Militarization and Disaster-ification

I spent the last few weeks working on presentations with Dr. Mukwege for his speaking engagements in Sweden and London. This experience has been stressful but also absolutely educational and has strengthened my belief that health is inextricably tied to a country’s success or failure in sustainable development, and why I should therefore study public health in the near future.

As part of one of these presentations, I had the amazing honor of reviewing Panzi’s entry statistics, details on women, their backgrounds and their rapists. What was clear to me, that I guess I already knew from reading and research, but was brought to life by the numbers I saw on these pages – was just how much the face of gender based violence has changed in this country and how many rapes are now being committed by civilians and intimate partners.

This is one of the greatest tragedies in any post-conflict or post-disaster setting, the militarization of civilians and the disaster-ification of the country (yes, I made that word up). Disaster-ification is what I want to talk about in this post, more so than militarization. Militarization smacks of civilians adopting soldier-like mannerisms but disaster-ification speaks more to the long-lasting effects that living in a state of emergency and uncertainty have on people and their daily lives.

I caught my first whiff of this in Port au Prince in March of 2010, when during my first experience of doing a tent-distribution, the tents were immediately stolen and I presume taken to the local market to be sold, leaving families, women and children with sheets as their only shelter. I had an inkling of what that was a larger sign of back then, but it is only now that I can express it into words.

Disasters, whether natural or man-made, whether earthquake, war or tsunami, force people to live thinking only of their primal needs. Even when the immediate state of emergency is over, this unwillingness to accept that there is no more danger and that life can carry on without scavenging, violence and bitterness is near impossible to break.

I see it here each day, because the needs of today far outweigh the needs of the next year and the future generations. Like I’ve said before, it is unbelievably difficult to get people to think in terms of what they will need five years from now, when they do not have food on the table today. That in itself is a pretty good argument for aid and development needing to work together instead of simply parallel with each other.
When I think of the way that war has damaged the Congolese people it makes me weep. When I think of the way living like animals in tents has near-destroyed so many Haitians, it burns my soul.
So quick to respond to emergency needs – the aid worker, the humanitarian, the donor, too often fail to recognize that even when there’s no more need for food rations, peace-keepers, tents and livelihoods programs – people are forever changed.
There’s very little that can wipe away memories of bullets, guns, the earth swallowing homes whole and oceans wiping away everything in sight.

I think of my own country – Trinidad and the long-term effects that living in a crime-induced state of emergency on my country-men – a lax attitude to violence and a nothing-to-lose way of living.

Yes indeed – it is not bullets through flags, homes crushed into sandwiches and criminals walking free that destroy nations – it is the disaster-ification that crushes hearts and souls, bends minds into acceptance and lashes people into submission and defeat that will destroy us.

Rape in Congo and the bandages that don’t fight bullies.

This is not the post you think it will be.

Since I slaved over a mini-thesis in Colonel Bowers’ introductory International Relations class on gender-based violence in conflict, most notably in the Democratic Republic of Congo I have been appalled and morbidly fascinated by the situation faced by women in this country. For a long time I have viewed Congo as nothing more than a cesspool of rape, pain, bullets and sorrows. Certainly nothing I saw in my research, in the news or in what people said told me otherwise.

But then I came out here for myself. I didn’t stay for a month or two to write a book, take photos or conduct interviews with the worst of the worst cases. I freed myself from that mzungu prison of thinking that because they spend a week or two in Congo a few times – they know this place.  I began to build a life for myself here. I began to work to serve women who have survived rape, buying whole-heartedly into the idea that rape is the most atrocious problem faced by the Congolese people – and the core of this country’s woes. What a silly tunnel-vision-ed girl I was.

You may re-read this blog and think…well this is directly contradicting so much of what you have said in the past Dominique. But please forgive me, I was in the throes of caring so much so that I forgot to check out my peripheral vision to get the view of the whole picture.

Congo’s problem is not just rape. (I can’t believe those words just escaped my lips). Congo’s problems go so much deeper than rape, if anything, this devastating sexual violence is a RESULT not the CAUSE of Congo’s difficulties, and it is definitely not the only result.

Care for just a starter list of problems and questions? Here goes, why do NGO’s PR stunts sometimes cost more than their actual programs? Why is it normal for the soldiers to go unpaid for months? No one thinks to stand up and say, hey maybe these rebels shouldn’t be going to bars with their grenade launchers and Kalashnikovs? Why are children being burnt alive after being accused of witchcraft? Why are cancer and AIDS so often passed off as ‘poisoning’? No one thinks it atrocious that the Mai Mai HAVE to hunt protected animals because they just have NOTHING else to eat? How about Hilary Clinton travelling here constantly and nothing concrete coming of it? People living on less than $1 day? What’s the line between a freedom fighter and a combatant? I think it pretty strange that grown women don’t know anything about their anatomy. I find it appalling that students have to trade money and sex for grades. I find it disgusting that people KNOW where the raping and pillaging rebels are and we haven’t announced a mass arresting yet? How about oil companies purchasing the right to dig wells in national parks? The border no longer accepting 6 month VISA’s from embassies? Rwanda has 3G cell service and I can’t get a call to go through when it’s windy or rainy? Oh I could go on and on and on and on about this country where there is no war…but still so very little peace.

