Far From An End

Dear Reader,

This is my last post, but the reflections – and the journey – go on, even here in the United States, where I touched down fairly recently after spending just over 8 months in Rwanda. Before going any further, I want to get to the purpose of this entry: Thank you. Without your participation in what just happened - whether it was reading this blog; Skype, phone, or email conversations of encouragement; prayer; sending me notes and gifts in the mail (I don't think you understand what that chocolate did to me); financial support; or giving contacts and information about the region - the last several months would never have happened. It's been a joy to hear from you and to keep in touch with you. And I cannot quite describe the joy it brings to see my family again.

Thank you for your faithful reading, your time, your thoughts, your challenges to my thoughts, and your encouragement throughout my time in Rwanda. I would love to keep in touch with you. While I was glad to give you glimpses of my life in Africa through blogging, I've found that there's not quite a "good" place to end a blog, because, of course, the conversation has not ended. It will never end. And that, frankly, is the most perplexing part and the most exhilarating part of the whole picture. I never set out as a Kolbe Fellow to solve these issues - I set out to contribute to the conversation. And I hope that you and I can continue to probe, wonder, ask questions, grow the arguments, and realize the solutions.

On one of my last few days in Rwanda, I woke up one morning and joined one of my housemates and now close friend in the living room of my house in the heart of Kigali. Both of us sat across from each other and talked nonstop from sunup to sundown. We could have easily gone on talking. This wasn't the first time. We barely left the room all day. I did not, of course, plan for this to happen - we had completely lost ourselves in time and I found myself suddenly watching the sunset, silently accusing myself of being an uncontrollable Chatty Cathy, and scrambling to get things packed before I set foot on the plane that would take me back. But that conversation was certainly worth the scramble. It struck me that night with full force: It's all about engaging these issues in conversation and taking informed action. It's all about laying out on the table the staggering and complicated questions of our lives today, marveling at them, being humbled by them, disagreeing about them, taking action that improves and advances them, making mistakes, picking ourselves up again, and jumping back in. And in doing so, we impact the lives of those around us, and in more cases than we think, the lives of those we don't know and will never know in this lifetime.

So, then, here is an invitation for you to continue to learn and to learn with me. And if we find ourselves perplexed and about to lose heart as we face the challenges so characteristic of this life, I believe that the very best thing we can do is to be humbled by something greater than ourselves and to be reminded that each of our contributions - however large or small - are the very essence of progress.

Here's to a lifetime of learning,

Grace

Pride

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people…ever imagine that they are guilty of themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have heard anyone…accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone…who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am talking of is Pride…it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” --C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

You might want to call this entry the thesis of my whole blog, the crux of it, if you will. I might go so far as to say the discussion that follows underlines every component of my trip here. It might be the thesis, then, not of this blog, but of this time spend in Rwanda. Rwanda does contribute to the explanation of this concept of interest in a poignant way – Rwanda is a good discussion point. But this goes beyond Rwanda.

It’s difficult, of course, to sum up complex thoughts that have been going on overtime into one entry. But somehow, the matter here isn’t so complex to discuss. It’s surprisingly simple. It takes centuries, though, for individuals, groups, governments, international organizations, movements, and nations to master it. It seems, actually, none of us ever do master it in a complete sense, though we get a taste of it at points in our lives through our awareness of it and our conscious battle to overcome it. Perhaps the pursuit itself – the very effort we put in to master it – is the beauty of it all.

If we were going to talk favorite authors, C.S. Lewis would be up there for me. As a little girl, I would curl up with his Chronicles of Narnia books on the floral-knit couch in our old Victorian house for hours, turning page after page without lifting my eyes. Later in life, I began to learn about the potent symbolism in these books, the metaphorical plots and the grave questions posed through fantastical characters and happenings. Even later, I learned about the life of C.S. Lewis, how he was once a staunch atheist and then turned around and published a tremendous array of books about what he saw on the other side.

