off up north

Off up north tomorrow, just over the border from where I used to live in Uganda. I'm looking forward to nights with nothing to do but sit by the fire, look at the stars and try to decipher conversation in omiti. More when I get back...

Sunday encounters

Sunday mornings can bring unexpected visitors. In the quiet vacuum created by mass attendance at church, opportunists often try their hand. One Sunday I was reading in my bedroom when I caught a boy peering in at me through the mosquito netting, checking out who was at home. Another week as I was cooking Sunday lunch, I heard the front door open and found a young man in my sitting room. He wasn’t able to tell me why he was there or how he knew me, so I asked him to leave. Yesterday I confronted an enterprising boy who was lobbing stones at my avocado trees to help with the harvesting (remembering the apple scrumping my friends and I used to indulge in as kids, I couldn’t be too hard on him!).  

I was just settling down to some Sunday music making when a knock came at the door. It was a middle-aged man wearing a small, worn out shoulder bag and a weary expression. In a mixture of French and Swahili, he started explaining how he was a displaced person who’d fled Dungu, nearly 300km away, where he’d working, because of attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Apparently he’d walked many miles, hitched a lift from others and was now here in Bunia, but he was trying to get back to Goma hundreds of kilometres south, where his family was. He needed $20 for transport. He’d asked for help at various humanitarian organisations, and at my local church, which is where he saw me and followed me home. I was suspicious. I’ve had conmen pretending to be refugees asking me for money on Sunday mornings before now, and I don’t have much time for them. My colleagues have advised me never to give money to people I don’t know who turn up at my door. Somehow, though, this story had something genuine about it. I decided to stall. I asked him to come back on Monday morning, when I could talk to him with one of my colleagues who comes from Goma.

 I’m glad I did. He duly returned at the time we’d fixed. My colleague questioned him a bit about Goma, about what his name means in his language, which is very similar to my colleague’s, about his church community, and found that his story rang true. From his frayed shoulder bag he produced a precious piece of soap he’d been given by someone on the road. As for food, there wasn’t much opportunity for it. We realised that this was a case where help was needed. My colleague accompanied him to the bus park and helped him onto a lorry which would take him down south. It was a lesson to me that I need to be shrewd and vigilant on a Sunday morning, but open, too, to the good that God is wanting to do, whatever I might have experienced in the past. Blanket rules just don’t work.

wounds

The other day, one of my students came to see me during class break. He’s usually very punctual but this particular day he’d arrived late and distracted, and he wanted to explain why. His fifteen year old daughter had just given birth by Caesarean, so he’d been to visit her and his wife who is looking after her at the hospital. He explained further that his daughter had become pregnant after being raped by her school teacher. This is an all-too-common occurrence here. According to statistics, since the end of the war in 2003, rape committed by civilians has increased seventeen fold in DRC. A culture of impunity has developed: during the war traditional social structures and sanctions broke down in many communities, and people became accustomed to violence.

 Later that day, I rode with my student on the back of his motorbike to visit his daughter in hospital. She looked so small and fragile, withdrawn, subdued, just a child herself. But the baby is healthy, and her Caesarean wound is healing well. We’re praying that God will heal the deeper emotional wounds she bears and set her free from any sense of shame because of what happened to her. And we’re praying, too, that she’ll be able to continue with her schooling, and know hope and joy in the future.

bandits on the road

Bunia feels a less tense place than it did a couple of years ago when I first arrived. It's rare to hear gunshots at night nowadays. Sheltered as I am on the university campus, it can be easy to forget that insecurity is still an issue in and near Bunia. But on Friday at university staff prayers we got news that was a sharp reminder otherwise. The afternoon before, one of the university drivers, B., had dropped off the principal about 50km out of town for a church meeting. On his way back night was falling as he reached a spot on the main road about 15km from Bunia. He found the road ahead of him barred by sticks driven into the ground. As he tried to reverse the vehicle, he was attacked by a group of around ten armed bandits. The dragged him out of the minibus, and beat him severely with sticks. They were looking for money, and took his mobile phone and the $20 he had. They had expected to find the minibus full of traders flush with cash coming back from Beni, a trading centre south of Bunia. The bandits discussed whether they should kill B, but in the end left him in a ditch and disappeared into the night. They didn't touch the vehicle. B tried to get back into the minibus, but his ribs were broken and he didn't have the strength. Miraculously a few minutes later a motorbike came by. The motorbike driver was a mechanic who knew B. He was able to drive B. and the university vehicle into Bunia and take B. to the hospital. Thankfully he was not badly injured, although he was very shaken up. We're thankful too, that the principal wasn't attacked.

