I have been misled by my senses. I had started to imagine that Congo was not as bad as imagined, (see first blog). It is better than I expected, the infrastructure, the opportunity for business, the money being made; and Kinshasa is a good example of these things. But what I haven’t seen or experienced directly is the Congo that you think of. Today, a young girl said to me in her broken English with a heavy Congolese accent, “Things are not so good in Congo”.
I have only experienced the ‘not so good’ vicariously through others. I have seen some of it, but I have been spared most of the squalor and poverty in my insulated existence at Café Mozart. I am thankful for that. I am content to experience and understand Congo little by little, or as Soeur Yolande has said to me, “petite a petite”. Soeur Yolande once told me this when I had eaten outside of the Café Mozart. I tried bbq-d goat meat “chevre” at a local hangout while out with some new friends. I was a bit sick the next day, surely from the chevre and the beer. Soeur Yolande said to me many things in French, after only one week here this is what I understood: “Marie-Lauren you are too delicate to eat food outside, you can drink things outside, anything in a bottle, soda, pop, beer, not water, but do not eat outside, only here in the community. You do not know who is preparing the food, here you know who and what they are doing. Try to experience Congo, little by little.” As far as the ‘not so good’, Lord let it be little by little.
I have seen the hospital run by the Sisters at Maleuka, I have seen the community that houses four schools run by the Sisters at Sanga Mamba, I have seen what I think of as a boarding school for girls run by the Sisters at Café Mozart in Gombe. I have talked to volunteer from France who was passing through after her vacation home and who is spending two years at Bugemyi doing agriculture, I have conversed with a Jesuit priest who also lives in the bush. I have even seen people living on the side of the room between a tree and a concrete wall just opposite the church I go to on Sundays, Sacre Coeur, where there is a convent of Sisters also. After the second Sunday mass I went to, I saw a child washing her hands by the side of the road, the rest of her body was covered in dust, it is very dusty in Kinshasa during the winter/dry season. Her family was lounging at the base of the wall just along it, with their clothes, drying, strewn over the wall. There was some bits of food, cooking utensils and more clothes lying around.
At the hospital I saw a reality different from where I am. On the tour I saw lots of sick people, but the thing I saw that stuck with me and worried me the worst was the sick children. This is what I was fundraising for. The malnourished kids here need food, especially peanut butter. The Sister
Superior giving me the tour explained when I asked that their parents were very poor and could not afford food to feed the children. Other family members, like grandmothers, had stepped up to help but they also have no money and no job. There were quite a few in the paediatric unit, sick, malnourished kids, they looked just like the kids in the TV commercials for World Vision and Plan, except cuter. One was so hungry, he wouldn’t stop crying. He was fine and quiet when he was listless on the bed, lying on his stomach, legs akimbo, hands sprawled whichever way, face smushed into the mattress, he looked like a ragdoll someone just plopped down on the mattress with no concern for positioning. Very sad. Then when he was sat upright by his grandmother, the
person who is left to look after him, perhaps the realization that his belly hurts or his whole being is unwell, but he just started bawling and was inconsolable.
Little by litte, this is how I am experiencing Congo. Petite a petite.
I have only experienced the ‘not so good’ vicariously through others. I have seen some of it, but I have been spared most of the squalor and poverty in my insulated existence at Café Mozart. I am thankful for that. I am content to experience and understand Congo little by little, or as Soeur Yolande has said to me, “petite a petite”. Soeur Yolande once told me this when I had eaten outside of the Café Mozart. I tried bbq-d goat meat “chevre” at a local hangout while out with some new friends. I was a bit sick the next day, surely from the chevre and the beer. Soeur Yolande said to me many things in French, after only one week here this is what I understood: “Marie-Lauren you are too delicate to eat food outside, you can drink things outside, anything in a bottle, soda, pop, beer, not water, but do not eat outside, only here in the community. You do not know who is preparing the food, here you know who and what they are doing. Try to experience Congo, little by little.” As far as the ‘not so good’, Lord let it be little by little.
I have seen the hospital run by the Sisters at Maleuka, I have seen the community that houses four schools run by the Sisters at Sanga Mamba, I have seen what I think of as a boarding school for girls run by the Sisters at Café Mozart in Gombe. I have talked to volunteer from France who was passing through after her vacation home and who is spending two years at Bugemyi doing agriculture, I have conversed with a Jesuit priest who also lives in the bush. I have even seen people living on the side of the room between a tree and a concrete wall just opposite the church I go to on Sundays, Sacre Coeur, where there is a convent of Sisters also. After the second Sunday mass I went to, I saw a child washing her hands by the side of the road, the rest of her body was covered in dust, it is very dusty in Kinshasa during the winter/dry season. Her family was lounging at the base of the wall just along it, with their clothes, drying, strewn over the wall. There was some bits of food, cooking utensils and more clothes lying around.
At the hospital I saw a reality different from where I am. On the tour I saw lots of sick people, but the thing I saw that stuck with me and worried me the worst was the sick children. This is what I was fundraising for. The malnourished kids here need food, especially peanut butter. The Sister
Superior giving me the tour explained when I asked that their parents were very poor and could not afford food to feed the children. Other family members, like grandmothers, had stepped up to help but they also have no money and no job. There were quite a few in the paediatric unit, sick, malnourished kids, they looked just like the kids in the TV commercials for World Vision and Plan, except cuter. One was so hungry, he wouldn’t stop crying. He was fine and quiet when he was listless on the bed, lying on his stomach, legs akimbo, hands sprawled whichever way, face smushed into the mattress, he looked like a ragdoll someone just plopped down on the mattress with no concern for positioning. Very sad. Then when he was sat upright by his grandmother, the
person who is left to look after him, perhaps the realization that his belly hurts or his whole being is unwell, but he just started bawling and was inconsolable.
Little by litte, this is how I am experiencing Congo. Petite a petite.
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