If we were going to talk favorite books, Mere Christianity would be up there. It’s scraped and cleansed of all religious (and particularly Christian) jargon that people throw around nowadays, throw around so much, in fact, that most meaning has been lost or muddled. It’s an entirely logical, philosophical, and at times even scientific, discussion on the question of God and, later, on the question of the life of the man called Jesus Christ. It’s about as far from evangelization, conversion, guilt-trips and un-based Christian belief as Neptune is from the sun. It’s not a missive on feelings and church. It doesn’t start with “Christianity,” a term and belief system that has accumulated the dirty lint of misunderstanding and stigma and assumption over the course of the past centuries, and direct life from there; rather, it starts with logical, well-informed explanations and arrives at Christianity. And it’s not some sort of Manifesto or proclamation that Christianity is thoroughly true; rather, it’s a humble piece that provides some very compelling talking and thinking points.

But moving on. This post is not about Christianity – it’s about a chapter in Mere Christianity. Chapter 8. If we were ever going to talk favorite chapters of books, then this one would be up there. C.S. Lewis devotes an entire chapter, the fulcrum of the whole book, to this concept called pride. I want to broach and extend this discussion because I think that, no matter what you believe religiously or what your worldview is, pride is pride, and pride is the driving force for what are deemed the most terrible and unsolvable issues of our world today. Social inequality, ethnic hatred, discrimination, political hatred, greed, economic crises, jealousy, environmental degradation, poverty, mass conflict and war, familial conflict, governmental corruption, organizational corruption, injustice, violence.

Pride is embedded in our humanity. We are competitive; we compare ourselves to the next man. We can’t help it. We can try our best to acknowledge this and move away from it, and this is a great success, though we cannot rid our humanity of pride. We like power. No human hates power or influence or sway – in his own life, in the lives of others, in movements. At one point, Lewis says, “For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing that makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers.”

Of course, there is nothing wrong with power or influence or applause or accomplishment. These become problematic only when we think of them in comparison to others and pursue them not for the sake of say, success, but rather for the sake of rising above others. “The trouble begins,” Lewis says, “when you pass from thinking, ‘I have pleased him; all is well,’ to thinking, ‘What a fine person I must be to have done it.’”

Pride is interesting because it can be subtle or blatant. It can be a harp or it can be cymbals. It is blatant in certain extremes: corruption, for one. The lack of good governance among politicians or leaders. Corruption is driven by pride, by a desire to pursue your own ends (power, fortune, fame) despite – or even at the cost of – others’ success or even welfare. Corruption in the DRC, for example, has taken a foothold to such a degree that its disastrous effects are flagrantly known around the globe.

Genocide is another example of blatant pride at work. I can name 2 incidences/ways, and only 2 here for the sake of space, in which pride ruled the genocide in Rwanda:

(1) In the years leading up to 1994, the incumbent dictator, Habyarimana, decided to kill his political competition, Kayibanda. Habyarimana did this by sending military men to surround Kayibanda’s home. Kayibanda and his wife spent their final days in hostage, eating the pages of books in their library, and by the time they died, Habyarimana had established himself as Rwanda’s dictator.

(2) Any given Rwandan killed in 1994 because he (there is no gender bias here, as there were plenty of female killers – this is just to keep things grammatically uncluttered) was either under threat – he killed for fear of losing his own life for non-participation – or he was completely convinced that another man deserved death in his place, or some fateful combination of the two. In any case, the genocide was really a bloody fest of everyone trying to save themselves.

Everyone trying to save themselves, preserve themselves. Pride was at work.

The economic collapse. Did prideful people (and greed is an offshoot of pride) not have a hand in it?

Jealousy is an offshoot of pride.

Familial conflict often results from a lack of effort or ability to see the wrongs committed by both parties and only sees the wrongs committed by another.

Poverty can be exacerbated and perpetuated by pride: a man who decides to hoard riches for his own spending instead of for his family, for their education or welfare; a woman who decides to spend on unnecessary things for herself rather than to invest in the future of her children or serve their immediate needs; a landowner demanding increased payments from farmers who barely see yields that year; a leader who ostensibly “serves” others, only to accumulate profit and power for himself through “servitude.”

Doing service not for the service itself, but instead to get a pat on the back or to do something glamorous in others’ eyes, or to hear people say, “my, what a fine young chap” or “that there is a jolly sweet lady.” You get my drift. It goes on.

If you think just for a moment about an issue that causes affliction or inequality or injustice or suffering in the world – choose one, any one – can you not trace it to pride? I do not believe we can trace it to something more fundamental. Please, enlighten me if you can. This is what I am trying to drive home, and I am open to criticism.

