Congo Journal 22

We're Home. Now What?

The Chicago contingent of the Ten for Congo team gathered earlier this week at Christine’s house for breakfast, conversation and a Congo photo swap.  After breakfast, Christine gifted each of us with a series of her favorite Congo portraits.  The next morning, I arranged them on my desk, as you see them here.  I thought they would inspire me to write, but instead they paralyzed me.  As a writer, any time I experience brain or heart paralysis, it’s bad because I can’t get any writing done.  In this case, I had brain AND heart paralysis—definitely not good. 

So, nothing to do but sit and look at these photos.  Mothers.  Sisters.  Daughters.  Friends.  Grandmas.  Aunts.  Wives.  Schoolgirls.  Widows. 

I’ve now gathered up the photos into a shiny stack and I flip through them one by one.  I thought it would be less intense to look at one photo at a time but it isn’t.  Just the opposite: looking into one pair of eyes pulls me deeper into Congo than I thought possible.  Who would have imagined that thousands of miles could be compressed to fit into the space of a 5-x-7-inch photo?  

If you were to ask my grandson, Henry, what Nana Lynne’s favorite color is, he’d shout with enthusiasm: “Turquoise!”  He knows that I think life is always more beautiful with a dash of turquoise thrown in.  But even without the turquoise walls in the little church where these portraits were taken, I would be overwhelmed by the candescent beauty of these women—a beauty unique to these who know both intense suffering and well-grounded hope.

These photos were taken after the women and girls had courageously shared with us the detailed stories of their suffering.  After we had all joined in a circle and prayed.  After hugs and attempted conversations in an incomprehensible jumble of French, English and Swahili.  After one hour, two, three, four.  Hours spent together in a little church with turquoise walls, in a little turquoise sanctuary for souls. 

I don’t ever want to forget these women.  Thanks to Christine’s amazing photos and the copious notes I took, I won’t forget them.  But what do I do with these memories?  These stories?  These faces?  What now? 

Each member of the Ten for Congo team is returning home to a life filled with family, friends, jobs, pleasures and pains.  One woman returns to grieving the loss of a family member, a process cut short by our Congo travel schedule.  Another prepares to bury the failing body of a dear young friend perched on the edge of death.  One fills her hours with work that grew exponentially while we were gone.  Another crosses the country in search of a job. One plans a massive public event.  Another parses short sentences on a laptop as a freelance writer for hire. 

We Ten for Congo “girls” live very diverse lives, but we’ve been united by Congo.  Together we will determine how best we can continue to honor and support the people of Congo.  In the coming weeks and months, whenever you see the Ten for Congo banner on my website, you can expect an update on our friends in Congo and on our efforts on their behalf. 

In the meantime, any funds you donate by clicking on the link below will support local Congolese churches doing what we saw them doing so well: fostering reconciliation, caring for orphans and widows, and advocating for peace.

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Congo Journal 21

 

A Blessed Trip

Early morning. Sitting on a little porch overlooking Lake Kivu. Listening to waves splashing gently on the rocky shoreline. The sun has just climbed over the mountain, writing a line of illumination across the water. Very peaceful.

I just learned last night that the World Relief staff did not believe this trip would actually happen. Up until the very day we arrived they thought they would have to cancel it for security reasons. In the weeks before the trip, WR staff informed us of the mounting security risks and described possible contingency plans. If Rutshuru were too unstable we'd stay in Goma. If the Rwanda/Congo border were closed and we couldn't get to Goma, we'd stay in Gisenyi, Rwanda, and focus on Congolese refugees fleeing the violence. If this . . . then that. But in their heart of hearts, they didn't really believe any of this would happen. 

Ha! You just can't mess with ten Dangerous Women!

I write that in jest . . . sort of. In truth, there was something in the way this Ten for Congo team came together—in an unexpected and seemingly random way—that gave me confidence that our Congo trip was a meant-to-be kind of plan. Now, as we near the end of the trip, I am completely convinced of the meant-to-be-ness of this adventure.

