The work blur comes more into focus, several colleagues are going on vacation so there is a drive to finish and prepare and be on top of things. I take a boat ride. The office goes on a retreat and much is revealed (but not here, bien sur).

First, I move from the hilltop mansion to a shared house near the office. Now I have roommates, although this house as well is a complicated system of people: the first night I arrive there are new security guards, paid for by UNICEF. The four other residents of this house all work for UNICEF, and there was an unexplained break-in the week before I arrived. So: new guards. But a family lives on the grounds as well, in a small house within the walled compound. They are relatives of the woman who owns the house; she, as many wealth Central Africans do, lives in France. My roommates are from Sierra Leone, Somalia, Denmark, and Albania. I’m happy to have someone to share my limited homelife with, and even happier to be close to the bustle of the city. My ankle prevented me from exploring too much while on the hill, a kilometer away from the city center. Now, on my first night, I walk home and head towards the nearest cluster of people and music. There are outdoor cafes serving beer, and more beer, people sit around in the semi-darkness listening to the pulsating rhythm of some local music. I become disappointed until finally at the end of a row of these dingy bars I come across an old woman grilling chicken. Finally! No more bread and butter for dinner. But she does not speak French, only Sangho. I was wrong when I earlier spoke of French replaced Sangho as the lingua franca (pun intended)… that is a phenomenon affects only the elite. Most of the country speaks Sangho as a second language, in addition to their native language. It’s origins are disputed by linguists, but it is sufficient to describe it as a creole, a mixture of local and European languages created during the bad old days of slaving and early colonial exploitation. The woman repeats something in Sangho to me. A cloud of street kids have been following me and they help negotiate the purchase of two drumsticks. I buy the lead negotiator a soda, but explain this is a one-time deal only.

The new house is great. A family residence-turned hotel, it is located off one of the main roads that radiate from the roundabout at the city center. That roundabout is known as kilometer zero – the office and my new house are at around kilometer four. Those two story buildings downtown disappear quickly. Living here helps me understand that the city is really a collection of dirt roads that would barely qualify as alleys anywhere else, homes in walled compounds are hidden by ferns, palms, and large trees. A collection of paved roads crisscross the city, and support a decent amount of traffic. There is even a bit of a rush hour in the morning, and a five-day work week is followed by those who have jobs. Many people walk. It is far more common to see people walking than in vehicles, although if you are lucky you can get a seat in a shared cab. Cab drivers will kick out all their passengers for foreigners if requested, but I find that the 150 CFCA (franc communauté financière africaine) for a seat in a shared cab is a better value than commandeering a cab for 1500.

I feel more at home now that I can walk a short ways and meet different kinds of locals. I’ve already met a large swathe of the expat community, and while of course it is fascinating to hear where people have been and what they are doing here, both professionaly and personally it is very important to me to understand what is going on, what life is like, how deep the challenges are. My new, more pedestrian-friendly location helps me understand that poverty here is pervasive but easy for my one-week CAR mind to miss. This part of the country is lush; mangoes drop from the trees. There is an abundance of produce, and the weather is comfortable without being overwhelmingly wet or hot. In short, without anything one can survive. This is clearly not the case outside of the city, but here the languid, easy-going nature of the city hides the slow economic and political progress, much as the rich green fauna hid away most of the city while I lived in my first-week bubble.

But this is all outside the office. Inside, where I spend 60-70 hours a week, the week finishes with a three day retreat, an annual taking-stock of things for the office. The retreat is held by the waterfalls at a town named Boali, some 60 kilometers to the north of Bangui. To get there, we drive past the checkpoints that control the roads out of town. In a convoy, marked as UN vehicles, there is no problem. The security situation between here and there is as safe as can be in the country. The problem, my coworkers tell me, lies beyond Boali. Which is to say, in the entire rest of the country, where highway bandits stick ‘em up and wreak havoc on the population. These coupeurs de routes, or zaraguinas in Sango, are a mix of ex-soldiers from this country, neighboring countries, and other conflicts in West Africa. There are locals who take up guns as a means of making money. There are rebel groups, three of them, who contribute to the bandit population. It is a confusing mix.

The road is nice and paved. It is not very wide, but two vehicles can pass each other safely. The road is in excellent condition, and during the 70 minute drive I see that this is because there are practically no vehicles using it. Why? The government tightly restricts automobile travel, partly as a means of stemming the chaotic tide of rebels, bandits, and whoever else may be out to challenge the meager collection of 8000 who compose the army, gendarme, and police. Another reason the road is not used very much is that vehicles are expensive to come by, and even more expensive to fix. Human capital, the know-how to manipulate mechanical things, is also scarce. The result is that this very excellent road is populated by two or three taxis, loaded down with literally as much as they can carry. People cram on the roof next to goats and boxes, the insides bursting with limbs and stoic faces. A nice system of buses would fix this, if the security situation improved.

The waterfalls encompass another sad story, helping me peel back another layer in the CAR mystery. These falls are the only source of power for the entire country. The ONLY source, barring the ubiquitous generators that the government, wealth citizens, high-income businesses, and the international community uses. There are three turbines here, but only one works. No one is sure why the other two do not, but they know that these were built by the Chinese and Czechs. The Yugoslavian generator breaks down, sometimes when a thing floats by the safety nets (says one of the hotel staff). During these times, the 600,000 people in Bangui who are the main recipients of power are left in the dark. The hotel de chutes is located right next to the falls, and overlooks the solitary hydropower station some hundred meters downstream.

The meetings help me understand the internal dynamics of the office a little better. The one observation I think I can share is that most of the staff focused on the administrative details of their work. The UN is very much about process, which fits well with the local CAR culture of hierarchy and formality. There is a real desire to see things through *exactly* right. I listen to discussions about procurement, financial management, decision-making processes. There is almost no discussion of what lies at the end of this, why these things must be done the way they are. There is a disconnect between the red-tape and what is happening to the country we are here to assist.

So this second week has been a slow unraveling of the different muddles that immediately affect me. It also frees up the mental space to start to absorb the even larger jumble of ethnic and political entanglements that have lead this country to regress over the past few decades. More on those things, and our fun trip down the river à la Heart of Darkness, later.