Coming into Kinshasa from the airport, the tall structure is some kind of unfinished play area that Mbutu never completed.
Addis Ababa, from where I am sending this blog, is becoming a familiar place of transition for us, especially on this trip. We are stopping here no less than 3 times in two weeks as all of our routings pass through it. On a map, it does appear to be a peculiar center point as it is nowhere near our destinations, but since we are flying Ethiopian Airlines, it is necessary.
Actually travel between our different destination points feels a bit like taking the local subway that stops at every in- between point. This was particularly poignant enroute to Kinshasa when we made a 1 hour stop in Brazzaville before jumping across the Congo river in our 767, a total of 5 minutes in the air, to land on the other side in Kinshasa. It was the shortest flight I have ever taken.
The trip to the western side of DRC and especially Kinshasa in certain ways fulfilled a certain wish to set foot in the place I had read about in several books set in Africa, particularly Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Most recently though I have been reading an incredible history of the colonization of the Congo by Belgians under King Leopold II that is one of the most shocking accounts of what was probably the most brutal colonial occupation of a country in history. Between 1890 and 1910, during the height of the ivory and rubber trade, much of the population of Congo was enslaved and forced to labor to provide Europe with ivory and rubber.
The tactics were so brutal it is honestly on a par with Kony and the LRA. The Force Publique, was in the habit of kidnapping and holding hostage the women and children in a village to force the men to work. If they did not bring in the proper quota, their wives and children were killed. Soldiers would regularly whip laborers to death, hang them, and most preferably cut off their hands. 10s of thousands of Africans had their hands chopped off as punishment for various offences, particularly not working hard enough. Dismembering hands and feet of young children (5yo’s) was not uncommon practice as well to force parents to work harder.
Probably most disturbing was the habit of some of the most sadistic Belgian officers to ‘decorate’ their gardens (enclosed flower beds) with the severed heads of Africans they had decapitated. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness set in the DRC of the time, he describes the fictional Mr. Kurtz as putting heads of Africans on stakes all around his walled compound. This story was undoubtedly drawn from something Conrad actually witnessed during a sojourn he had in Congo during this epoch.
The crowning abomination for me though was the fact that the Belgian Colonial authority was carrying out this reign of terror under the guise of humanitarian protection of natives against the Arab slave trade. They did their best to completely disguise and dis-inform the public back home of what was really happening in the Congo.
I did feel encouragement, however, in reading this book, that among some of the most outspoken critics at the time were missionaries on the ground who passed on eye-witness accounts of the horrors to the European press. There were several accounts of African tribes who, during failed rebellions, actually protected missionaries and did not consider them to be part of the reign of terror led by the Belgian Force Publique. This is another corrective to the more cynical view that Christians who came over during the colonial era were in complete complicity with all the objectives of their European Government counterparts. It was in fact with the help of testimony of some of these returned missionaries that colonial authority was taken away from the King of Belgium. (3 mentioned by name were the Rev. William Shepard, an African American Presbyterian, and The Rev. John and Alice Harris, two Baptist missionaries from the UK.)
So the brief history lesson is what set the stage to our family’s arrival in Kinshasa. We of course were not here for a history lesson, but rather for the much more practical purpose of having another one of our regional meetings. Our region includes the countries of Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, DRC, Rwanda and Burundi.
We look forward to these meetings now as a time to be together with our country Rep colleagues. In between the business meetings, there are lots of informal times to share stories about our challenges, frustrations, and yes, joys in our individual assignments. We also become aware of various regional crises and try to share learnings and advice as we seek to direct MCC programming to the areas most needed.
Chad reps. shared with us the growing challenge of famine in the region that continues to grow more acute due to drought. Whether MCC will participate with other groups in a major relief effort was a question on the table.
Nigeria reps. also shared with us the challenge of living in a continual deteriorating religious conflict. They do feel under some threat personally as Boko Haram terrorism has been directed at churches in their area as well as other parts of Nigeria. Sadly I read an account just this morning of a bomb that went off in a Catholic Church there which killed 35 on Easter Sunday.
The rest of us fortunately had less crisis related news to share about our countries.
We were also a bit sad to be saying good-bye to both the Nigeria Reps (Harman_Souder family: Mark, Brenda, Greg, Valerie) and the Chad Reps. (Entz’s: Doug, Naomi, and Hannah). They have come to the end of their assignments. It will be sad to see them go as we have enjoyed for several years the mutual support that have been an important part of these regional meetings.
It is also a big challenge to find new people willing to fill the roles these reps. will vacate. Both countries pose serious challenges for expats. Chad is unimaginably hot, and Nigeria continues to descend into instability and possible civil war. To find people willing to be ‘on the ground’ in these places for MCC requires extensive searching and prayer that God will call those whom he has prepared to do the work there. (If anyone reading wants more info on MCC and job opportunities, there is a link on this blog in the right hand column.)
Our residence in Kinashasa was simple and quite pleasant. We stayed at the Methodist-Presbyterian Guesthouse, an old youth hostel. Weather in general was quite hot, even for those coming from Chad and Burkina, found the humidity very uncomfortable.
The City of Kinshasa is a study in contrasts as well. The airport epitomizes the stagnant bureaucracy of a failed state. Both coming and going took an exceedingly long time with an amazing number of redundancies. There were at least 4 separate passport control checkpoints, as well as a number of places where they checked a receipt for $50 we paid per person as an airport tax. There were also 3 separate security checkpoints, none of which had any working scanning equipment so it was all manual.
Driving from the airport onee passes by many miles of slums which are carpeted under several feet of old plastic shopping bags. Eventually we emerged into the more modern center of the city where our guest house was located. The city itself is impressive with modern skyscrapers, supermarkets, and just about any import one would want to buy available. A poignant example of the great disparity between wealth and poverty so apparent in the country.
I will admit that there was a side of me looking at all this asking myself if we might ever consider taking an MCC DRC assignment in the future. I don’t have answer to that question now, but it is not something I would dismiss out-of-hand, despite the great challenges I see here.
We did have some special events during our time together, particularly since we were meeting over Holy Week. On Friday evening we went over to the house of MCC Congo Rep. Suzanne Lind and share a meal together which included a Seder as Jesus might have participated in at Passover. We sat together on the floor as a big group. After dinner we had a chance to give some words of encouragement to the Rep. families that were leaving.
We left Kinshasa about midday on Easter Sunday and unfortunately we were not able to go to a service before departing as the ride to the airport and the time for processing takes so long, we had to leave pretty early in the morning.
We flew with some of the other reps to Addis where we stayed the night again and today are on our way to Zanzibar for 6 days of vacation.
It will be interesting to find out more about this port on the other side of the continent, also an important point of trade, including slaving to the East (Arab countries).
Hopefully I will find internet and be able to post this before the end of next week.
(As it turns out, I was not able to post this for a full 6 days because we had no internet access in Zanzibar. Will update you soon on that trip.)
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