Peter Biro (left) with Congo mortality team leader Maxim Bushiri (on the back, right) and Rafael Jedi. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

A previous IRC survey found that nearly four million people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998–making it the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II. The new study about to be released shows the numbers steadily rising.

Part 1  l  Part 2: Deeper into the jungle - Kalima to Misoke  l  Part 3 

Having eventually made it to Kalima following an emergency stop at the Maloani Isungo’s house in the small village of Kio, we were ready for the next leg of our journey. The IRC mortality survey team has randomly picked a village called Misoke, where the population will be interviewed about their health and any recent deaths in their households. There are no maps available, but we are joined by Merveille Njolombe, a local health official, who will guide us through the bush.

“It will take many hours to reach our destination,” he says vaguely as he kick-starts his motorbike.

Once again we have to cross a river before we can start our trip in earnest. The Ulindi, a tributary to the Congo River, used to separate two of the main combatants in this region: the dreaded Mai-Mai militia and the Rwanda-allied rebel Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD).

“The Mai-Mai used to cross here to attack the RCD who used an airstrip near Kalima,” Merveille says as our canoe, unsteady by the weight of our three motorbikes, follows a lazy current to the opposite river bank. “For a long time it was impossible to cross this river because Mai-Mai controlled all villages on the other side.”

As we unload the motorbikes, the boatman shakes his head.

“You will fall a hundred times,” he grins. “The road is very, very bad.”

He is right. The next ten hours prove to be a seemingly never-ending ordeal across an extremely bad jungle road. We are sliding around in mud, lifting the bikes over large fallen trees and balancing them precariously over wild rivers. These crossings become the curse of the journey. Each obstacle seems hazardous and countless times I have to jump off the bike and push it across. It is easy to understand why motorbikes bigger than 125cc are seldom used here; they would simply be too heavy and cumbersome to drive and lift through this terrain.

Driving for hours without hardly any sign of life, we eventually come across a little clearing where a small group of people are cooking meat over a coal fire. We stop and are soon invited for lunch. A woman introducing herself as Azama lifts the lid of the boiling pot and I find myself staring down at three monkey heads, facial expressions frozen in an agonizing scream.

They are the local macaque variety, I am told, cooked in palm oil, tomato and pepper and served with fufu, the local staple made from mashed cassava.

“The animals are fresh, I shot them today,” Azama’s husband Kingombe says, showing me his homemade shotgun.

It tastes much like beef, but stringier.

As we continue our journey, the track gets narrower and narrower with each passing kilometer. It is as if the forest devours everything in its path here. I am caked with mud and the jungle vegetation whips me in the face and arms from both sides of the path. Thick vines keep getting stuck on my feet or on the bike’s footrests and the sound of the cicadas grows increasingly ear-splitting as we penetrate the bush. Everything seems to be alive in the Congolese forest; we pass through clouds of large, colourful butterflies, and birds and monkeys screech in the canopy. Suddenly, Merveille hits the brakes just in time for me to see the thick end of a menacing-looking snake sliding into the undergrowth.

“Black mamba,” he says, referring to one of the deadliest reptiles in the world.

Just as I am beginning to think that we might make our destination before sunset, we are forced to drag the bikes through a large, black, mosquito-infested swamp. It takes over an hour to move three motorbikes less than 200 meters. It is situations like these that makes one understand that seriously ill patients in Congo often actually die en route before they can reach proper health care. Patients are typically carried on homemade stretchers, sometimes for days, on small jungle paths like these, before they get to a doctor.

Finally, after a full day of gruelling dirt road, reach Misoke. Darkness is already upon us and the lack of electricity makes the moon and the stars glow in the calm still night. A group of villagers gather around us and we are soon offered a bed in a small hut.

Exhausted, I fall asleep with my clothes on.  

A previous IRC survey found that nearly four million people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998—making it the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II. The new study about to be released shows the numbers steadily rising.

