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.