Don’t get me wrong. Rape remains exceedingly important; it is the bane of a woman’s existence, the most difficult and sadly the most-anticipated event in our lives. Perhaps this is why I have attached myself so inextricably to this cause – it is too near and dear to my heart, a very real and very frightening issue that is the risk we are born with. It is ever-present in Congo, it has gripped this nation in its horrible claws and shows no signs of letting go, but it is just ONE display of the depravity and debasing of humanity that has taken place here. To focus only on this, and highlight only this, and champion this, no matter how much it deserves to be championed is to simplify the conflict and the current situation to the point where it loses so many of its dark and difficult layers.

Activists that shall go un-named will carry on and on and have the world believe though that rape is the biggest and the sole challenge to Congo’s peace and that your iPhone, you horrible human being is the reason for this rape.  But they conveniently ignore the fact that the main perpetrators of rape are no longer the FLDR or the FARDC, they are fathers, brothers, community leaders and men who walk the streets freely every day.  These activists will gloss over the silence of nations, churches and Christians that resulted in thousands of Tutsis massacred a little over a decade ago only a stone’s throw away, this same silence that characterizes the treatment of Congo today. They gloss over the complicity of governments and international NGO’s in the trading of sex for aid, the horribly defunct social infrastructure and the fact that somehow…we now have two men claiming to be the President of this one nation.

For me…I see Congo as being the sadly perfect example of a place where the value of a human life has only diminished over the years. This is why these men rape without concern for judgment, what are these women’s lives worth to them? What are their own lives worth? This is why soldiers fire their guns off into crowds for jokes…who cares? What is the value of this life they eke out? It’s a game of survival here. Why worry about development in 2020 when so many things can kill them today? Why govern this country with order and peace? The world surely hasn’t cared before…will they care now if massacres, executions and botched elections are quietly conducted?

Donors love the idea of saving women, providing for their needs, and in short, perpetuating what I like to call the ‘aid-addiction’. Very few donors think logically about the fact that perhaps ending violence against women goes much deeper than simply providing for their needs after they have been raped. It requires getting at bottom and top-levels of authorities, ending their corrupted reigns, demanding transparency and accountability and not accepting pathetic excuses for democracy and justice in return.

I love my work, I love the women in my program. I see the merit daily. I know it is creating so much good in the lives of women in so much need of good. I love the thought that I am helping them create their dreams, and training them to potentially live a much better life. But there is a sick feeling in my stomach that…the copybooks with the treasured notes on English and French…make for poor weapons against guns, machetes and the ‘stronger sex’.

There comes a point in every humanitarian’s life where she questions the worth and the efficacy of her work. I can honestly say at this juncture, that I don’t think rehabilitation in and of itself is going to solve the problem of violence against women in Congo or elsewhere anytime soon. This is not to say, that rehabilitation is worthless, it is definitely worthwhile. It’s extremely important to provide for the needs of these women after they have suffered so much physical and psychological damage…but rehabilitation relies on the event happening. It does little to prevent the violence in the first place. It is like the bandage you put on the bleeding bruise after the bully pushes you to the ground, though your bandage is really important, it doesn’t protect you from the bully. In fact he will probably push you harder tomorrow, bandage and all.

That being said, it is important to recognize that there seems to be no interest from the Western world in SOLVING the Congolese problem. Reasons for that, I shan’t get into in this post but it’s pretty obvious to me at least. This country on its knees is so much more convenient than it would be standing up on its own.  So hotels donate used bottles of shampoo, countries write off old bad-debts and count that as aid, laws and resolutions are passed; more and more funds go toward purchasing UN choppers so they can sit idly by, unable to fire their weapons at the perpetrators of massacres.

So we provide bandages and more bandages instead of pushing the bullies back, lest we actually beat them.

Violence

It is these times…it is this pain…that will either break us…or define us.

In the summer of 2010 while visiting Lynchburg, a town that once frustrated me with its nothingness and conservativeness, but a town that I now consider one of my homes, I watched the movie ‘Unthinkable’ with some guy-friends.  For those of you who haven’t seen this movie, it is either extremely disturbing or telling of our individual capacity for unthinkable violence. It tells the story of a captured terrorist, who is brutally tortured in order to exact some truth out of him. It begins with a team of hesitant officials who finally break-down and commit unspeakable acts against this terrorist and his family in order to save the lives of many. At the end of the movie we had a debate, as is typical of university students, on whether or not we could commit such violence. The general consensus was ‘No, we could never do that to another human being’.

