters that reminds me I am nowhere near Ithaca: a young man walks in carrying a hawk by its wings. He sets the bird down on the floor while he chats with a friend, and I can see the strings tied to its legs that keep it secured. I ask if I can take a photo, and the young man explains he uses the bird to fish.

Outside the airport, there is a small crowd sorting itself out as arriving passengers slowly leave. There is a woman sitting on the ground next to a small goat, which lies in a cloth bag, looking rather dispirited. We are being driven into town in a truck belonging to a local NGO, Medecins d’Afrique (MDA), and we load our luggage into the back of the truck. On the way out of the parking lot, we stop to buy some fish and chicken from women standing on the side of the lot with their buckets. The fish go into the back of the truck next to the luggage. Then we drive the ten minutes to my lodgings, a room rented from the nuns who live next to the Catholic cathedral. I can already tell that this trip is going to be a valuable learning experience, and I am beginning to get excited to see more. 

A view of the Impfondo airport from the parking lot, showing the primary mode of transportation in the area, motorcycles.

Below is a view facing away from the airport, which sits more or less at the edge of the jungle.

Studying Communication

I think that every academic researcher must experience a similar dilemma, the inevitable problem of trying to explain one’s work and discipline to outsiders – those family members, friends, and new acquaintances who, quite reasonably, would like to know “what you do” in your work. Communication researchers, however, seem to face an additional wrinkle in this explanation, I think, because the object of our study – “communication” – is a subject upon which everyone (it seems) considers him or herself an expert. The definition of our subject is also a question, (what do you mean by “communication,” anyway?) and most speakers also consider themselves to have a very good grasp of exactly what that definition is. They have very strong opinions on it, in fact.

I somehow doubt that physicists are routinely told, when they explain their work to non-academics, “Oh, yes, I use gravity every day. I know all about that.” Or that molecular geneticists are assured by new acquaintances, “Oh, yes, DNA. I have that. It’s pretty simple, right?”

Of course, this is not really a complaint, because all of the reactions generated by my response to the question, “So, what do you study, anyway?” also constitute data for me. The wrinkle does, however, create a rather difficult situation when research subjects do their best to tell me what they think I want to know about their communication, rather than simply letting me observe it. It seems to take a very long time before subjects will allow me to recede into the background, and become a mere observer, a data collection instrument, rather than the foregrounded oddity, outsider, random academic whose presence is cause for a great deal of speculation and conversation. Why would anyone need to study something so obvious?   

Small Steps

I have spent quite a bit of time recently wondering, how can I be of use here? What contributions, of a tangible nature, can my research and the theoretical tools I have available really produce? I also realize that this is jumping ahead quite a bit, but I think it comes in response to the situation I see around me. There is so much to do, and there are so many good people working hard, that the desire to contribute something right away is becoming an urgent need.

I also realize that I am not really ready to do this yet. There is a great deal I have not yet even seen – and there will be many things I don’t have time to see before I leave. When studying the activities of human beings, their communication and their work, you realize that nothing ever happens as your carefully crafted research agenda (constructed in the comfort of a home office) had predicted. This can be frustrating, but it can also be wonderful. It hardly ever, however, conforms to a pre-arranged schedule.

Walking around the city, and having conversations with INCEF staff, I realize that I am getting better at talking to people and I can understand more every day. I am also beginning to get a handle on the questions I need to be asking that I could not have anticipated from my perch in Seattle. One aspect that I had not foreseen, which turns out to be very important, is the role of communication with local bureaucracy. When I first conceived of this research project, I thought all local communication efforts would be focused on the population at large, particularly rural populations living in close contact with the forest and the wildlife. That is indeed the main focus of INCEF’s work and mission. There is another local audience, however, that occupies a very different position, and that requires a great deal of attention in order to make the other work possible. Coordination with local partners, including several different government ministries, requires energy, experience and expertise on the part of any NGO that wants to work here. It is a very different mode of communication from INCEF’s main work: it takes place in different settings, and in a different language (French, rather than Lingala or Kitouba), and often involves multiple stakeholders with different agendas.

The norms of bureaucratic communication, and the culture of government in Congo, play an important part in the work of getting the work done. Some initial conversations have suggested to me that personal connections are important in this process. This is not in any corrupt sense, but in the way that an individual’s personal credibility is judged and evaluated by interlocutors. Several people have also mentioned the importance of observing the polite formalities of face-to-face communication, allowing the conversation to cover more general topics, inquiries about the health of one’s family, the state of one’s children, and so forth, before diving in to the main purpose of a meeting.

These few initial observations indicate that there is “something” going on here, and that I should at the very least attempt to account for it in any revised project design, and in future efforts at data collection.    

Boiling the Water

This morning, I went through the chore of boiling large pots of tap water, then pouring the thoroughly boiled water into a large, stainless steel filter device. From the filter, the water is poured into re-used plastic water bottles, then placed on the counter in the kitchen. We use this water for cooking – rice, or pasta – and for making coffee or tea. For everyday drinking water, I purchase “l’eau potable” from the nearby shop, eight liters at a time. I think I am drinking almost three liters of water per day.

Several conversations recently with various public health professionals, all foreigners, have followed the same pattern. I ask about their work in Congo, and they tell me. They ask about my research, and I tell them. Then they say, “but the real problem here is cholera.” In other words, the problem that none of us is working on.

It seems to me, coming from my Western/Northern/‘developed’ world perspective, that “cholera” actually signifies something more than just a disease. It may stand for “extreme poverty,” or the very odd term “under-developed” (as though a country were a piece of film or a photographic print, removed from its developing fluid too soon). It is a disease spread through water and human waste, among people living without what many parts of the world now consider to be “basic” sanitation: a functioning public water system, drains, and waste water treatment. It may be a disease we read about in history books, afflicting the workers who dug the Panama Canal, or newly arrived immigrants in 19^th century US cities, living in slums without modern sanitation. It is a disease we associate with disasters, the dreaded aftermath of a tsunami or earthquake, especially in poor parts of the world. The spectre of cholera was raised after Hurricane Katrina, and it felt like yet another piece of the frame painting New Orleans and its residents as somehow more “backward” than the rest of the US.

If you can forgive the slide into interpretation in the paragraph above, what seems most significant about cholera and about the places that suffer from it, is that this is a problem whose solutions are relatively straightforward, involving some major public infrastructure, to be sure, but not requiring a great deal of laboratory research or trial and error. And that is also the problem.

The son of the president of the Republic of Congo lives right next door to INCEF’s headquarters. Or, I should more accurately say he owns a large, walled compound of several elegant, whitewashed buildings next door. But the public water system in this neighborhood does not work most of the time, which is the case for every neighborhood in Brazzaville. INCEF has, in fact, its own reservoir for the house, and this reservoir must be refilled with water purchased from a private company that delivers it in a truck. This fact does not stop the city water company from delivering a bill every month. Nor should one drink any of the water that comes out of the taps, regardless of its source. I doubt the president’s son drinks tap water. I know I don’t.