There’s a purpose for saying all of this. First of all, I am in no way saying that I have personally won my battle with pride and thus am giving you the skinny now on how to overcome pride, or some preposterous nonsense of that sort. I am personally about as far from achieving mastery over pride as I am from running a 5-mile cross-country race in 5 minutes. The point is that the most important thing we can do, I think, in response to some of the most engulfing and convoluted problems of our day, is to recognize that pride – no matter on what scale or level – is eternally destructive. Pride may start as a seedling, and it can grow. Or, it may have adverse effects on others of which we are not even aware.

And I am not speaking so much of the pride of others, for there is little we can do to force or convince someone else to cease being prideful. I am speaking of examining pride in ourselves, because in all frankness, that is the only pride about which we can even begin to do something. Perhaps the very essence of pride, in fact, is not to examine it in others, though it is vastly unfortunate and we feel as though we are sitting in the audience and watching it contemptuously and sadly as it runs its course. Rather, its essence may very well be to take note of it in ourselves, recognize its destructiveness, think hard about any action we can take to turn and flee, quickly and entirely in the opposite direction, from where we see it in ourselves, and then to flee. Scram.

Just imagine for a moment what kind of world this would be if everyone attempted to do the above. If everyone, that is, cared for themselves in order to care for others. In short, if everyone got over themselves. We would not always succeed, of course, and relapse occasionally if not frequently into prideful tendencies. And yet, a good bit would be done about corruption. About war. Poverty. Conflict between friends and families. Greed. Suffering.

Example. You find yourself thinking you are better than someone else for whatever large or small reason. Oh, but remember: you are better than no one, and no one is better than you. Look inward instead of outward. Take note of the dramatic shift in perspective that takes place in that moment. And, such a small modification in our psychology can induce impactful and lasting effects in the course of a lifetime. Humility, you might see, can be contagious.

Forgiveness is a gesture of humility.

Example on the large scale. There were some – far too few, but some – Rwandans who refused to participate in the genocide. By doing so, they knew that they increased their chances of being killed either by government forces or by everyone else who was madly convinced that killing was the correct thing to do. They decided to spare others’ lives at the expense of their own. Some survived, and some did not. There were people, in other words, who were courageous enough to swallow their pride in the genocide. However few in number they were, these people changed the progression of the genocide in notable ways. They are remembered all over Rwanda and around the world today. Suppose that every Rwandan had refused to listen to government authorities and had chosen instead to hold onto his own morals. Suppose that every Rwandan (meaning millions of people) had swallowed his pride to risk ostracization or worse, torture or death. There wouldn’t have been a genocide.

Food for thought.

The UN Peacekeeping Ops in Congo: What Needs To Be Said

On my last night in the DRC, I went to a BBQ at the housing compound of a group of UN officers. A good number of troops were there, along with some NGO workers stationed in the DRC for time periods ranging from months to years. It was a fascinating group of people to be around. The UN-funded house itself had that simple/slick/spacious/clean/modern/geometric feel to it, with ceilings so high I actually felt short for once in my life. Everything was white – the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the closets, the bed frames. One of the U.S. officers grilled steak for us – it was perfectly glorious after not having slabs of deliciously-seasoned protein like that available to me in months. Oh yeah, and the homemade mashed potatoes were straight from the land flowing with milk and honey.

While there, I talked with a guy from Sweden who serves as a civilian observer in the UN forces. Translated, “civilian observer” means the following: every morning, this guy wakes up, puts on his army garb, gets into a UN SUV tank with caged-in windows and a bullet-proof frame, drives around the bush with a pen and sheets of paper in his lap, and documents human rights violations. He couldn’t have been older than me. I can’t even imagine the things he sees every day.

I talked also with an upper-ranking British official in the UN, a blunt, loud, and outgoing guy. He was having a genuinely good time talking and joking with me and Nina, and I had a few small conversations with him throughout the night about all kinds of things. At one point, his presence there and the general question of the UN Mission came up. It was close to the end of the night, and things were winding down. He became brutally honest in his parting conversations with us. At one point, he sighed, dropped his head a bit, stared at his feet, and between a few swigs of beer, he said, “The militias…they’re out there, alright. But we can’t get ‘em.”