I however had just returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a place where violence is daily and justice happens…maybe once a decade, so I had a different answer, one that shocked my hippie peace-lovin heart to the core. I said that a part of me – I’ll omit how a large a part of me, would be violent if it meant I could save the lives of millions. Of course, a part of me questions this, as a Christian I can’t wrap my mind around the eternal ramifications of being violent to another person. But while in Congo and faced with children as young as 4 years old who had been brutally raped, it became a bit more difficult to justify peaceful approaches to killers. While in Congo and faced with an endless stream of work and minimal results, faced with women who are crippled and who bow when they walk past men – I find it hard to look at peaceable measures and say – yeah…those work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not cold-blooded. I’m not advocating a kill ‘em all strategy. I’ve never lifted a finger against another soul and I hope I never will. But I do believe that everyone, particularly men have the capacity to be deeply violent and sadistic if driven to it. Some of us…it takes a lot less or a lot more than others.

While thinking on how to write this post, I thought of the simple joy we get from squishing mosquitoes in our hands. I know I do, I hate those buggers. They terrorize me to no end. I thought on how peace-workers are driven to near insanity or I suppose the clinical term would be PTSD, by being treated like crap in the field, forced to pay exorbitant prices and doing a mostly thankless, dirty and frustrating job. I thought of a legitimate and actually effective solution to the rebels terrorizing this nation. Rebels that seem impossible to change, integrate or bring to a level of “human”-behavior. I thought of the very conservative notion of peace in strength. And I thought about the centuries and centuries of untold pain and torture that women have endured at the hands of the ‘stronger’ sex…and I doubt  the efficacy of my hippie peace-lovin notions.

We are all capable of violence. When faced with a situation strong enough to drive us to it. I can’t honestly say without a doubt I would handle a situation peacefully, if someone hurt my children and I had the opportunity to do something about that. How unthinkable and un-Christian of me right?

Peace-work is challenging in many ways. But the main way is in how much it changes one to live in a society totally unlike his or her own. How much it changes you to be faced with violence day in and day out. How much it frustrates you to be helpless. How much it annoys you when no-one knows, but everyone somehow knows enough to tell you how you should feel and what you should be doing from the comfort of their suburban homes. How much it hurts when you do a thankless and difficult job with no resources at your disposal and no visible end to what you’re combating. How much it makes you tear your hair out when people claim to care so much but can’t give up their Starbucks addiction to make a donation toward a good cause. How much it burns me when somehow I can find internet to call, make meetings and send emails and yet a reply can take days to come from the world of smart-phones and Macbooks and wireless high-speed. How much it pains you when people ask you when you’re leaving like if you’re just playing games, and you couldn’t possibly be working in Africa long-term. How much it attacks every fiber of your being when you are witness to horrific things and its effects. How much it either strengthens everything you believe in or makes you question it all.

Can I justify violence against another human being? I don’t know. I pray I am never faced with the situation to make a decision like that, because I don’t know what my answer would me. I say no now. But then…things might be different.

