Hey all!
Sorry for the length of time from my last update, I’ve just been out of country for a bit. To catch you up, my leg is fine, it looks like there will be a pretty decent scar, but I’m totally great. My mind is going a little haywire without my laptop and every once in a while a twinge of pain rises up when I remember everything that I’ve lost, but I’m beginning to get back on the horse, starting to recollect all my ideas. Some friends of CLD sent a laptop out here so that those of us who lost our computers can use it, and we are so thankful.
Shane returned this week, with her daughter Jesca and our friend Deirdre arrived this week as well, so we have quite the full house. Last Thursday Susan, Laura and I set off on a trip around East Africa. We went with our friends Eric, Kyle and John traveling and adventuring through Rwanda, and Burundi. We rode on life-threatening buses, watched traditional tribal Burundi dancing on the beach of Lake Tanganyika, played a lot of rummy, and deepened friendships that will last a lifetime. We parted ways with the boys in Kigali as they went back to Kampala, and we girls followed our intrigued and deep curiosity into the DRC.
I had been coincidentally reading “Heart of Darkness” for the last few weeks. For those of you who haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Although it probably took on a different meaning reading the novel where I could watch Conrad’s descriptions eerily come alive. Much has changed since the book was published in 1902 but the truths he captured about exploration, colonization, and humanity continue to resonate throughout all of Africa. It was fascinating to me how he understood society’s brutality, felt such cynicism, and yet expressed all of it with such beauty.
We traveled a three hour shuttle bus ride through the astounding terraced mountain farms of Rwanda. Susan and my jaws were in a constant state of dropped awe at how much the ride reminded us of summer drives around our Colorado ski towns. I love how I’ve found elements of home in such faraway places. We arrived at the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi, grabbed our backpacks, and walked into the pain-filled mystery that is the Congo. We waited an outrageously long time to be issued visas, and answered questions from confused border officials about why three young girls just wanted to see Goma, and then were sent on our way.
Here’s a brief history of the DRC, if you don’t know anything about it...
1482: Portugal’s Diogo Cao was the first white man to set eyes on Congo River
Late 1860’s: English explorer Livingston goes missing on his expedition to map out Africa
1871: Henry Morten Stanley a newspaper reporter goes to find Livingston
November 1871: Stanley finds Livingston at Lake Tanganyika... “Dr. Livingston I presume?”
November 17, 1874: Stanley decides to continue Livingston’s expedition mapping out the Congo River
1877: Stanley returns trying to involve Britain in utilizing the Congo’s resources, but they aren’t interested, instead Leopold II of Belgium seeks out Stanley and begins reaping the benefits of the country.
1878: The scramble for Africa begins... within two decades of Stanley’s expedition all of Africa was colonized
The Congo has the bloodiest colonial past of any African country.
June 30, 1960: Belgium grants the DRC independence
1965: Mobutu becomes emperor
1980's-90’s: Mobutu allies himself with Rwandan Hutus
April 6, 1994: Plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundi president is shot down by Interahamwe initiating the Rwandan genocide
July 1994: Rwandan genocide ends, and Mobutu, supported by France, provides refuge for the Interahamwe in the Congo, they come by the thousands, fleeing persecution and trial for their crimes against humanity, this coincides with a large Cholera outbreak in Goma.
1997: Rebel Laurent Kabila overthrows Mobutu with the help of troops from Rwanda, and Uganda
1998: War breaks out... Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi vs. Congo, Zimbabwe, Chad, Angola, and Namibia fighting on DRC soil
2000: More than a thousand people dying each day
The death toll from the continuing of this war has reached about 4.5 million, that's like wiping out the entire state of Colorado.
2001: Kabila is assassinated by his bodyguard
January 26, 2001: The current president, Joseph Kabila, is elected with no election
January 2002: An estimated 45 die when the Mount Nyiragongo volcano unexpectedly explodes in Goma
2002-2008: Peace treaties are continually made and broken as rebel groups fight each other: for wealth and resources, because of tribal hate, in retaliation to violent histories.
I guess it must have been cloudy before we went into Goma but I didn’t notice God’s foreshadowing until the gray skies collided with the ash ridden streets, and the weight of the air heavied my soul. Remnants of black volcanic rock were scattered about the streets and had become the foundation of every building and wall built on top of the ruin the 2002 eruption had caused. Every other vehicle was UN, or some sort of humanitarian aid organization, and every hour UN planes and relief helicopters flew closely overhead. We had entered a war zone that we didn’t even know existed, and I was captivated. The extent of my knowledge was that the Congo had suffered a tumultuous past, but I had no recent information, no idea that war was still being waged. We started asking as many questions as we could to the UN people that would talk to us, to the Lebanese business owners, to civilians at the hospital we visited.