Things went silent in my head. Coming from him – with his position, his sway, his influence, his credibility in the Mission – that was hard to take. There, floating around that house, were some of them, representing thousands upon thousands more UN soldiers, peacekeepers and operations employees, dispatched around the country. They represented huge sums of money being poured into the nationwide Mission. They represented long-term efforts and weapons and strategy infiltrating the jungles and scanty towns. And that is what he had to say about the whole thing – the whole enterprise. I will say that there are few times in my life when I felt as hopeless as I did then.

So then, is peacekeeping, especially UN peacekeeping, in such a plagued place as the DRC pointless? Really, is it fruitless to station soldiers from all over the world in an unconscionably unstable region of the world? The UN has been active in the DRC for far too many years, and by now, people kind of roll their eyes. What’s the point? The wars haven’t ended. What gives? What, if anything, is becoming of our efforts there?

Some things need to be said here about the UN. I’ve developed these points through conversations with UN personnel, conversations with people deeply involved in the DRC and its issues, and research of my own. And in saying these things, I am not giving excuses or taking some sort of side. Like anything, the UN is imperfect and it has its fair share of problems. NGOs aren’t perfect. Small businesses aren’t perfect. Think-tanks aren’t perfect. Corporations aren’t perfect. And my goodness, human beings aren’t perfect. Neither are our ideas. But we continue to be imperfect human beings with imperfect ideas who form imperfect NGOs and imperfect small businesses and imperfect think-tanks and imperfect corporations in order to combat the imperfections of the world. We must, in all cases, before wholly losing heart in the DRC and the presence of the UN Peacekeeping Ops there, understand what exactly the UN is positioned to do, what its purpose is, and on a broader level, what peacekeeping aims to do. Armed with this knowledge, you can become aware of what you can do.

First of all, the UN never went to the DRC to directly and single-handedly wipe out the wars there. If we – a herd of uniformed outsiders – set out to do that, then yes, we would fail. In fact, if we set out to do that, we have already failed. In our intentions, we have failed. We can do our part to help create an environment where peace can take shape, but the people in the country are the ones that need to actually shape peace (The more time I spend in East Africa, the more firmly I hold this opinion.) They do this through good governance, through compliance with human rights regulations, and through recognition of the dignity of human beings. We cannot, no matter how diverse and big we are, force any of these ideas down the throat of any individual and certainly not of any nation. Which leads to the next point:

Second, the UN is a peacekeeping – not peacemaking – body. This implies that communities are already living in relative peace, e.g., innocent civilians, and the UN aims to “keep” that peace. Which leads us to the next point:

Third, the UN is a defensive, not offensive, force. It is not authorized to “wipe out” the militia groups through killing sprees and violence. It has neither the mandate nor the manpower or resources to do this. So, for example, you have a village inhabited by innocent civilians in the rural hinterlands of the DRC who are trying to live in peace. A militia group stumbles upon this community and decides to blow it to smithereens (for any one of several preposterous reasons, discussed in previous posts). This is where the UN steps in. The UN’s primary purpose is to defend civilians. Which leads us to the next point:

Fourth, the UN’s secondary purpose is to serve as a buffer between opposing parties. I know of French-speaking people in the UN whose sole responsibility it is to locate militia members, sit down with them, and try to convince them to demobilize. This “buffer” idea implies that UN personnel do not commit violence against militia groups, unless in defense of civilians. They do their best to create a buffer with the number they have, but they cannot possibly create a sufficient buffer between ginormous militia groups. Which leads us to the next point:

Fifth, the UN is not big enough, and can never possibly be big enough, to create peace in every part of the DRC. The DRC is gigantic. It is an incalculably gargantuan hunk of land. Its own government does not even know the precise size of its population, or where its population really resides, or even where its borders really are. Which leads us to the next point:

Sixth, the UN is also not big enough to create peace in a single village. Say 10 UN soldiers are dispatched into the DRC’s territory and discover a tiny village of civilians somewhere out there in the boonies, and they resolve to do everything they can to defend it. Well, “everything they can” just will never be enough to combat the entire Lord’s Resistance Army descending upon the village, outnumbering the UN clan by hundreds, killing everyone in the village, including the UN soldiers. Which leads us to the next point:

Seventh, the militia groups that roam around in the DRC have had all kinds of time (as in the last several decades) to get accustomed to the harsh terrain of their country. While harsh, they know it well, and they know how to navigate it. Not only do they know how to navigate it, they use it to their advantage. It’s conducive to hiding. They live among the volcanoes, on top of the volcanoes. No UN vehicle, no matter how robust, can reach these militias if they are on top of a volcano. The rebel groups traverse their territory on foot, and they are ludicrously good at doing it. Speaking of territory:

Eighth, The DRC is known to be the weathiest region of the world – wealth, in terms of its vast supply of natural resources. And this wealth is exploited beyond belief. The country’s natural resources actually fund the ruthless and systematic rape, torture, and slavery of DRC citizens, executed by the rebel armies. Militia groups run the entire venture. Just last night, I was having coffee with a Rwandan friend of mine, and he pointed out just how much of an ironic contradiction the situation really is: The country is so rich in resources and so beautiful, and yet the bulk of its population lives in some of the worst poverty known to man. The DRC could say goodbye to its militia groups and lift itself right out of extreme poverty if only the profits from the export of these natural resources were actually invested in its people, and not its wars.

Read closely: The militia groups aren’t financed by export solely to the rest of Africa. Today, the DRC’s multi-million dollar trade in conflict minerals is worldwide. Gold, along with what’s now known as the 3Ts – tin, tungsten, tantalum – from the DRC are used in almost every consumer electronics product – like your laptop and your cell phone. These things are bought and sold all over the world, including the Best Buy down the street from your house. The funds go directly to financing war in the DRC – to financing these rebel groups.

Fortunately, different states and cities in the U.S. have recently enacted legislation that prohibits the purchase of minerals from the DRC that fund the militia groups – this means that there’s a growing commitment (and requirement) among many electronics companies to exercise extreme vigilance when it comes to monitoring their supply chains.

The bad news: Conflict minerals fuel the war in the DRC. And by gosh, the UN cannot possibly single-handedly halt the conflict mineral trade. The good news: Every single person – yes, that would mean you – can participate in stopping the trade in conflict minerals. All it takes is a little extra vigilance on your part, and some action. If we refuse to sustain these rebel groups through our purchases, they can’t go on. There are lots of things you can do about this. Among them are:

1. Check out this website: www.enoughproject.org. Enough Project is an incredible org that takes action against genocide and crimes against humanity. They have an awesome website and blog that I could spend hours perusing. They do intensive field research in Sudan, Congo, and areas affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army; develop policies that combat the conflicts in these areas; and offer tools to think-tanks, individuals, and organizations in the fight against these conflicts and the ideologies that sustain them. They have a great blog you can follow, and tons of information about these parts of the world and how to take action. Educating ourselves, no matter where we are in the world, is the first step.

2. Visit this page, supported by Enough, which ranks companies in terms of their commitment to producing conflict-free electronics. You can write directly to any company via the site, whether to thank those electronics manufacturers that are making strides towards putting the rebel militias out of business or to tell those that have little to 0 regulation to step it up.

3. Next time you think about buying a new laptop, cell phone, or other electronic device, do the research. Don’t pay for this stuff to continue happening. If the world responds, we are way closer to watching the DRC come out of its hole. It’s amazingly possible.

4. Also via the Enough Project website, you can write to policymakers to urge them to take action on the conflict in the DRC in different ways.

5. Not only do university campuses often invest in electronics in bulk, but they are also known to be giant intellectual conduits for change. Universities just might take us over the edge. If you’re a University student, administrator, professor, or connected in to a university in any way at all, you can begin a Conflict-Free Campus initiative on your campus. You have every resource you need to do this here.

The DRC: Strength in Numbers...Numbers of Individuals

I awoke from my hostel slumber (or lack thereof) the next morning. Nina, Jade, and I had crammed into one bed in a hostel/hotel place that night (hey, make way for the women on a budget) and I got lucky enough to be the sardine in the middle. But alas, I think I’m pretty accustomed to being the middle child by now.