Talk about justice…

I was hesitant to accept the invitation to Marian’s home last week. For someone who has barely clung to a cliff, staring into the abyss of depression and only…just barely made it out intact, the thought of meeting with a severely depressed HIV-positive woman…was terrifying. Not just because I had no words nor money for her, but because it would be like glancing back at the shadow that for so long…crept frighteningly close behind me and occasionally whispers taunts into my ear.
But I accepted the invitation and went with Marian’s sister to her home. The skies were gray, telling of an impending storm, or in a very Shakespearean manner, telling of the mood. We got out of the vastly over-priced taxi (curse my more-English-than-French French) and walked up a tiny, gravelly road, past the shacks and children playing in the dirt outside of them, and turned into the driveway of a modest home. We walked alongside the wall of this home till we got to the back, an area curtained off with what seemed to be old table-cloths. As I took a seat on the couch in this little shed-like area, the rain began to pour and we were soon damp from the raindrops that dripped like tears from the eyes in the worn-out galvanize roof.
When Marian joined her sister and I, her thumb was bandaged up and bloody. In a hateful and typically human way, my mind immediately ran to the open scratches on my hands from my loving but violent kitten and the what if’s of being exposed to HIV from her infected finger. I chastised myself silently, for being just like the rest of the world, and throughout our conversation kept on reminding myself that the greatest need of a human-being is to be known and to be loved, that this woman needed to be known, loved, held, hugged and reminded of her value
Even though I already knew her story, from the tragic tale her sister had told me, I asked Marian to share her story with me. Although she was distracted by the pain from her infected thumb, she finally opened up – albeit in bits and pieces.
She had been a virgin when she married her husband. Things went as well as they could go for a Congolese wife for years. She bore her husband four children, remained faithful to him, cooked, cleaned and was a good wife to him. She submitted to him in every way. Then, a few months ago when she became ill, her husband told her that he had HIV.
He had been slipping her medication for years, but had never bothered to tell her about having the disease. After he told her that she had most likely had contracted AIDS from him, he told her he no longer had any use for her, and turned her onto the streets with nothing but her name. He stole two of their children and sent them abroad to meet his family and left her with the youngest – a boy of about 6 and a baby girl of about 3.
Where we met her, was the home of some of her family members who had taken her in. When I asked her what she was doing, she said ‘nothing’. It was so clear to me that Marian had lost her will to live. She had stopped taking her medication from the local hospital, spoke in barely a whisper, and no longer cared much about living it seemed. She clutched her baby girl in her arms while she chatted, and lovingly placed her chin on the baby’s forehead while staring blankly ahead.
As we wrapped up our talk, the thunder began to roar and the rain began tumbling down torrentially. We prayed, I tried to invite her to participate in our program even though I knew it was no use.
And then we left. And I swallowed back the anger and the tears.
In this land, where there is no war and there is no peace, there are so many battles that aren’t fought among militia and governments but are fought in the streets and in the silencing walls of homes and families. It’s a battle in Marian’s tiny home every day. To continue living a life she knows will end all too soon, when all she did was be a good wife, the way she was told to be.
I’ve been struck this week not just by the incapacitating power of unchecked depression and the way the devil uses it to destroy everything we have…but also just how little power we as women wield in our own lives. In so many countries around the world, wives are forbidden from using contraception and protection because that’s not what a good wife does. And ironically, in countries where sexual prowess and multiple partners are inextricably tied to the qualities of a manly man, these are the countries where women’s sexual rights are widely ignored.
Marian never stood a chance against her unfaithful husband, because it was outside her realm of possibility to ask her spouse – who should have been protecting and loving her – to get tested, or to use a condom.
Needless to say, I am fired up about this. I am angry that women like Marian are sentenced to death, abandoned and then have to somehow pick up the pieces…how is that fair? And please don’t tell me life is not fair, I’ve seen too much in the last year…I’m waiting to see this fairness and justice that the fairytales speak of.
Marian can’t find the energy to smile, to truly laugh or even take the medication that may prolong her life by a few years, far less for work, find money, prepare the nutritional meals that she needs or to send her children to school.
I’m angry yes, I’m shaken by seeing the face of the monster of depression, I’m rendered helpless by the thought that Marian is not the only one. I’m distraught that women around the world don’t and can’t exercise their sexual rights, that sixteen year olds in love succumb to having unprotected sex in the name of love, and play dangerous games of cat and mouse that for them mean so little, because youth is immortality. I’m angry that while in the developed world, AIDS is now controllable, people can live for decades with the disease – in countries that ABSOLUTELY NEED to catch the proverbial break, access to retro-viral drugs is minimal if even available and talk of the nutrition needed to ward of infections and disease? That’s a joke.
Targeted in war and targeted in our own relationships. Marian wasn’t safe in her own home nor in the arms of the man she was entrusted to.
He will move on to another woman, infect another. She will raise his children until she is too weak to do anything.
Talk about justice…

Victories

I’ve written so much about the horrors taking place in Congo, the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, the blissful ignorance of millions of people in the West that I’ve grown quite weary of it. I don’t know how people like Kristoff do it, how often can you come up with synonyms for destruction, rape, poverty and war. I for one have made ample use online synonym dictionaries and have sat for many a minute contemplating, how to describe horrible thing X without repeating the same words and calls to action that I’ve written in almost every other blog post.

As I was walking through downtown Bukavu today, checking out the atmosphere as we await the announcement of Congo’s new President and in search of canned Coke and mangoes for curried mango to go with my chapati, I had a thought. I haven’t toured through Africa so I don’t have much authority on this, but it struck me how easy it would be to forget that Bukavu is in fact a war-torn African city. It is so peaceful, beautiful and deceivingly lovely that I sometimes have to reassure myself about where I am.
I tried to look straight-ahead today as I walked, looking for signs of the battles and the bloodshed and craving some African-ness in my system.

I noticed the FARDC soldier, a sight seen so often I don’t even register it as abnormal to see soldiers clutching their AK-47s walk brazenly through the streets. I watched him with my typical but ghastly fearlessness that comes from growing up in the (slightly) developed world. He walked tiredly, barely holding on to his gun, eyes downcast and brow furrowed in the blazing Congo mid-day heat. He walked right past me – this remnant of war seemed just eager to reach a cool sitting place where he could sip a beer and get out of the sun.

