Worker struggles to get the mail through

BUNIA, Congo -- Neither rain nor war keeps Nkunda Leon from coming to work nearly every morning inside this town's bullet-stained post office.

He polishes the thick wood of the letter-writing tables. He dusts the faded and empty post office boxes. He tests the scale. In better times it was used to weigh bulky packages and letters home from colonialists that were filled with fabled stories of African bush adventures and fantastical tales of profits from gold and diamond mines.

But these days, no one wants to deliver anything to or from this faded city in the sad and lawless northeastern Congo, especially since fighting turned this once-bustling crossroads into a battlefield. The vicious war here -- fought largely outside the view of the West -- has claimed the lives of 50,000 people in the district of Ituri alone. Bunia, the local capital, once had a population of 150,000. More than half of them have fled.

And yet when the rattle of gunfire fades and the remaining citizens of Bunia move slowly back into the streets, Leon, 50, quietly emerges to take up his role as postmaster in the squat one-story post office in the town center. He hasn't been paid since a myriad of ever-changing rebels took over the eastern half of the country. That was in 1995, the year of the calendar that still hangs on the wall.

'Can you take these?'

"Are you going somewhere?" he asks a journalist, showing a thick stack of about 300 unsent letters, four years old. He looks desperate, and pleads with huge hopeful eyes: "Can you take these letters with you wherever you go and mail them?"

Sometimes when the fighting grows too dangerous, Leon, who has a master's degree in commerce, has to retreat to the local refugee camp. But he always comes back to his post office, keeping regular hours from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The building, constructed during colonial times in 1948, looks as though it hasn't been touched since then. With faded posters, antique furniture and a hand-crank telephone, it has the feel of a Cracker Barrel in suburban America. A worn sign teeters from the side of the faded yellow building and reads, "The Post and Telecoms opening Congo up to the world." But in reality, the only thing that's getting sent in or out of this town today are 1,400 heavily armed U.N. troops sent here to end the massacres.

"Still, we try to do what we can," says Leon. "We are not in a good situation. But the only choice is to go on."

Two months ago, he pooled funds from the nine other employees who still show up for work and they traveled to neighboring Uganda and purchased a satellite phone. During that optimistic month, the postal staff was able to charge people in town to call relatives, a precious service in a place where most people don't have land lines or cell phones.

But a militia group stole the phone last month. It now gets frequent use inside one of the three homes of the warlord Thomas Lubanga, who has bestowed upon himself the title of president of the Union of Congolese Patriots.

That militia is made up mainly of the Hema ethnic group, which is fighting the town's Lendu ethnic group for control. Leon is neither Hema or Lendu and comes from a tribe in the capital city of Kinshasa. The groups aren't inherently enemies. Simmering historical tensions were carefully manipulated by Ugandan- and Rwandan-backed rebel groups who armed the local population.

In the early years of the war, the postal workers attempted to deliver mail on Chinese bikes that were more than 20 years old. The handlebars were held together with thick tape and sometimes T-shirts tied in knots. But machete-wielding bands of ethnic militia put an end to that, too, with postal carriers too scared to deliver even a note, let alone packages.

Then, in an act of ironic desperation, the postal workers began selling one of the only things they had left -- stamps carrying the image of a deposed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. He was the infamous kleptomaniac, pink champagne-guzzling tyrant who looted the country of its riches even as he was backed by the U.S. government during the Cold War. U.N. workers, French soldiers and visiting journalists buy them as souvenirs.

Leon and the others at the post office say they would rather sell the image of a current president in Congo.

"The problem is which one," Leon says with a sigh. "With every ethnic group and rebel saying they are president, we have too many 'presidents' trying to run this country."

Leon, the father of nine children, now feeds his family by selling fruit outside of the post office or by typing occasional letters for aid workers and U.N. employees. (They take their letters with them when they leave for other postings.) Since his photocopier was looted, he also hand-copies documents for residents who are illiterate.

Many days he doesn't have much to do, so he writes his own letters. He has a daughter living in Philadelphia. He wants to send her a letter, let her know he's OK. He puts it in the pile alongside all of the others that will be carried to the outside world when peace comes.