There are several countries in the world where women are outright hated. We are seen as the source of disease, temptresses, evil witches and other lovely terms.

There are still more countries however where, women are not necessarily hated, just disregarded. Their thoughts, opinions and words are of less value to those of men. Their bodies are seen as objects for the taking, and their lives suitable only for child-bearing and husband-bearing.

Some will argue that this is just cultural, and that when women are treated poorly it is not “fair” to judge said treatment by Western standards. After all, its just culture, to shut women up, speak over them, ignore them, beat them and rape them.

While deep in my heart I remain an African, I am a born and bred Westerner in many ways. In Trinidad, women are formidable, loved and while under-estimated, I think we have still gone further than just being disregarded. Working in Africa, needless to say, with this Western background of mine, often makes for some fireworks and tough situations.

Recently, I was loudly berated by a group of men and one woman, for asking the question “Why”, in response to a problem we were trying to resolve at the office. Trying to be solution oriented, I was trying to get at what the problem was exactly, so we could fix it, and move on. Instead of being responded to courteously or even remotely professionally, I was literally ( figuratively) jumped on, by everyone around. Without going into the wonderful details, there was shouting, screaming, laughter and ridicule.

It became clear, that I wasn’t going to get a response, not because my question wasn’t valid, but because I was a woman. And a young, foreign woman at that, who shouldn’t dare to even speak.

This became especially clear, when later on, an older man came in and asked the same question and he was responded to very clearly, with an actually sensible answer.

The experience got me to thinking, well, maybe I just need to develop my shouting voice. Or maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut as per my usual policy. But mostly, wow, I just experienced what women here are brainwashed into accepting from their childhoods and I’m not quite sure how to swallow it.

In misogynistic cultures like Congo, it is often not just the outright violence and battery that breaks women down and keeps them there, but rather, it is the consistent shutting up, disregard and disdain that soon has them believing lies about themselves, that they are not worth anything, that their thoughts are worthless and that the correct response to anything a man has to say to them, is to smile coyly and keep their eyes averted, even if what is being said is unacceptable and intolerable by most standards.

This culture, this oppression, is perhaps the most difficult thing to witness in the DRC. More so even than many of the other atrocities that take place here, because the oppression, the maltreatment, the psychological slavery, is so pervasive and all-encompassing that it is accepted unquestioningly as culture.

To what extent do we accept and try to preserve cultural practices, without ever questioning whether it is in fact a matter of history and culture, or the tragic outcome of centuries-long brutality, a legacy of skewed gender roles and the acceptance of such.

It is tragic and curious, how much just two events – slavery and colonization, could infinitely change the course of history as we know or don’t know it, and affect every single facet of who we are, as a people, as a skin color, as a community, whether we live in sub-Sahara, the United States or the Caribbean

Here in the DRC, a transplant from the Caribbean, the product of slave and slave-owner, I am often confronted with the question of my identity, my African-ness as it were, and with each confrontation, I shy away, without an answer to give, without fully comprehending even how my ancestry has culminated in who I am today.

Do I know where my ancestors came from? Were they Congolese, Tamil, which Spanish province? I have no idea. And I’ve never thought enough about it, to look into it.

When Europeans came to African shores, they stole and enticed away the strongest, the warriors, and the leaders – those who could survive the long and arduous journey, and inevitably survive the horrors that awaited them in the lands of so-called fortune and promise – the New World.

This would forever impact African culture, the African “experience”.

In villages, without their leaders, the people who fought for them, the people who acted when noone else could act, their strongest and bravest, chaos ensued. While speaking to a Ugandan friend, he explained to me just how this turmoil must be considered a critical causal factor to the Africa we know today – torn apart by tribal warfare and persistently subjugated by autocratic leaders. In the village, the leaders, the elders, the respected ones – were the ones who directed life. Without them, there was despair, turmoil and violence. And before communities could rebuild and reframe themselves as per natural course, colonizers came, with their own cultural frameworks and beliefs and proceeded to “civilize” the African people. As it continues on today, the African experience is one of imposed “development” and “civilization” without ever being given a chance to self-evolve.

On the flipside of the coin, former leaders and warriors became slaves. No longer were they the lords of their lands. Taken away from their villages, from their routines, their cultures and beliefs, they were forced into hard labor, tortured and treated like cattle. They were no longer permitted the dignity that would have come with their positions in their own communities. They were animals, they were property.

After decades of this brain-washing and subjugation, finally, Africans were GIVEN freedom. And even then, they continued to be mistreated and scorned, burned and hanged.

Now today, African Americans, black islanders, and descendants of slaves, armed with their newfound freedom, don’t seem to really know what to do it. Some of us become Presidents, others become gang statistics. Some of us become national politicians, others spend their time in armchairs denouncing the world’s racism and racists with every tweet and every peep. Whereas our ancestors challenged their circumstances, beat drums in secret, sang songs and marched, and drew strength from their communities, far too many of us try to drag up lost dignity from brand-names, gold watches and cars.

We carry ourselves with a thread-bare dignity and honor, that is nothing but a prideful bravado, totally unlike the kind of dignity that even the poorest of the poor still hold their heads with, in sub-Saharan Africa. We pity Africans. We sorrow with them. But we continue to fail to realize that even amid mud, poverty, death and tears, the African is not lost. He is still inherently proud, honor-bound to his people and struggling to reclaim paradise lost and a life stolen.

We pity our people or ignore them, depending on your predilections, and have taken our limited freedom and occupied ourselves with the luxuries of a society still unknown and readily claimed by us. We continue to be enslaved by our own histories of slavery and racism. We continue to be enslaved by fear of authority, by trends and fads, styles of dress, ways of speaking and violence.