As I continued down the dirt road, I came face to face with a woman of abundant girth and probably wealth, stepping gingerly, clutching her cloth wrapped around her waist with gaudy, yellow high-heels adorning her feet. A bit further on I noticed a man burning his rubbish at the side of the street, simultaneously coolly lighting his old-timey pipe in the flames that came from his rubbish. Urban Outfitters and other hipster-havens would kill for that kind of authenticity.

When I left the dirt road, and emerged onto the bustling Ave Lumumba, I was immediately confronted with local and UN police decked out in full riot gear but lazing around by the vehicles, “securing” the community during this tense time. Moto-taxis congregate at the corner, so my thought process was put on pause for a bit as I walked quickly through them denying offers of lifts to Carrefour, Essence or Chai.

I continued to walk through the crowds of people plying their goods, hailing taxis, chatting with each other, languidly smoking their Ambassade cigarettes and going about their everyday life. To my right, I could just barely catch a glimpse of the massive Lake Kivu gleaming enticingly like the teasing and deadly woman she is, and to my left I could see stores, markets, local bars, and way in the distance looming eerily over the town – the barracks that house the presumably integrated army.

I wanted to take you on this journey with me because as I walked through town today, I couldn’t help but think what a pity it is that the news on Congo focuses only on the wars, the corruption, the conflict minerals and it being the worst place to be a woman. Little to no news at all focuses on the admirable way in which the people here have sought to cling to some semblance of normalcy and the ever-elusive – peace.

Perhaps if Bukavu were more Gaza-strip-esque, it would be on the headlines every day, perhaps if people were still starving to death trapped in their homes in Port-au-Prince mainstream media would not have forgotten about the Haitian people since the excitement and the million-dollar aid shipments have ceased.

What I’ve found is this. In the worst places in the world, people continue to eke out a living. They wake up in the morning, they fetch their water, they go about their lives, because that’s what we as people do. We cling to normalcy, we cling to our routines and we cling to them even in the face of death, destruction, war, elections, and the end of the world even.

Perhaps this should be a part of the mainstream media’s depiction of these countries, perhaps that would normalize horrible things X,Y and even Z, and bring them closer to the heart of the average Jersey Shore viewer, knowing that even when there is madness in the streets, someone’s at home making dinner very quietly for their families. Even when the earth literally shook and cracked, someone woke up the next morning to prepare breakfast.

People ask me all these absurd but understandable questions about why I seem determined to travel to every place the US State Department says not to go, is it because I don’t give a rip about their website and travel warnings, partly yes. But it’s also because I know deep down inside that life goes on in these places in quietly victorious ways.

These are the victories we fail to acknowledge. The victory that some sort of dinner was served in some tent-homes in Port-au-Prince in 2010. The victory that a father consoled his hungry children until they fell asleep beneath their fabric roof, watching over them, as only a The victory that children continued playing football in cracked streets bordered by collapsed homes in Jacmel. The victory that people turn out in the Sunday-best to church, election, war, earthquake be damned. The victory that people wake up every morning no matter what, and…exist.

I find that exciting. And I think we should all think that that is pretty cool.

I know there’ve been mornings I’ve woken up praying to God all-mighty that the day before did not happen, or that I had dreamed the horrendous incident of the night before up. I can’t even bring myself to get out of bed and when I do, it’s to face the day with gloom and despair. But I make my coffee, I eat something, I go back to bed and try again the next day.

I don’t live my life in an incredibly victorious way. Its part and parcel of living in the (slightly) developed world. We don’t consider being able to break out the French press in the morning a victory – when oh…my…word – it is a victory beyond compare.

I wish the media and writers like myself (ha), would highlight these victories so much more. I can only read so many articles about civilian deaths, riots and rapes. Sometimes I want to read about the families that picked the pieces up after these events. Sometimes I want to read about the young girl in a refugee camp that dreams of going to school to become a nurse. Sometimes I want to see hope splashed across CNN and BBC.

The biggest victories are so often in the untold stories.