For all of us, the day spent listening to women who had survived rape and were on a healing path was all we needed to make this trip worth every dollar spent, worth every hour on a plane, worth every comment from those who thought we were foolish to take the risk or to waste our time on Congo. But we have been given gifts even beyond that extraordinary day. 

Here are some of my gifts: Sitting in a church service with a Congolese toddler snuggled on my lap, feeling overwhelmed by the energy, beauty and strength of the Congolese people and culture. Walking in the early-morning dewy grass in a backyard in Rutshuru, snapping photos of flowers that seemed like gifts from the Creator straight to my soul.

Crowding into a tiny mud shack with a tin roof, embraced by the joy and gratitude of the homeless widow who never dreamed she'd have a roof over her head provided by local pastors.

In a future blog I'll write in detail about the day we spent with the village Peace Committees—men and women appointed by their churches to facilitate reconciliation in the community. Broken marriages.  Conflicts between parents and children. Disputes over land ownership. Paternal neglect. Violation of the rights of widows. It was like sitting in a passage of the Bible.  "A certain widow had two sons..."  Except the story had unfolded in 2012 in Rutshuru, Congo, and the agents of reconciliation—who had the wisdom of Solomon--were the humble leaders seated before us.

We literally spent an entire day seated in a concrete church building listening to twenty stories of reconciliation. In each case, the disputing parties had tried every other option available—which basically means they had paid bribes to the local police and to the court system, trying to get someone to take up their cause. But bribes and justice seldom kiss. Finally, someone would tell the parties in conflict about the peace committees, who take no bribes and earn no salaries and seek only the benefit of all who are involved in the conflict. The favored technique of reconciliation is to engage in conversation with the disputing parties and slowly allow possible solutions to rise up out of the shared ideas. These solutions always involve compromise and they must be accepted by each party rather than imposed upon them. I will write more about this after I get home, and you will be amazed! 

Our last visit in Congo was to a center for grieving children. That experience, too, will require its own blog. Children who have seen their parents shot by soldiers with machine guns or hacked to death by rebels with machetes bury those visions of horror deep in their souls—like arrows stuck in their hearts, as one gentle Congolese man told us. Healing cannot happen until the arrow is removed.

But how do you get children to tell the stories that will slowly push the arrows out? Through drawings.  Through play acting. Eventually through sitting in a circle around a pretend fire, passing a pretend microphone from child to child and letting them finally put their stories into words. They are never told what kind of picture to draw, what scene to play act, or what story to tell. The goal is to create a safe place for whatever emerges from the depth of each child's awareness on any given day. 

At the children's center we added a new hero to our list. A seventy-three-year-old woman (from Oregon) who has served with the Baptist mission in Congo since 1985. Dear Anita, you have marked us! 

I have to end this post and send it ASAP in order to take advantage of a brief Internet connection. We have a few hours to spend in Rwanda before we begin our journey home tonight. Thank you for joining us and praying for us along the way. It has been a blessed trip. We'll be writing more in the coming weeks, so our shared journey is definitely not over!

On behalf of the Ten for Congo team and World Relief Congo: Merci Beaucoup!

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Congo Journal 20

Impunity
Impunity. This is a word we hear often in Congo (DRC). I can't access Google for a dictionary definition, but what it means here is that men can rape women with no fear of consequences. Here, there is no rule of law. There is only the rule of the gun, the rule of the powerful, the rule of male dominance.

Before we arrived, the Ten for Congo team did research, read books, and studied reports on rape as a weapon of war. But we missed something. Yes, rape is a weapon of war in the Congo. Rebel militia fighters do hide in the forest, ready to attack vulnerable women. They do know that if they rape enough women they can destroy the social fabric of an entire community.

But we've discovered something worse than rape as a weapon of war. What's worse is an underlying culture of rape. A culture in which rape has become normalized. Accepted. Okay. This is a patriarchal society taken to the tragic extreme. From the time they are born, boys are taught that being a man means they must have dominion over women. Rapists are congratulated on being "man enough" to "take a woman."