We have lost a sense of who we are and who our history dictates we must be.

How much of this comes out of the enslaved African experience? How much of the way we are today has to do with our paradises lost? How much lost hair, peeling skin, and forsaken identity has risen out of the long journeys that brought our ancestors to the New World?

My Africa

My Africa is cool, dark, a mix of overhanging trees and swirly fog. . It is the home of my ancestors, who I know nothing about, and yet know all about.

My Africa is a place that draws me in like no other, with its trials, frustrations, beauty and promise.

My Africa and I are connected in ways I cannot begin to explain. Its pain is my own. I feel it in our heart with every massacre, every cripple, every beggar, every five year old rape survivor.

My Africa makes me want to curse. Every day.

My Africa wears me out, with its tongues I can not speak nor understand, its noise that overpowers even my thoughts. With its dank smells, its mud covered bathrooms, its shacks, its dirt roads, its politics, its people pulling and pushing and standing so close.

My Africa has a sky as wide and as vast as my eyes can see, clear and uninhibited, dark and growling with no end in sight.

My Africa covers me in cool rainy darkness and silence and lights me up with realizations and joy like nothing and nowhere else.

This is the land of my people. Once Kings and Queens, taken away from their homelands, my motherland to pick sugarcane, bear babies, be raped, and in time, capture an elusive semblance of freedom.

My story is my Africa. My story of freedom, emancipation, patience, honor and peace. My Africa is a tale of pride, honor, death, murder, robbery and slavery, yet to have ended.

My Africa is neverending sea of unimaginable depth, dark, beautiful, wondrous and too complex to ever fully comprehend.

My Africa is a sonnet of volcano-scorched mountainsides, cool night air, smoke, rum and meat by moonlight.

My Africa is one of sweat, blinding sunlight, work harder than I’ve ever worked, smells worse than I’ve ever smelled.

My Africa is one of long journeys in buses and cars, winding roads that don’t end, green plains and pastures, tea fields that go on for miles and miles, straw huts reminiscent of a time before iPhones, iPods, blood, war, milk and honey.

My Africa is a place of secrets, only told to those who will listen. A place of coyness, wonder, style, color, tears and uncontrollable laughter, overlooking a dark and deep lake that never ever ends.

My Africa is neverending. It is perennial. It withstands every test of time, crisis of faith, enslavement, war and disaster. It stands as a beacon of promise, a sounding call to all those who doubt whether the sun always rises.

My Africa is constant as it is ever changing, as sweet and solemn as it is dangerous, as loving as it is hateful, as warm as it is cold, as welcoming as it is damning, as addictive as it is.

My Africa, my motherland, calls out to its people taken as slaves all around the world, a sweet song of pride, remembrance and joy and dances around the fire, beneath the waning moon waiting, ever waiting on the time to come when ancestors return.

My Africa is never ending. It goes on for miles and miles, never stopped by any force, ocean or man. Ever-reaching, ever lasting.

My Africa is the land of my ancestors. The home of my people. My history of kings, queens, beads and village. From whence came my slavery and from whence has come my freedom.

This is about too many things to summarize in this introduction.

Today, while leaving the hospital, I shared a taxi with a young couple. The wife could not have been older than I am. Their baby had just died, and the husband, the father, held his dead child’s body wrapped up in folds upon more folds of colorful traditional fabric, all the way from the hospital, into town.

I sat silently in the taxi, looking on, as they mourned.

The measure of a man

It should come as no surprise to you that my views on men can at times be low. In so many ways, the examples of men I have seen in my life, have created in me an inherent distrust, a lack of faith, and doubt at the idea that men were ever once…well, men.

Looking on today at this Congolese man, holding his dead child, crying unashamedly, lifting his child up to heaven as if to say, take me too, never once mishandling the body, never once stopping to think…is this manly? Only weeping that his child had been taken away from him, far too soon, I witnessed the true measure of a man.

He held on to his child, while we were stopped in traffic in a crowded part of town, known for pickpockets and fighting, and rolled up his window, in case anything fell onto his baby. He looked down at him often, even once, adjusting the fabric, as if to look at his face. Every so often, he would shake his head, in utter disbelief, the way that we all do during hard times, as if to say, no, no, this didn’t happen. This is a dream.

His grief was unmatched by anything I have ever witnessed before. He had clearly loved his child for the short time he lived, and yet even through his tears and his mourning, I could see him gathering his resolve, his jaw clenching and unclenching, preparing for the future, when he could no longer just, grieve, but would have to be….a man.

Making her sorrow into song

The mother sat next to me, her hand resting on her husband’s forearm, who couldn’t look at her, he could only look at his baby and straight ahead at a future, unseen by me, and probably her. She wept uncontrollably, in the Congolese way, singing her sorrow, crying a tune.

She cried out to God, to her mother, to anybody who would listen, and hung her head with pain and grief.

It’s only in Congo, I’ve seen women exude so much pain, and cry music.

 Quel dommage…

I don’t know what caused the death of this child. I don’t know what kind of relationship this couple has. I don’t know what circumstances surrounded this terrible, terrible tragedy. I only know the grief I witnessed. I only saw the solemnity of that hour, when all, all was lost.

I only know that statistics on rape, neonatal mortality, maternal mortality and other such delightfully bland terms, that we – international development types love to quote and coin, that hide the true magnitude of the loss of life, do absolutely no justice…to the reality when a life is lost.

I only know that, in other countries, “right to health-care” is a dirty phase, it is political, it is Communist, it is this, it is that, but in the majority of countries around the world – including Congo – this right, is about life and death, not about whose paycheck it comes out of.

And even with care…sometimes, babies still die. And parents must tenderly carry the corpse of their child in public transportation to their homes.