First world problems

I rolled out of bed this morning and quickly threw on my clothes and the mandatory pashmina to head out for a walk and take a look-see at the situation in the streets on Election Day. I’m not sure what I was expecting…rioting, crowds of disgruntled voters, crowds of women trying to share a bribe from a local candidate. I really don’t know.
What I did see however was…calm streets, empty sidewalks, closed stores and gigantic UN tanks with officers in full riot gear behind their weapons…presumably protecting and serving and observing and what not.
I crept into the College Alfajiri polling center in Nguba, Bukavu and was at once engulfed into crowds of voters, excited by the promise of democracy, a vote and a voice. I tried to be discreet as I photographed scenes of crowds, lined up voters, people peering over the list of candidates, and young couples lounging on the grassy fields, waiting as their friends complete their civil duty.
I was asked several times who I had voted for, and deja-vu transported me to not too long ago when I was asked the same question time and time again in Lynchburg, VA. During the Obama campaign, to be an Obama supporter on the Bible belt, attending a conservative Christian school with fairly obvious political inclinations meant you were basically persecuted. The campaigning was nothing short of vicious; candidates were deemed anti-Christ, terrorists and non-citizens. I don’t know…but I felt then and still feel now, there are probably systems in place to ensure that citizens of random countries aren’t allowed to just run for office in the land of the free.
As I looked on in awe at hundreds of Congolese people today, eager to vote and excited for the albeit slim chance of a democratic election and a leader they might be able to say – they voted into power, I was struck again by the memory of the lack of graciousness I saw then and continue to see in the land of the brave and free.
Not being a citizen, I didn’t feel strongly either way about any candidate then or now, I am fairly low on the totem-pole in terms of passport-royalty, but as an outsider I saw so clearly how little appreciation there was then, for just the opportunity to vote, that a free and fair election process was actually possible, that their President would step down and the glories of democracy could actually take place without riots and bloodshed. In countries like Congo, free and fair elections are nothing but a dream. In countries like my own, dead people vote and communities of 200 people submit 2000 ballot papers. I’d love a day to see each country with a democratically-elected, ethical leader.
I suppose with the gift of democracy comes the gift of being able to print and say laughable allegations against one’s leaders. And that too is a gift that many countries around the world don’t have. But does this warrant forgetting what a blessing a free and fair electoral process is? I don’t think so.
Such a huge difference between first and third-world problems.
Pray for free, fair and safe elections in the DRC.

Like self-beating

I cannot impress enough on you how difficult it is to teach something that goes against the very grain of people’s culture and everything they believe in. Think of…beating yourself against a wall, then rolling in mud, then beating yourself again, then go out in the sun and let the mud harden so you’re unable to even blink.

Some days are double that for me.

After a very…interesting seminar with my staff on our Vision, Mission and Values – I realized I was asking these women to purport something that they didn’t really believe themselves. They didn’t believe that education and empowerment would help women. They continually asked about why we didn’t give people financial help to come to class. My responses about development instead of aid, my textbook sustainability answers fell on deaf ears. Finally it came down to me firmly saying “We don’t give out money. That’s all there is to it. That is part of the problem in Congo, this belief that throwing money at a situation doesn’t help. We are here to teach women how to make their own money and take care of themselves. Time spent here is not lost. It is an investment – that I will see to it is worth their while.”

I’ve seen this in Haiti as well. Countries that have spent decades in crisis create generations of people unable to think long-term. Their needs are immediate, their thoughts are on the immediate and their expectations of foreign groups is a tidy little food and money package.

Its caused me to think more on the revolutionary ideas I’m bringing here – women are worth education? It is possible to live a successful and happy life? That women don’t HAVE to be beasts of burden. I might as well be walking around saying the earth is flat out of the three mouths on my three heads.

It has caused me to think…what a drastic revolution is needed here and in so many countries around the world. If even relatively successful women do not really believe that there is hope for their peers…how do we get the women who are much worse off to believe it?

How have we as human beings allowed this to happen to our sisters? How are we okay with the absolute train wrecks our blatant disregard for bringing justice to countries that are not our own, lest they impact our pleasure-filled lives, have made of women’s psyches.

I don’t know how to get someone to believe that they worth so much more than they think and simultaneously break down decades and decades of believed lies.

To do this would be my greatest accomplishment.

Bahati’s Story

Bahati stands shorter than even 5 foot 1 little me. She carries herself with a grace, patience and a lady-like gentleness that astonishes even Liberty graduate me who spent 4 years with Southern belles. She waits on me to finish my meeting, standing at the doorway of our new center, shrouded in sunlight with her traditional scarf slung around her shoulder. Her red and brown dress sways gently around her in the light breeze that blows through our open doors and windows – signaling a pending storm. My translator remains unconcerned… “Heavy rain comes from Rwanda, this will be short”. Not sure if this is just symbolic of the seething rage against Rwandans or if it has any geographical sound reason but so the saying goes. Bahati glares at the rain and instantly it seems to clear up. Who is this woman? Where has she brought this joy and loveliness from? Why have I never met her? I can’t focus on the issues I’m discussing with my staff, so eager I am to meet this lady. This woman who does not reek of sorrow and acceptance of the misfortunes of her life. I need to listen to her.