Part 1: The beginning of the road - Kindu to Kalima  l  Part 2  l Part 3

The plane touches down with a heavy thud and as the doors open, a rush of warm, humid, tropical air hits me in the face. This is Kindu, the provincial capital of Maniema, a rural, war-torn and neglected province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I have joined one of five IRC teams tasked with conducting a mortality survey in Congo and this is where our journey begins.

The IRC has documented the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in Congo in four previous mortality surveys. The latest, conducted in 2004, showed that from August 1998 to April 2004, more than 3.9 million people died as a result of the war here, making it the deadliest conflict since World War II. Ninety-eight percent of the deaths were due to preventable and curable diseases. Now the survey teams are trying to understand if things are improving in Congo or if it has indeed gotten worse.

The teams will interview the population in 31 randomly selected health zones across all of Congo’s eleven provinces. The leader of the team I have joined is Maxim Bushiri, a Congolese IRC staff member who normally works with public health in our office in the capital Kinshasa.

The first stop in the town of Kindu is a small shop where we rent motorbikes and stock up on fuel, food and water. Old bicycle inner tubes are used as luggage straps to attach our bags to the back of the motorbikes. As we prepare to leave, my beat-up 125cc cross bike sits heavily on its rear wheel, with backpacks, jerry cans for spare fuel, camera bags and other bits of luggage occupying most of the rider’s seat. This leaves little space for my colleague, Amaka Megwalu, on the seat behind me. An IRC information officer in Kinshasa, Amaka is here to help with translations and, as it will turn out, endless dealings with police officers and local authorities.

It is early afternoon as we set off for our first destination, the town of Kalima about five hours drive east. During the dry season when road conditions are favourable, that is. When it rains, this trip can take days. In addition to obstacles caused by weather, roads are extremely poor at the best of times. Congo, the size of Western Europe, has only somewhere between 500 and 1,500 kilometres of paved road and millions of people are separated from hospitals and clinics by endless stretches of jungle paths, destroyed roads and demolished bridges.

From Kalima, the team will begin to survey a number of isolated villages in the region over the next two weeks. Our first obstacle is the mighty Congo River, the country’s main trade and transportation artery. We load our three cross bikes into a pirogue, a local dug-out canoe, and slowly make the crossing.

On the other side of the Congo River the real journey begins. After a few kilometres of potholed tarmac road we soon find ourselves on a narrow dirt track with huge craters and rocks in it. The road is so poor that we soon realize that it will take us much longer than expected to reach Kalima. As the last rays of the sun disappear, the situation deteriorates further when a tropical storm explodes overhead. The road turns into a veritable river in less than half an hour. My bike soon takes a nose dive into a pool of muddy brown water and the over-heated engine begins to hiss and cough. The rear wheel digs me in deeper and deeper with each fruitless spin. Overhead, the lightning crashes and I am completely soaked. My team mates help me get up and we try to continue our journey with water up to our upper thighs. We soon realize it is no longer possible to continue and decide to stop at the next house we see. It turns out to be that of Maloani Isungo, a man in his early 60s who lives with his children and a dozen relatives in two small clay huts by the side of the dirt track.

We soon get a taste of Congolese hospitality. Maloani and his son Axel light a coal fire in the middle of the dirt floor and, although the family is clearly very poor, insist on offering us dinner. We soon share rice and sardines over a candle-lit table as the torrential rain continues its ferocious pounding on the thatched roof. Axel tells me that his wife gave birth to a daughter by a caesarian-section in Kalima earlier that day.

“She lost a lot of blood, and she’s not feeling well,” Axels says. “But the baby’s fine. I went with my wife to the hospital a month before she was due to give birth. She has stayed there ever since and I brought her food every day. I am lucky; we are only three in this village who own a motorbike. The others have to walk if there’s an emergency. And sometimes people die on the way.”

With no sign of the tropical storm letting up, we are offered a bed for the night. My body is aching from trying to control the bike on six hours of slippery mud. My left index finger has grown to twice the normal size, the result of a bite from a nasty black ant. It has been a dramatic day, I think to myself as I drift off to sleep in Maloani’s bed in a tiny, damp room dominated by two old suitcases and a stack of cardboard boxes.

As I am about to find out, this is merely the beginning.