Projects

SS Curriculum for Africa

UPDATE ON S.S. CONTAINER

June 26, 2008

Dear Clement,

I just finished talking with President Sanguma (President of the Covenant Churches in the Congo) and the pastor handling the container in Zongo, DR Congo. The books are in a container at Zongo, but they are still working through Congo exoneration issues. The process has been going on in the capital Kinshasa for at least 3 months. The government Finance Minister has the information, but is delaying. The Vice Minister of Education is a member of the CEUM church, and he has also been working on this. However, the Finance Minister's office is notoriously slow, and there is no response yet.

One option that President Sanguma is currently considering is paying the expenses in Zongo. The Pastor in Zongo said that the OFIDA office is requesting $2,500 for customs, and that another office is requesting $1,200. The shipping of the 40 foot container to Karawa will be $5,500. President Sanguma will be calculating how much is left from the first budget for importing the books, and how much money would need to be raised to cover these additional expenses. The CEUM is working to get the Provincial Governor in Mbandaka to forgive any penalties for delays in importing the container, using the argument that they have been pursuing normal channels to import the books, and that the delay is not the fault of the CEUM but the fault of government offices. We'll see how it ends.

Keep praying. The books are almost at their destination, but still need to get over the hurdles of final expenses and travel by road to Karawa.

Thanks.
Keith Gustafson

Comment by Bud Kroeker, Project Coordinator, Belgium.

Zongo is on the Congo side of the river from Bangui in CFA. $2500 is not much for customs fees on such a shipment. It is important that government authorities know that mission leaders are willing to pay correct and normal fees as long as they have not been blown up for personal bribery. Government leaders cannot continue to yield to personal favor requests.

We need to continue to advocate for free importation of educational materials. This has to be set on a national level and not a personal mission level.

This is the only news I have had and there are no pictures or other details. I am happy to hear that the container is probably not in the shipping company warehouse because storage fees are calculated by DAY.

There are a number of issues in all of this that make me concerned and disappointed. We keep praying that the good news will come soon.

In Him,
Bud

Feb. 21, 2008

We heard on Wednesday that the container has arrived in Bangui. It will probably be processed in the next 10 days.

The latest problem is that the ferry between Bangui and Zongo has not been working for the past month. We only heard that yesterday as well. Pray that it will be fixed so that the container can be taken across to Zongo and on to Gemena. If it is not repaired, the only other option would be to unload the container and cross the contents in large dugout canoes to Congo, then load the boxes on trucks. That can be done, but the risk of theft and damage increases with that method.

I'm in Gemena right now with President Sanguma.

Keith

On February 5 I received a message from Noel Ningalao in Bangui saying that the container was blocker in Douala because they did not have the insurance document and the truck could not leave. I sent him a copy of the insurance paper and explained that I had sent this separately to Keith Gustafson in December. At that time I asked them to keep this document separate from the others because the insured value was higher than the invoice and we did not want the customs to use the insured value for duty.

It seems that this might be just another trick to hold the container to be able to charge storage on it. In any case they have the insurance paper and we will wait to see what happens. Pastor Sanguma has not been able to get the Congo customs in Zonga (across the river from Bangui) to exorerate the duty so he has appealed to Kinshasa, the capital. I'm afraid this will take time and not too happy about this. Time costs money. It is too bad that there are not standard acceptable rates in Congo that you just pay and be done. The invoice value is already very low, if they just accept that it should be OK.

The route for the container is the cross Africa "highway" that goes from Douala to Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, and then through the equiorial rain forest to Bangui the capital of Central African Republic on the shores of the Ubangi river, the north tributary of the mighty Congo river, and the border with Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC. The distance from Douaa to Bangui is about 900 miles with another hundred in Congo to Gemena. The road is paved from Daoula to Yaounde. Char and I rode over it in 1998. However after Yaounde through the forest it can hardly be called a road and a lot of red mud. Big trucks use it as they haul the big logs out of the forest.

Just pray that there will not be a big delay.

Bud Kroeker

“BLF Ships Container of SS Curriculum to Africa”

Dec. 3, 2007
The container was scheduled to leave on Roland Delmas before the end of October. Then we were informed that this cargo ship had to undergo repairs in Antwerp. The plan was to put the container on the next ship. It was put on the Romain Delmas but there were problems there too and finally on November 20 it was loaded on Rosa Delmas, a smaller ship. This ship left a few days later. (Larry: put pix of the ship here).

So the container is actually on its way. Before it left we received word from the shipping company that the road between Douala and Bangui was in such bad condition that they advised delaying sending trucks over that route. This is probably one reason why they were not in a hurry to get the container on a ship before the end of November.

A friend of ours from Central African Republic knows this road very well and he confirmed the bad condition. It is the dry season there now, north of the equator, and I hate to think what the road might be like once the heavy rains start.

Towns further south in the Congo, south of the equator, were hit with some of the heaviest rains in many years and there may have been as many of 800 lives lost. It is unfortunate to have these figures in addition to the health, famine, displacement and the many war casualties.

There are 900 miles of this road from Yaounde, Cameroon, to Bangui, Central African Republic, across the equatorial rain forest. The twenty-ton container of Sunday school literature needs to make it through.

For now the container is floating across the Atlantic south bound on this ship the Rosa Delmas. After docking at several African ports it will reach Douala, Cameroun. There it will go on truck to the center of Africa.

This is what people in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo Democratic Republic discovered when they came out after the heavy rains. Many homes, made of water soluble sun dried bricks in Central Africa, were washed away.

Photos by Dany Masson

Report by Bud Kroeker