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.
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