Situation in DR Congo serious, group told

Congolese Mennonites feel abandoned, even by those who first brought them the Christian gospel.

This was the sobering message of an ad hoc meeting of more than 60 people in Winnipeg, Aug. 17. Some who attended were Mennonite mission representatives; others had lived in Congo, were expatriate Congolese in Canada, or were simply interested in mission.

Pakisa Tshimika

All had come to interact about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with guests Pakisa Tshimika, who grew up in the DRC and is currently based in Fresno, Calif., and Siaka Traore, a leader of the Evangelical Mennonite Church in neighbouring Burkino Faso.

If numbers counted, Tshimika told the group, the current war and its consequences in the DR Congo would be front page news and people wouldn’t stop talking about it until the atrocities ended.

DR Congo is still struggling to recover from a five-year war between government and rebel forces (a war that involved other African countries on opposing side), in which it is estimated that upwards of three million people died – through the fighting or because of starvation and disease.

Although a peace deal was reached in 2003, with a transitional government formed and elections scheduled for 2006, tensions remain high, and the needs of Congo’s citizens remain enormous. More than two million people are internally displaced.

Tshimika, who is currently an associate executive secretary of Mennonite World Conference and earlier served as MB Mission and Service International’s program director for Africa, related that a visit to his homeland earlier this year was his first since 1999.

It was a trip of many sad memories, he said. Most of his immediate family are now dead and many friends have also died because of AIDS or lack of access to health care.

He encountered “a nation of very resilient people,” he said, who “continue to hope with confidence that better days are ahead.”

But he also found a nation whose political and economic situation was the worst he had ever known.

Tshimika learned that at least 37 percent of Congolese – approximately 18.5 million people – have no access to formal health care and 16 million people have critical food needs. There are 2,056 doctors left for a population of about 50 million; 930 are in Kinshasa, the capital.

More than statistics

“For many people around the world,” he said, “these are just statistics.” For him, however, they represent family members, friends, and the country’s future leaders. Soon after he arrived in DR Congo, for example, he was greeted by the death from anemia of a four-year-old girl, daughter of a close friend. He also got news that a favourite cousin had just died of AIDS.

Tshimika further encountered a deep sense of isolation and a feeling that the rest of the world doesn’t care. (See excerpt below, “I could not help but cry.”)

“How is it,” he asked, “that even my own denomination [Mennonite Brethren] back in North America recognizes that the Congo church membership is the largest within our family of faith and yet the situation in Congo has never been considered a priority?”

Tshimika’s report and plea were affirmed and augmented by others at the meeting. Ray Dirks, a professional artist and photographer who accompanied Tshimika to DR Congo, showed pictures that documented both the strength and straitened circumstances of Congolese Mennonites.

Siaka Traore of Burkina Faso offered the perspective that significant difficulties facing the Mennonite churches in Congo – “internal difficulties, difficulties between Mennonite denominations” – are also part of the mix.

“We have to go to Congo and sit down and try to understand,” Traore said. “This is a big challenge.”

Representatives of agencies like MCC, Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission (AIMM), Mennonite Mission Health Association and other people with recent contact with the country shared some of the projects currently underway to foster relationships with Congolese churches and provide assistance. A Congolese student studying reconciliation at CMU urged that peace work be a priority. Deo Namwira of MCC drew attention to the environmental devastation caused by the plunder of war; “nature is suffering too,” he said.

Various suggestions for response followed in the discussion. (See box below.) One person wondered if Mennonite organizations shouldn’t focus on a few countries like DR Congo; “we’re spread so thinly,” he said.

Another said we need a “strong and clear message to our leaders” that they “prioritize our attention.” Mennonites have “good organizations,” he continued, “and people are willing to respond.”

“Our churches need to hear the hard edge, the anger, we’ve heard tonight,” another person commented. “Hundreds of thousands of Mennonites feel abandoned by other Mennonites. . . . These are brothers and sisters.”

—Dora Dueck

I could not help but cry

An excerpt from a report on DRC
by Pakisa Tshimika

Empty pharmacy shelves

We found a country where people felt isolated and uncared for by the rest of the world. That feeling was best expressed by someone in Eastern Congo in a report by Amnesty International saying: “I am convinced now . . . that the lives of Congolese people no longer mean anything to anybody. Not to those who kill us like flies, our brothers who help kill us or those you call the international community . . . Even God does not listen to our prayers any more and abandons us.”

We also found a country where representatives of international aid organizations felt frustrated by the lack of response from the international community. Oxfam, for instance, [notes] that “the international community is essentially ignoring what has been deemed ‘Africa’s first world war.’ The DRC remains a forgotten emergency.”

In Kinshasa we discovered schools without places for children to sit. Kikwit, a city of half a million people, was not any different. That’s where I went to high school under excellent conditions. Today, many schools are without walls . . .

In Kajiji, my own village, we found crowded schools and students without access to books or basic school supplies. We found only three sewing machines for 120 students in a girls’ training school where they are supposed to learn about home economics and sewing. The hospital pharmacy was empty and hospital beds were without mattresses and linens.

Hospital beds with no mattresses

Walking through the hospital we discovered a little boy sitting in his mother’s lap outside the pediatrics ward. He was suffering from severe malnutrition, and yet the hospital could not afford to buy milk to feed children like him. It does not make any difference how the country arrived where it was. People created in God’s image were dying unnecessarily and the living were feeling isolated and abandoned.

I could not help but cry each day as I listened and observed what was happening to this beautiful and potentially rich country and its people. Each morning I contemplated the beauty of the country as I would sit on the veranda of the house where we were staying and watch the fog rise from the valley. The singing of gospel songs on Sunday morning in church was comforting, but it did not take away the pain I was feeling. The beautiful rising fog in the morning and golden African sunset in the evening brought temporary peace of mind. As soon as I turned to visiting with friends, local chiefs, and hard working women whose sense of hope was slipping away, my heart would break once more . . .

(The full report, “When numbers no longer count: Journey to Democratic Republic of Congo,” can be read at Mama Makeka House of Hope).

MB school in Kikwit with no walls