Bahati’s Story.
I am a follower of Christ. I am an evangelist. I used to be a seamstress, I would sew dresses with my sewing machines to make enough money to feed my family. When I saved enough, I bought four sewing machines so I could make my business larger. Then the war came, and my husband was taken as a prisoner for two years. I could barely survive.
Then I travelled to Mwenga. There I saw how people lived like animals and women suffered. And my Lord told me to do something about it. I sold my sewing machines. I went to school to learn a little about theology. Then I went to Mwenga to start a church. We helped many people. We gave them hope. I gathered up women who had been raped and started to try to support them. We were thirty.
Now, I am asked to evangelize in other places, people ask me to their conferences but I cannot understand anything. I am so thankful that you opened up this Center so that I could learn French for free. Truly you are a blessing from God, because you are helping me continue my ministry.
Now what can we do about these women in Mwenga?

I get challenged on a daily basis here. Sometimes small things, sometimes large. I was greatly challenged by Bahati’s story. This woman had given up everything to serve a God she believed in unconditionally, even in the midst of war, uncertainty and her husband’s imprisonment.
I’m taking this challenge and running with it, living fearlessly, heeding my God’s call even when it appears faint, and dropping everything in search of a life feverishly answering His call and doing His bidding. I’m going to have to take this and internalize it some more…but I’m called out.
I challenge you today. Now what will you do about these women in Mwenga? Now what will you do with Bahati’s story? Now what will you do to serve Him?
Now what?
 

Here’s what you missed

Well it would seem that I’ve been at a loss for words over the last few weeks. I apologize for the lack of blog-posts on exciting marriage-proposals, harrowing border crossings, and awesome times with the women from Wamu etc etc. I’ve been struggling, trying to keep focused on the mission here, the greater purpose, why I’m here, what God wants in this situation, what His purpose is for me and for Congo and trying to keep my head above the waters that drown missionaries whose missions become, frighteningly…jobs.

Here’s what you’ve missed.

Hysterically, I’ve become somewhat of a guardian to young girls in our program who we’ve been helping go to school. Now there’s purchasing books, sweaters, pencils and pens thrown in the mix and fights about why money that was intended for school went to lotions and makeup. Teenagers…love em.

Taken to wearing a cheap fake wedding band, who did I meet the other day but that guy who accosted me on the street earlier this year wanting my hand in marriage! So in an effort to end conversations about why I was so old and single before they even start I got myself a wedding ring and made-up hubby! Don’t judge me. It’s a jungle.

This might end up being a rant, but due to a series of unfortunate events I’ve added to my blacklist: expats who come to countries that are war-torn, poverty-stricken and hopeless for so many people and think it’s time to party wantonly. That’s not okay. Warzones aren’t playgrounds. What message does that send to the people they are here to work for and with? That their misfortune is an opportunity?

I took a trip to Kigali, Rwanda this weekend. There I had the pleasure of my first massage ever in life, note to self: be more discerning about where I go to get massages in Africa. I’ll spare you all the details, mostly because I’m a bit of a prude and a little nauseated by it still, but let’s just stay it required a pre-massage shower, lots of baby-oil and me frantically running away from the ‘health-club’ just barely making it out with my sanity into the scorching midday Rwandan sun.

I’ve been struggling trying to make our program work and effective with the limited resources at our disposal and although I know I’m learning valuable problem-solving skills, it’s a bit exhausting and frustrating. Somehow, I’m making it through though and we’re moving into our new project-site this week! Woot-woot!

I’ve become a hermit. Not wanting to be a part of the typical expat debaucherous life-style and not speaking Swahili leaves me to stay at home reading, watching Modern Family episodes and engulfing myself in the madness at Kadutu, Nyawera and Nguba markets, haggling over the amount of francs I’m getting charged for veggies – really 300 francs is just pennies, but I stand on principle, I shouldn’t have to pay twice the regular amount just because I’m not Congolese.  Sorry buddies, if I was getting a UN salary maybe I wouldn’t care. Boom! Roasted.

I’m reading through Joshua, wanting so badly to feel…led again, I want to see how God led His people in REAL ways…I want that. I want to be led. I know that I am…but sometimes…I feel more lost than ever.

I turned 24! And with this absurd reality I’m a bit stressed that I haven’t reached the deadlines I set for myself. Where’s the cushy job, car, apartment, health insurance, and completed novel at? Uh…not here. The only thing I have in my name is a savings account with $70 in it I started a few months ago when I became seriously concerned that I would be a broke 40 year old cat lady. I’m well on my way to becoming just that, cat – check, broke – check. And as for a completed novel, lets just say…I need inspiration. The last thing I wrote was an academic article on GBV…is this really who I am now? Craziness. After I broke up with my last real boyfriend, who after a three year relationship, I thought for sure I was set for life and got categorically lazy, I pledged to remain single till 23 – in my fear that I would once again lose myself in wondrous love, cleave my dreams to someone else’s and become lazy. Well…now I’m 24 and the pledge seems to be carrying over. Not to worry though, I’ll get this thing right someday.