I’ve never really known what the UN does, and I’m more confused now than I was before I started asking questions. We got a ride in a UN South Africa Land Cruiser and the driver casually talked about how we were going to die if we stayed. We ran into a Canadian UN official that works with a self-proclaimed “small, obscure, unknown branch of the UN”, and he explained that the role of MONUC is to “keep the window of peace open long enough to restore social development, and establish stable government.” We politely pressed for answers as to how they were going about stabilizing a rebel government, and he replied by telling us to get out as quickly and safely as possible, and excused himself for lunch.
We’ve come to find out that the UN in the east Congo is currently the largest peacekeeping operation in the world, and their presence there for the last eleven years has not seemed to stop a single rebellion. As we continued to receive vague answers about peace missions from bored UN soldiers, reasons for their ineffectiveness became apparent. Foreign political leaders sitting in board room chairs can’t possibly make a well informed decision on what the Congolese people need, and then send in various foreign troops to make their ideas happen. Success will only be sustained when it comes from the Congolese public. The UN is allegedly striving for community development without relationships, fighting for peace without love, following orders from distant delegation without inspiration, and it’s not working. They are building a house of bricks with no foundation, and no mortar, and although the big bad wolf won’t be able to blow it down, with a few friends he’ll be able to crumble it. Which I’ve now realized, is the whole point... it was never supposed to work in the first place, because peace in the Congo isn’t profitable.
I’ve begun to do some research, and have found dizzying facts about the resources the Congo has to offer, diamonds, oil, cobalt, copper, gold, uranium, and the list goes on. It is by far the richest country in the world in natural resources, but the poorest and most devastated country per capita. The uranium for the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the copper used to rebuild cities after 20th century wars, the cobalt satisfying the boom in 2004, all comes from the Congo, and as long as pretended allies discretely keep Africans fighting each other, the Middle East, and the Western world can continue raping the country.
The peace treaties established this past January went to hell this week, and fighting once again broke out in Kirotshe, about 35 kilometers south of where we were. We watched a convoy of the Congolese army head out on the only road west. I’ve never been anywhere close to a war zone, and I didn’t know my heart could beat the way it did. Chills sprinted from my head to my toes as the dark eyes of a camouflaged soldier with a Kalashnikov between his legs stared right through me. My wide eyes prompted our new friend Alex to tussle my hair, disparagingly saying “Welcome to the Congo.”
That night after dinner, we came across some MERLIN workers that had been evacuated from where the fighting broke out. I sat and talked with a Scottish guy for a while, and he answered my rapid fire questions, apparently coming to the conclusion that I was journalist of some sort... he thanked me for what I was doing, “there is nothing more important than communicating the truth of this horrifying situation to the world” he said. I laughed thinking of the ten people who probably read my emails all the way through, and clarified how my audience isn’t exactly “the world”... he smiled, and exclaimed “Well, it’s a start” and explained how in all his time around the Congo he hadn’t seen a single reporter, how no one is covering this story, so the little I could get out would have to do... I’ve found some UN coverage, and updates on Relief Web, but it’s not exactly making headlines. The Congolese news is heavy propaganda, and Fox News doesn’t even have a link to the DRC.
I still don’t know the whole story, and I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the conspiracies enveloping this entire continent. I have no ideas on what can get the world invested in this situation, what will move us to positive action, what will make us refuse to slide further into ignorance and apathy... because before I embarked on this whole Africa extravaganza, I was the perfect representation for humanity’s lack of concern for their global neighbors... I hated history in school, and I could care less about how my gas got to the pump... but now I’ve seen faces that have moved me from indifference to the desire of illumination... listening to the broken English of repeatedly raped women, uncomfortably avoiding the cold-eyed stares of severely peeling child burn victims, and holding the stubs of arms where hands should have been. There are invisible people that go nameless, and it’s time that someone rises up to tell their story until they are able to speak for themselves...
I don’t think there is a formula for peace, but I do know that ending ignorance is the first step for change. Things change when we stop buying conflict diamonds, things change when we start worrying about how our oil gets to the pump, instead of how much it costs, things change when we understand where we get our magnets from, things change when we transform our thoughts about what has worth... when we decide that human lives are more important than our comfort... And then we can raise our voices loud enough to shatter the glass that is encasing this vile cycle of exploitation.
I spent just about 48 hours in the DRC and it has wrecked me beyond recognition... I don’t know what that means for the future, but right now it means continuing to pursue awareness of the invisible... straining to hear the cries of the inaudible. I encourage you to do your own research, to find something that wrecks you, because unlike the majority of the world, you have a voice.
Bringing what I am able,
Nicole
