Fuel Crisis (2000)

Excerpt from the draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story"

The war heated up north of Pendjua. Twelve deserters from Kabila's army passed through the mission during the last week of September. They were armed, and they were obnoxious. The mission truck transported them to Kiri the same afternoon. The soldiers reported that the rebels captured 2,000 other soldiers, 2,000 died, and another 2,000 fled. There were supposed to be 50 more soldiers passing through, but thankfully they took another route to Inongo.

In late October, the mission barge was still in Kinshasa. For almost two months, there was no gas or diesel fuel available in Kinshasa. I waited for three medication orders and the clothes and supplies for the boarding school I bought in July. The mission had 400 liters of diesel fuel left, so Father Daniel stopped the road work and laid off the workers. We had enough manioc to last one month. If we could not get fuel to drive to get food, we feared we would have to close the boarding school. In the 21 years I have been here, we have never run out of diesel fuel. If the war continued, conditions would get worse.

With this crisis in Kinshasa, very few planes were flying. In early November, the barge still waited to buy fuel. The hospital no longer had fuel for their generator. The mission was down to 200 liters, and we had electricity, but only for two hours a night.