Avant

Recently we’ve had 3 Belgians move onto the mine. They were all born in Congo in the 50’s. They don’t really speak English so we usually communicate in Swahili with some French and English shoved in along the way. A few days ago we happened to be around some foreigners who don’t speak Swahili so it was mostly French. It’s amazing how bad my French has gotten. It’s pretty easy for me to understand because I haven’t actually forgotten the words but it’s so difficult and unnatural to form sentences. It’s kind of like when I go back to Zambia and my friends talk to me in Tonga but I have to respond to them in English because I just can’t put sentences together. I’m guessing being around these Belgians will change that at least for French.

So one of them decided to tell us stories of Congo avant (before). Meaning before independence. I’m not so arrogant to believe I know more about how things were back then than he does from merely reading books but it was so obvious to me from what I had read that he was romanticizing things. Things were much better back then for whites and blacks alike no doubt the Congolese destroyed things. But the people weren’t free and they weren’t treated fairly by any stretch of the imagination. They were given free education and free health care in fact the best health care in all of Africa. But they were third class citizens behind the Portuguese and Greeks who weren’t even allowed to live in the center of the city. Talk about racism.

I’ve thought a lot lately about what would happen if all the foreigners left this country. Or if they had never come in the first place. There have been so many injustices and so much suffering here by the hands of foreigners and natives alike. Some times it just feels like too much. Overwhelming and seemingly impossible to change.

Today I saw the street kids I’ve become friends with. One of them showed me his cut up knuckles. He said the Catholic sister who cares for him beat his knuckles because he didn’t bring her any money from his begging. I was about to give him some food when 20 kids bombarded me and asked if I’d buy them a soccer ball. One kid tripped and started crying as his arm started bleeding. I took him to the nearest store and bought a bandage for him. Then bought the kids a ball to which they decided to give me a round of applause. It made me so sad. Here are these great kids whose parents either died or threw them away. Now they have nothing. When the boy fell down the first thought that came to my head was “I don’t have time for this.” It took me maybe 20 minutes to get him bandaged up and then buy their soccer ball. How pathetic that I considered not helping him to save myself 20 minutes. I wonder how many other people walked past these kids today and did nothing to help them. I wish there was a magic button I could push to give them a decent life, but there isn’t so I do the little things that I can and I wonder what Jesus would do if He were here in this awful place.

A Typical Day

So people always ask me what a typical day is like in my life. It’s hard to say because everyday is different and because this is Africa you have to expect the unexpected. Few days go as I think they will.

For example I woke up this morning at 6AM after all the night sounds had disappeared like the howling monkeys and hooting owls not to mention chirping crickets and loud frogs. I took a shower then read my Bible for a while, made some coffee and headed to the all purpose room (dinning room, living room, and office) around 7:30. My coworker beat me there and had the TV on Sky News so I poured some coffee and he drank his tea while we heard about what was going on in the world. I turned on my laptop and started working through some paperwork when one of my workers came in to give me a status report on his project. After I had drunk all my coffee I headed down to the other office building where there is internet. I checked my emails and sent out some responses and reports.

I just reopened our clinic here so I went down to see how the doctor was doing. We chatted about some of the issues and ideas until a man came by who was sick. I sat outside on the dirt and chatted with the patient’s wife and daughter about all the basics. They giggled with glee at the thought of having had an actual conversation with a white person in Swahili no less. When the doctor had finished we talked for a while about reports statistics ideas etc then I walked back to the office to type up all we had discussed.

I went up to the kitchen and decided to eat some lunch with my coworkers. After lunch I organized to go to the village with Lunda. We were to leave at 1:40 sharp because I had a meeting with the Development Committee at 2pm. Then it started pouring down rain so we waited until 2:15 when the rain let up enough for us to get going. The road was horribly muddy so about 2 miles from the camp I told Lunda we would have to push. The only problem was I was wearing flipflops. It was useless trying to push since I slid all over the place nearly dropping my 200lb bike each time. I removed my shoes and did slightly better barefooted. Thankfully Lunda had on sneakers and was able to help a lot!

Finally we reached less muddy ground and I tried to start the motorcycle. Someone stole my battery and I just haven’t been to a place that sells batteries yet so I’ve been using the kick start. As these things go it wouldn’t start . A concerned man who was on the back of a 3 person motorcycle taxi stopped to tell me I should buy an SUV and motorcycles aren’t for white people especially not for women!

There is a mechanic shop (well a plastic tarp held up by sticks with some screw drivers and wrenches) by the side of the road so I stop in. A 15 year old boy under the tutelage of another boy maybe 20 years old grabbed a screwdriver and had the problem fixed in less than 5 minutes. I paid the 15 year old and thanked him then drove off to my meeting only an hour late.

Thankfully it’s African time so they were there waiting for me some of them hadn’t even arrived yet. They saw my muddy feet and hands and knew I was telling the truth about why I was late. We discussed some of the issues in the village and made some resolutions. Everyone was happy and we started off to the school to check on my project there to fix the leaky roof. Apparently it was half fixed so we investigated and made a plan to have it completely fixed. We jumped back on the motorcycle and headed off.

I returned to the mine to explain the new attempt at fixing the school’s roof to my workers. When I got back to the office I realized the generator had been turned off for the regular one hour from 4pm to 5pm while they refill the diesel. No generator means no water so much for cleaning my muddy feet. I was able to steal some water out of the cleaning lady’s bucket to wash my hands. I started typing up a proposal based upon my meeting with the development committee. Then the generator kicked on and I was about to head up to get clean when the doctor came over to talk about more problems. While I was dealing with that it started pouring down rain. I decided to procrastinate on finishing my updated medical reports and started typing this blog entry. It’s now 7pm and the rain has finally finished… oh wait there it goes again! I should go anyway so I can cook supper and definitely clean my disgusting feet! Hopefully I’ll have time to read a few pages from a good book and get to sleep by 10.

Just a typical day for me.