 

People are saying that this main road south is not safe before 8 in the morning, nor after 4 in the evening. It's a road that friends and colleagues need to use regularly. It's been announced just recently that there are plans for the Chinese to tarmac this road, which is very good news, since it is deeply rutted and potholed. We're praying that its security can be improved, as well as its surface. And we're praying for B., and others like him whose job as a driver can involve big risks.

visits

Visiting people is a very important part of life in DRC. It’s one of the prime ways you show you respect them, care about them and are in a good relationship with them. You can drop in on people at any time, unannounced, and they will welcome you warmly, because visitors are considered a blessing. And you need to be ready to receive visitors unexpectedly, too. I find this challenging sometimes, because I can be pretty work-orientated and my home is my office. (Cultural values clashing again!) Visitors announce their presence at the door with the expression ‘Hodi!’ It can be hard to leave my computer, lose my train of thought as it wends its way through academic French, and open the door with a smile and a ‘Karibu!’, (meaning ‘Welcome’). But I’m trying to learn to look at things the way Henri Nouwen did when he said, “My interruptions are my work.” And, of course, lots of the visitors I receive are an unexpected pleasure that help to warm my house up, as we say here. Being stuck at home under piles of lesson plans and academic assignments can be rather lonely at times and visitors bring laughter and connectedness.

Last year I realised that I didn’t take nearly enough time to visit the students who live on my doorstep. That was partly because I was in survival mode, and barely keeping my head above water as I struggled to prepare lessons in French at degree level for the first time, as well as adapting to Congolese life. But this academic year life seems a little less ‘on the edge’, so I’m trying to make a little bit of time every week to go visiting. It’s amazing what I find. A couple of days ago I visited one of my students, T. a young, bright guy who is excited about translating the Bible into his language, who regularly accosts me with difficult questions in class. He is living in one room with his wife, two small children, and his sister, a schoolgirl. This weekend his sister-in-law is arriving from their home in the Kivu region to help look after the children. That will make six people in one room, three of whom are studying. They make do by partitioning off parts of the room with curtains. His wife gave birth to their second daughter about a month ago, and is doing her second degree in development studies. She has to nip out of lectures to feed the baby. In the future she’s hoping to apply what she’s learning by encouraging literacy in their home community. T. asked me to pray for his sister-in-law’s journey from Goma, because security on the road is sometimes bad, and that they will find somewhere less cramped to live. In general there’s great pressure on student housing on the campus. Another student is waiting for his wife and six children to arrive to move into their tiny two-roomed house. My spacious two-bedroomed house is truly palatial here. One again I’m challenged by the contrasts between my own life and those I live and work with here.

 

it never rains but it pours

We’ve been having buckets of rain in Bunia recently. Rain is basically seen as a blessing, but it has its disadvantages, too!

Rain means...

food (as long as there’s not too much, otherwise the crops will rot)

 mud

slippery roads, longer journeys, larger potholes, deeper ruts

vehicles slipping down the hill into my hedge

road outside my house after rain

everything stops till the rain stops – classes, exams, meetings, visits, journeys can be delayed

deep sleep and slow starts

catching tasty termites

more mud

blankets on beds

bundling up in woolly jumpers and shawls

extended power cuts

thieves at night making the most of power cuts

rain-washed air and crystal clear views of the mountains

thick mud

damped down dust

rampant vegetation

cutting the grass once a week, using a ‘slasher’ (a long, thin scythe)

shouting loudly to make yourself heard over the din on a tin roof

cutting the grass

mosquitoes multiplying

soil erosion

treacherous mud