Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar.
Only a third of the city of Goma has access to running water. The remaining two-thirds of the city rely on private water trucks selling water, or, for the majority, walking to the shores of Lake Kivu to fill jerry-cans. Right next to where these people collect their water, cars and motorcycles are washed in the lake water, the oily run-off draining back into the lake. Not far from here, the boats chug in and out of the port, leaving residue in the water.
The waiting game
The provisional results of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s presidential elections were due today. In the centre of Lubumbashi, the main square was quiet. Usually abuzz with people after work, fear of unrest caused people to stay away. The rain didn’t help.
The giant screen outside the main post-office was showing advertisements. The guys in charge said they would not be showing the results here. The cinema opposite was closing early.
Driving to a bar usually bustling with the after-work crowd, a few danced indoors, but tonight the bar-tenders would not be busy. The streets outside were quiet.
And then came the announcement that the results would be postponed.
DR Congo election day
The ballots were due to open at 7am. At the polling stations, an hour or so beforehand, the queues were already forming, but it would prove to be far too optimistic. Huddled under umbrellas, voters waited for what would be only the second democratic elections in four decades, and the first one to be organised by the Congolese; the previous elections were largely organised by the international community and the United Nations.
Officials at a school-cum-polling station said that they were still awaiting election materials: not only the ballot papers themselves, but voting booths and urns.
This was not the case throughout the city. At the largest voting station in the Lubumbashi—DR Congo’s second city—voting opened as small queues trickled into the many classrooms that had been transformed into voting offices. The maze of striped plastic tape marking out queuing lines for each office seemed a little optimistic.
Then came news of the first of the day’s incidents. In the early hours of the morning, a convoy of pick-up trucks delivering voting materials had been attacked, leaving two burning by the side of the road, their ballot papers smouldering.
We raced over there, and found a crowd of people. Cautiously, I approached as my colleagues from the BBC and RFI spoke to people standing around; I hoped the mob would not turn angry.
I was accosted by people showing me burned ballot papers, amidst cries in French of fraud. Every now and then, a “pre-marked” ballot paper would be held out, but after several minutes of photographing them, I began to question their veracity. Different pens, some crosses, some ticks, a few with thumb prints on them. And none of the papers still burning in the trucks showed evidence of tampering. The local populace, who had rushed the scene, had done this themselves I concluded, after conferring with the radio folk.
It was 9am, and already, there were several angles to cover in the day’s voting. This was going to be a long day.
Driving from Marsabit, crossing the Chalbi desert, we got lost at night, in the vast expanse of black. We were headed to a small town where we could spend the night, but there are few lights in this part of the world, and once we lost the track, it wasn’t easy to find. Our faith was in the driver. In the end, he turned up trumps.