Even churches reinforced this perspective when they preached a perverted message of female submission. Women were to submit, period. There was no mention of the fact that men are to love their wives as Christ loved the church—even to the point of giving his life for his beloved. No mention of the concept of mutual submission.

Congo does have a law against men having sex with girls younger than eighteen. But laws mean nothing when they're not enforced. And laws that could protect vulnerable Congolese girls and women are never enforced. It is as if they do not exist. It is not uncommon for girls as young as fifth grade to have sex with their teachers to insure their "success" in school. University students who don't demand that their professors wear condoms when they have sex with them are offered higher grades than girls who demand condoms. Women are often asked to have sex with potential employers before they are given a job.

Yesterday, we met with Congolese surgeon, Dr. Monique Kapamba Yangoy. In beautiful French she described this grim reality. A Rwandan church leader translated and added his own commentary. "In a situation like this," he said, "where there is no rule of law, the church is the only hope."

Although the church has too often contributed to the problem, that is beginning to change. World Relief Congo staff are committed to the slow, but sustainable transformation of cultural attitudes toward gender and sex.

Perhaps the deepest problem, suggests Dr. Monique, is that women in a culture such as this are conditioned to believe they are of little value. They believe they truly are subordinate to men. So they lose the will to fight back, to stand up for themselves, to expect just and loving treatment. Life is what it is. They can hope for nothing more.

"But what about you?" I asked Dr. Monique. "You grew up here. You were a little girl and a young woman and a university student in this environment. Yet you stepped out of the pattern. You became a doctor! How? What empowered you to do that?"

"I was a privileged girl because of the openness in my family," she said. "My mother was a teacher and my father was a university professor and psychologist. My parents talked openly about life, about sexuality, about being a girl in Goma. Every evening we would debrief what happened that day. It's not that way in most families. Parents don't talk to their children about sex and about what's appropriate and right."

Dr. Monique joined the World Relief staff just a few days before we arrived. After years of surgically repairing fistulas—severe gynecological injuries caused by sexual trauma or childbirth—Monique wanted to address not just the physical injuries but the systemic realities that lead to them. She returned to the university and earned a master's degree in public health. In her role with World Relief, she will train pastors, parents, teachers, young people, and leaders in all sectors of civil society. Citing the positive example of her own father, she will challenge other fathers to play a similar role of openness, advocacy, protection, and empowerment for their wives and daughters.

Yesterday, as we talked with Monique, we realized that Ten For Congo has become Eleven for Congo.
 

Dr. Monique, we are so grateful for you. We'll be praying for you. And we'll be eager to hear more in the months to come about how we can partner with you in honoring and serving the women of Congo. 

 

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Congo Journal 19

Creative Kids

Occasionally, people do something that completely surprises you. That makes you laugh for joy. Cry happy tears. Chuckle throughout the day whenever you think about it.

Early this morning, while the Ten for Congo team ate breakfast, some local children festooned our World Relief vehicle with flowers. Then they waited until we arrived and discovered their creative achievement. They giggled while we walked round and round the car, capturing photos from every possible angle. We were delighted! Stunned speechless!

Thank you, precious little Congolese kids. You gave us an unforgettable image of the generosity of spirit we’ve seen throughout this trip.

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Congo Journal 18

Three Reflections

After our meeting on Saturday with the victims of gender-based violence, I asked several members of the Ten for Congo team to write a brief response to that experience. Their reflections capture the horror of the violence, the resilience of the women, and the hope for healing.


Sherri Meyer

I remember the moment she walked into the room. I had been greeting the other women who would be speaking with us that day. Each woman was beautiful but this new face stood out to me . . . because she wasn't a woman—she was just a girl. A beautiful girl with the smoothest brown skin, soft brown eyes, and braids. I guessed her age to be about ten. Surely she was here with her mother. She couldn't be one of the victims, could she? I caught her eye and smiled, and she smiled back shyly. And then she walked over to the bench and sat among the other victims.

When it was her turn to tell her story, she stood and told us she was thirteen. She described the day two years earlier when she and her friends were confronted by soldiers while searching for firewood. The other children were able to run away, but she was caught.