We decided to explore on foot. We found out pretty quickly that we wouldn’t be venturing too far outside the town of Goma anytime soon, because mototaxi drivers refused to go past certain points. In other words, the moto drivers – all Congolese men – refused to go into the bush themselves, let alone take anyone else there. And that’s what nearly all of the Congo is. Bush. And if you’re a woman, you can definitely forget it. The DRC is known to be the most dangerous place for a woman to live.

There are places in countries where a person can go if they must, but they take a risk by going there and they must exercise vigilance. Then, there are places in countries where it’s just plain stupid to go. You’re not just taking a risk – you’re asking for it. Many parts of the DRC fit this bill.

Not that Goma is super stable, either. It has, in the past, been a target of attack. Goma is crowded with camps for internally-displaced persons – people, that is, who have fled from violent attacks out in the vast oblivion where the rebel fighters and government troops roam and clash. And where the merciless LRA – the Ugandan rebels – wreak havoc against innocent Congolese civilians. And where the rebel fighters who fled Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide commit similar acts.

I took a shower with half a bucket of water – there was not a drop of running water, though there was a sink and a showerhead in the room. We left the hostel through the gates next to the watchtower (photo shows entrance to our hotel). We started walking. We decided to find some kind of main road to buy some drinking water. As we walked, we were approached by a few Congolese children. They clung to us for awhile, but then wandered away. Over the course of our time in Congo, we saw many children walking around by themselves, and they often directed one word at us – the word for “biscuits” in French. One of the Mercy Corps contacts told us that they’re referring to the high-energy protein biscuits that UN troops have been known to distribute to young children in the DRC.

What was interesting was that, while we drew attention to ourselves by virtue of not being Congolese, we weren’t some kind of sore thumb. I wasn’t getting the calls and attention I get in Rwanda. We weren’t magnets. People seemed more jaded with us – the UN troop’s population is heavy there, so it makes sense. People just seemed more jaded in general. Not excited. That was definitely something I saw and felt. There was this overwhelming sense of disillusionment there, a sense that people were just walking and talking and living day to day and accepting things without putting up a fight anymore. It’s like they had given up the fight long ago.

Rwandans ask me what I’m doing here all the time. They ask me where I live, what my job is, how long I’m staying, if I like Rwanda. I received none of these questions in the DRC. What was I doing there, a white foreigner in a region rife with war and human rights atrocities? It was just assumed. People didn’t even bring it up. It’s all out in the open. They know that we know and we know that they know and it’s all just understood, so why talk about it?

There were absolutely no rules to the road, as the Mercy Corps girls told us. Drivers can be pretty careless and reckless in Rwanda, but this was a different story. People were walking on all sides of the road. Cars and motos just kind of went, drivers trying to avoid running off the road and crashing where possible. It seemed like people just adhered to common sense rules – rules that are more logically life-saving than enforced.

We found a shop that was kind of bare inside and walked in. We got a couple water bottles and some snacks and went to the check-out counter. It appeared that Congolese francs are used just as much as U.S. dollars in Goma. I noticed immediately that all the bills, no matter what the currency, were dirty as the dirt on the ground itself. You could barely make out George Washington’s face on the U.S. ones, and I don’t even know what was supposed to be pictured on the Congolese bills. Like if you dropped your bill, you wouldn’t find it again because it would just disintegrate into the ground. All the bills were barely held together by loose threads steadily unraveling, and they appeared to be centuries old. All I could think about was the DRC’s economy.

The electricity went out in the middle of the transaction (it seemed like the whole town had lost electricity, which was likely the case). We waited there for about 15 minutes for the power to go back on so the guy could punch the numbers and open the drawer to get change. 10 minutes later, it went off again. Off, on. Off, on. I mean, I lose electricity regularly in Rwanda, but nothing like this. In Rwanda, you just kind of expect to lose it for 10 – 20 minutes about every other day. But every 10 minutes? The Mercy Corps girls told us that it wasn’t uncommon for them to lose power completely for days on end.

We walked outside the shop and saw something that I’ll never forget. Walking down the main road in the middle of all these people was a woman wearing a neon orange t-shirt, her left arm slightly deformed, the whites of her eyes pinkish-red. She was definitely talking – but it was so shrill and glass-shatteringly loud that no one could really make out what she was saying. Even if it was in English, it would’ve been a challenge. It was 9:00 in the morning, and there she was, noticeably intoxicated. She stumbled out into the road, and cars dodged her, and then she’d go back up onto the sidewalk again.

