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| Christine and friends in Gemena |
Sometimes it’s difficult to decide what to share about my
life here. Everything is different, but
I forget what might be interesting or surprising to people at home. Some fun stories from the past week:
I have been driving a 4-wheeler to the World Vision office
for a little over a month now. I am one
of two young white women who live in this town, and there are only two
4-wheelers in the town too, so if people didn’t notice me before, now I REALLY
stand out. To make things more
interesting Debbie Williams lent me her motorcycle helmet that she rarely uses
because she isn’t about to ride motorcycles on these challenging roads. So, now I am the only person in town wearing
a big green helmet, on top of being white and having a unique vehicle, and sometimes
the children screaming and running after me gets almost out of hand. My daily commute.
We had a team from Covenant Churches in the US visit last
week, and one morning I went with Diann from Naperville Covenant Church to
visit her World Vision sponsored kids.
It was a great experience, and as we were walking through one village we
saw a group of women pounding fuku flour (corn and cassava flour mixed) and the
women encouraged us to try pounding the flour with them. Diann and I quickly realized the hard labor
that preparing a simple meal entails, and the women laughed and laughed at our
efforts. As we worked, a young man rode
up on his bicycle and asked the women if I had a mobali, or husband. My Lingala is good enough now that I can
understand when people are talking about me, but they might not know that I
understand. He asked again and the women
said “No, she is not married, she is free, so take her!” I have been proposed to before in Congo, but
that was the first time I had an arranged proposal approved by a group of women
I had never met before. Welcome to my
life.
This past Sunday I went to a church in a neighborhood called
Salongo II, and in Lingala salongo means “community work”, or “work
together”. Often Saturday mornings are a
time of salongo where everyone will come out and clean up their neighborhood
together. So, I went with one of our Saving for Change
trainers, Mama Bibi, so we could share our program with women of the Salongo church
after the Sunday morning service. In
these small village churches there might be 60 people under a grass roof with
mud walls and dirt floors. I actually
prefer this kind of church because from my foreign Western perspective, it
seems more intimate and real. They bring
out the drums made of wood and taught goat skin and we celebrate our faith with
singing and dancing to rhythms of Congo.
That is by far my favorite part of church. After the 3 hour service (not too long by
Gemena standards) Mama Bibi gathered about 40 women to talk to them about
saving and loaning to improve their businesses and household income. The women listened at first, asking questions
where they didn’t understand, but the women community leaders were the ones
that really grasped the idea and convinced the other women that they could do
this. It was awesome to see – there was
doubt and negativity at the beginning, but it slowly turned to acceptance and
even excitement. We offered to let the
women think about the idea for a week before we come back to form the groups,
but the women said “No! Let’s make the groups now, we want to start saving as
soon as possible!” So cool. The women split themselves into two groups, we led them through fair
elections for a president, secretary, treasurer, cashier and key holder and
they chose saving amounts and names for their groups, Bolingo and Esengo, or Love and Joy. When Mama Bibi comes again next week, they
will have their first official savings meeting, and they will be able to take loans
from their group within the next 4 weeks.
On our walk home Mama Bibi commented on what hard work we accomplished,
and I agreed how great it was that within 3 hours we got 40 women on board with
our program to be empowered and change their own lives, without receiving a
penny from an international organization.
In this town, changing people’s minds and behaviors is by far the
biggest challenge, but we are seeing change and acceptance of our idea. It
really is miraculous. So far 14 savings
groups have been formed in Gemena and we look forward to seeing how God works
through these groups to bring empowerment and relieve some of the struggle from living in poverty for these women and their families.
All in all, another eventful week in Gemena, DRC.