I was awed by the courage it took for her to tell us her story, but I wanted to wrap my arms around her and protect her all the same.

Every woman we met that day left an imprint on my heart, but the face of this girl will stay with me for a long time to come.


Lili-Ann Eldeiry

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and needy (Proverbs 31:8).

Today, in addition to victims of sexual violence, we met some very special women who have taken seriously the biblical mandate to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. These volunteer counselors—who face both support and opposition from the community—step into the lives of traumatized women who are most vulnerable. Woman after woman told us about the counselors who got them to a hospital for treatment and made sure they had a place to live. When some of the victims were literally stripped of everything they owned, including the clothes on their backs, counselors clothed them and provided for them from their own limited possessions. When the women were sick or recovering from injuries, counselors visited and comforted them. We could see the gratitude on the women’s faces as they described how these counselors offered care, encouragement, counsel and hope.

As I listened to the women describe how the counselors had helped them, it made me all the more determined to speak up on behalf of both the victims and their caregivers.


Marianne Clyde, LMFT

After our meeting, I sat on a narrow wooden pew trying to process everything we’d just heard. I felt angry, helpless, and paralyzed. I had just looked into the eyes of an eight-year-old victim who had been raped by a soldier who found her home alone. When her parents returned, they found her in a heap on the floor and knew immediately what had happened.

Her family took her to a hospital over two hours away in the city of Goma rather than to the local hospital. They were ashamed and didn’t want the village to know what had happened to their daughter. Her wounds were so severe she stayed on in Goma for nearly a year for ongoing treatment.

She received treatment for her body but I ached for the damage to her psyche. In a culture that stigmatizes the victim of a rape but not the rapist, she is hidden away, unable to attend school or be part of the life of the community. I am a therapist who deals with trauma and family relationships and I yet I felt I had nothing to offer her. I wanted to scream, and the only thought that kept running through my head was a prayer: “God, what can I do?”

I am listening for the answer. It’s hard to wait.

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Congo Journal 17

We Are Still Human Beings

It is Sunday morning before church. If we left Congo today, we would feel that we have received what we were meant to receive on this trip. Undoubtedly, we will receive more in the days to come, but it will all be bonus. Yesterday, we fell into the pure center of why we came.

In the simple sanctuary of the Baptist Church in Kiwanja, we sat in a circle of women. One after the other, eleven women who have survived brutal rape trusted us with the details of their stories. These women, aged eight to fifty-eight, had been raped by uniformed soldiers, armed rebel militia fighters, or "bandits." Some were raped by men who broke into their homes at night, but most were attacked when they went into the forest to collect firewood they could then sell to buy food for their children.

Most were widowed; some saw their husbands killed by the same men who raped them. An eleven-year-old girl tried to cry out against her attacker, but the man said, "If you cry, I'll kill you. I killed my mother and I'll kill you."

We have beautiful photos of these girls and women who have been lovingly and wisely cared for by counselors empowered by World Relief. In time, we will tell the details of their stories, but not until we're sure we can do that without endangering them further or violating their trust. They want their stories told to the world, but for their welfare we must do that carefully.

It was holy time we spent with them—in fact, it was beyond holy. To be trusted with the suffering of one person is holy. To sit in a circle and receive the gift of the suffering from so many is beyond words.

At the end of our time together we knelt before the Congolese women as they sat on a long wooden bench. We joined our hands with theirs and prayed for them. To touch them and pray for them felt like a high privilege.

If you have followed our Congo Journal you know that one of our prayers was that somehow our community of ten would create a space of healing for the women we would meet. In a small way, I believe that prayer was answered. One of the last women to speak was also one of the oldest, slight and delicately featured. Before she even began her story she said, "Thank you for coming here today. You have reminded us that we are still human beings."

 
We're all still kind of a mess after yesterday. After worship in local churches this morning, we'll have time to think and pray and talk through the holy moments of yesterday. In the meantime, I feel trapped in the disconcerting paradox of joy and sorrow. Joy because the women we met have been lovingly cared for. We also had the joy of witnessing the positive transformation in the demeanor of each woman as she spoke and knew she had been heard. But, oh, the sorrow, the anger and the despair we feel as we think of the many, many others like them who have never told their stories and have not yet received the help that can lead them toward healing.

