And the not quite so idyllic idyll of South Masisi. Where we're doing our stabilisation programme.

These are women brewing beer for a mining town where business, mining, prostitution and having an all-round viciously good time come together. The younger you start the better. Behind is a negotiation centre (I think the white building) for pricing minerals: it was built with stabilisation project money, but has yet to be used because local complications weren't taken into account beforehand. The yellow building is a health centre also built by well-meaning aid workers, but unfortunately on the wrong side of the river that divides two conflicting health zones - so the new centre was built in the wrong territory and has remained empty for a year. The small plastic things are the edge of a vast displaced people's camp that has sprung up since August as people flee increasingly violent and ethicised conflict.

The M23 Tutsi led shenanigans in North Kivu have polarised other armed groups largely bent on defending/ eliminating people of Rwandan origin (Hutu and Tutsi). The area has a long history of land conflict linked to large colonial farms, population growth, dodgy Mobutu era legislation, and since 1993, armed groups rolling up and staking vast claims at the end of a gun. Real power is held by a few big farmers, all of whom have CVs that include some kind of War Lord past, and most of whom now live in the US, Germany or Kinshasa. Although their parallel state administration officially no longer exists, it thrives in the shadows: if the government is calling the shots, it's only with the agreement of the big men.

Each village has its own history, but many have fled in their entirety and temporarily settled elsewhere for the majority of the last 15 years; if they've not fled, they've put up the fleeing either in their homes or in camps - a huge strain on their limited resources. People tend to displace to areas where they can find their own ethnic group - so the ethnic blocks become more and more distinct - and people less tolerant.

The draw of the mines means that kids head off there asap as workers or prostitutes. All the boys we talked to in one group had friends that had been killed underground. Girls want beauty products and new clothes. Parents don't feel they can talk to their kids because they don't have the money for school fees and can only offer a future of narrow agricultural survival.

To this add militia attacks, youth recruitment and daily hold ups on the road. Villages can no longer lodge all the displaced and large camps sprawl over village football fields and beyond.

What's not to like in designing a programme to consolidate peace and state presence?

The lack of peace and state legitimacy?

But the proposal was submitted to the donor a year ago so here we are. The potential for getting this one wildly wrong is huge. The signs so far are not good: on a first visit our team was cornered by the local elite, force fed milk, and made to understand who was really in charge here. Someone involved in the project appears to have promised new markets (sources of much land conflict, existing in all targeted areas but strangely unused, and profiting the rich), and an abattoir. There's definitely one interest group with more cows than others.