In spite of all the programmatic issues, the women remain my lifeline. Whenever I need a reminder there a few specific women I take some time to spend in their company, laughing with them as they scrub clothes in brightly colored buckets and stir bugali in darkened metals pots but keeping in mind the horrible things that have happened to them. The thing that doesn’t get publicized, because it doesn’t excite donors, is that these women…are real people. They get cranky, they laugh, they get pregnant, they curse when they plunge their feet into the muddy mess that passes for a road here, they have bad days, they get annoyed and yep…they can be annoying. We make them out to be helpless victims and only that – but that is just such a 2D version of the situation and really in this 3D world we live in, that’s bogus. I struggle sometimes when I get annoyed or frustrated with Congolese people, I feel guilty but now it’s hitting me – these are real people, and just as much as they get my love and respect, they can get the frustration too. Equal treatment does have its ups and its downs.

What have you missed? A little bit of a bleak time I’m afraid. Lots of frustrations, tears, doubt, lack-luster days, silent battles with myself, angry shouting matches with ridiculous wrong number callers, diarrhea, a twinge of defeat and…fatigue. This is no longer just an awesome three month volunteer experience, it is hard…hard…work that sometimes makes me feel like I’ve been beaten every which way with a club at the end of the day. I can’t help but sometimes wonder…what am I doing?

Birthdays and War

In my darkened electricity-less room I sit, staring out at a thunderously rainy, chilly night in Eastern Congo, a few tears dripping down my face. Today is my birthday. And it has been unequivocally…sucky.

Quite the record day it has been, work all day, unceremonious emails from the parents wishing me well, meaningless pleasantries from ex-friends and ex-boyfriends on the Facebook, then too much rain to even venture to the next-door hotel for mindless drinking and gluttony.

My afternoon was spent shivering from a cold bucket bath, reminiscing on the life-choices that have brought me to this horribly lonely, cat-lady place and simultaneously chastising myself for trying to hold on to childhood ideals of what my birthday should feel like, when I work with women who don’t know if they are 40 or 84.

War does that to women, we forget the things that should matter…the celebration of the day we were born, brought onto this earth, purposed into being. We forget what it means like to be feminine, to clutch fabric to our faces, to long for frills and skirts, to preen, to laugh, to joke.
War changes women.
And apparently so does post-war. I view Congo through the eyes of someone accustomed to looking at burnt down remnants of beauty, torn-apart wonders. I view Congo through the eyes of someone who has lived through several personal wars. I view Congo through eyes of dismay. How has post-war changed me….

I no longer enjoy things fully, no matter how hard I try. I stop taking care of myself. I cling to thoughts of violence, danger, horror stories that became realities for young girls. I cling to them for my sanity, clutching them like a child clutches her toy, because without those thoughts, those driving reasons for being here….then I have no reason for being here. Would I even have reason for being. Quite the doubled edge sword – a calling – who are you if you are not fulfilling it?

Without thoughts of war, determination to repair its effects, and reclaim souls, I have nothing and I am nothing. Sobering realization.
War has coerced me into a realization that I am but nothing, in all my efforts to do everything. War has drilled holes into my heart, more than even newly vegetarian/pansy ex-boyfriends, and frenemies have drilled. War has caused me to see things I wish I have not seen. War has caused me to look into the eyes of every woman…and see our vulnerability to attack. War has caused me to look into the eyes of men, and see only their capacity to rape, maim and kill. War has caused me to lay awake at night strategizing, typing, reading, then curling up with a resigned sigh of defeat and clutching my memory-foam pillow that no longer memorizes me – thanks to baggage handlers in Addis/Kigali.

War has caused me to look at the world with the eyes of a 40 something year old instead of a new 24 year old. Why do I feel like I have aged decades in the last year and a half? I think I have.

War has caused me to both consider birthdays insignificant, to count myself lucky for even knowing the year I was born in, but also is now causing me to desperately want some normalcy. To desperately want a loving phone-call, gift-wrapped jewelry box, or book or simply someone to hug me and say “I’m glad you were born”. War has both hardened me, as well as made me a secret pansy.
I talk of war as one who is trying to pick up the pieces of a country shattered like a broken mirror in the case of countless wars. I speak of a war that has both destroyed a nation as well as destroyed the hearts and vaginas of ghastly numbers of women.

I speak of war with the credentials of someone sitting, staring out at the rain falling on her inconsequential birthday, perhaps wishing that Congo had left her something to deem consequential.