As she walked down the road and got closer, we could see that the person she was talking to was some white guy wearing sunglasses, who appeared totally perturbed and confused. She kept screaming at him as he tried to ignore her. So much for ignoring her. She started actually hitting him. Hitting him violently and lunging at him and yelling way too close to his face “Umuzungu [white person]!” and then a stream of other indecipherable words. You could kind of deduce by observing her that she wanted money. He figured that one out pretty quickly and stuffed some small change into her hand to get rid of her. She got her way. She shut up immediately and walked away from him. There was a Congolese guard standing right outside of the shop, quietly observing her. Another foreigner walked by (by this time, Nina and I had shrunk into the shadows, watching and waiting for the whole thing to pass). She started doing the same thing to him. It became apparent that her intention was to pester every foreigner she saw for money. This time, the guard ran down the shop steps and grabbed her, trying to pull her away from him. She then started attacking the guard. He said some things to her, held her arms down firmly, and pulled her out of the road. He got her under control and began a verbal exchange with her. At the end of the exchange, the guard laughed. Some other Congolese people standing there on the side of the road also laughed. He let her go and she kept walking down the street in silence, still clearly upset.

People watched the whole ordeal stoically or just continued walking forward, not really giving it any attention at all. Some people (including the guard) just laughed at it as if it were some little piece of entertainment that had brushed across the screen and ended. It was quite a sight, and it left me with a lot of questions. It left me with questions about what it must be like to live in a country where laws aren’t enforced, where officials themselves are often the culprit for breaking the laws (Larry Devlin's book Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone gives an shocking depiction of a CIA officer’s firsthand experience with this), and where officials aren’t reliably present or easily summoned when something like this happens (what if that guard hadn’t been standing there?). On the one hand, I was heartened by the fact that the guard actually did something about this woman, that he tried to restore some sort of order after the incident. On the other hand, I was surprised that he just let her keep walking around after what we all had witnessed. The best way I can put it: the instability and arbitrariness of this country were coursing through my veins after that happened. I found myself wondering what had happened to that woman in her life, what she was doing in Goma, why she was in the state she was in. Hers weren’t the only pair of bloodshot eyes I saw as I walked around that day, either. I caught a glimpse of what purpose alcohol was serving there. I wondered about the woman’s story. I’ve learned (especially in Rwanda) that people’s stories – the nuances of people’s experiences – can illuminate more about the predicament of an entire country than perhaps anything else can. We can learn so much from people – and it’s while we’re immersed in stories and experiences and people’s lives that we can begin to understand greater problems, to identify solutions, to see the light, to see hope. If we have insight into the way people think and behave, we have insight into huge, encompassing issues. Strength comes in numbers, numbers of individuals with sets of experiences and distinctive worldviews. Individuals changing the way they think.

Someone once told me that changing the way you think changes the way you feel, which changes the way you act. When you have thousands of people changing the way they think, you’re going to end up with a change of actions on a mass scale. I think (and this is the psychology-lover coming out in me) that the idea of change of mind and change of heart in an individual (read: small-scale) is key to seeing large-scale change happen.

We kept walking, and we came upon an outdoor market – about 6 guys underneath a tin covering, displaying all kinds of Congolese handicrafts. They had some interesting products, and we spent some time there. They were very polite, affable people, and we enjoyed talking with them and giving them business. We talked to them about their country. The thing about the DRC is that the violence and terror there are hugely out in the open. There’s no use trying to claim good governance and peace while terrible things continue happening on the down low. The plight isn’t being kept hidden from the rest of the world or from the Congolese people. It’s widely known – it’s been around for decades. Movies have been made about it. The DRC has become a source of intense philosophical debates about humankind and its policies, its economies, its cultures, its viewpoints. While it’s a dark place, it’s also infused with complexities and questions that make people think on all kinds of levels that they wouldn’t otherwise. It’s also a place with shoots of hope. One of the men selling things in the market was fluent in French, English, and different Congolese dialects. He was clearly very intelligent, affable, and personable. He said to us after talking honestly about the country’s agony: “It’s getting better. Things are getting better.” That, coming from him, was pretty huge. I wanted to find out what was making him say that.