For them, we weep.

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Congo Journal 16

Ten Leaders You Need to Know

Last November, all the ingredients for a major conflict were in place in Eastern Congo. A presidential election pitted tribes against tribes, brothers against brothers. Young people in villages planted flags of their preferred candidate in front of their houses and fought with those who planted flags for the opposition. The candidates publicly insulted one another as if intentionally inciting hostility. In all spheres of civil society, people were preparing for far-reaching violence.

In the face of similar threats in the past, many church leaders behaved as helpless bystanders, at best; at worst, they reinforced violence with their acceptance of tribal and denominational divisions. But last November, local church pastors said, "God is able to bring peace through the Prince of Peace. Let us take this election before God." They chose one day to be a day of prayer in all the churches in the region. They fasted and prayed, asking that the potential conflict would be broken by the Lord.

The election came and there was no violence.

This is obviously a story of prayer. But it is much more than that.

Several years ago, World Relief Congo staff began an intentional program of reconciliation between churches. Through Bible study, discipleship, challenge and encouragement, local pastors began to understand the biblical mandate of peace building and reconciliation.

Last night the Ten for Congo team met with ten leaders of a local church network that has brought all the churches in the region—from ten different denominations—into a relationship of trust and cooperation. Under the leadership of these ten local leaders, churches work together to determine the neediest people in their communities. Then, together, they serve these widows, orphans, or women who have been raped. Some of the people they serve are members of their churches; many of them aren't. The pastors have become convinced that their calling is to " take care of suffering people until Jesus comes."

In the coming days we'll learn more about the joint ministries of the local churches in this region. Today we'll meet with women who have been emotionally, spiritually and physically traumatized by rape and with the counselors and caregivers who "help them come back to life." On another day we'll learn more about the peace building and conflict resolution roles of local churches and the impact they are having.

Today, please join us in being awed by the work of these local pastors—and join us in prayer on their behalf.

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Congo Journal 15

Greetings from Goma, Congo!

Guest Post: Lili Eldeiry

We arrived last night via Kigali, Rwanda.  It is a 2-3 hour drive through beautiful mountain roads.  With 10 million people in a very small country we were rarely, in fact never, on a lonely road yesterday!  They use every bit of the land for living and farming, so we passed through tall hills full of terraced farmland up to the very tops!

Goma is located on the shores of Lake Kivu, so I enjoyed a peaceful early morning (thanks, jet lag!) along the water with some funny looking bird friends (Crown Cranes) before we head off to Rutshuru, a town about 2 hours from Goma.  We’ll be meeting up with World Relief staff and local pastors and leaders over the next few days to hear about their efforts and desire to be agents of transformation in their communities.

Our host, Charles Franzen, Director of World Relief Congo, made a statement as we drove here yesterday that “Congo has been in a crisis state for the last thirty years.”  There are numerous reasons for these that have overtaken this county and perpetuated a cycle of disempowerment in the infrastructure of Congo (no postal system, for example) and the individual lives of the Congolese people.

I was reminded of the significance of our individual choices and the potential positive and negative repercussions they may have on other people, and even the greater society.  Author and journalist, Bryan Mealer, wrote these words in this book “All Things Must Fight to Live”, during his time reporting about the conflicts here in Congo in the late 1990s:  “What mattered was what kind of prints you left behind in the red dirt.”  This statement has added a very real context to the intentionality of our actions as I walk on the red dirt Mealer writes about.

As we start out today, and over the next four days, we’re going to be meeting up with the realities of Congo’s past and its present.  I am confident that we are going to witness both negative and positive repercussions of past actions.  I am equally confident that we will meet up with amazing people and initiatives that are working hard to leave footprints that won’t harm Congo’s future but will lead it back to a sustainable, fruitful and life-giving presence in our global community.

Internet may be spotty over the next few days, so we may not be able to post regularly.

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