The Voice of Pain

Once you hear it, you can never forget the sound of a wailing woman. It is the audible voice of pain, the retching of the heart. Infant and child mortality steals many lives in Africa. It is a thief that permits miniature coffins to be sold on the roadside next to the potatoes and cabbage. Infant mortality is easily thought of as a statistic until you gaze upon the tiny figure of the immortal. In the west, we have the expectation that someone will live until their 70’s. In Africa, people call it a miracle if a child sees their 5th birthday. I prefer my culture’s way of thinking even if it is a bit naive. The death of a child will never be normal for me or acceptable.

This past weekend I was asked to give the congregational prayer during the main service at church. I had heard during announcements that a baby had died that morning in the hospital and the mother was still there sick herself. Upon entering the back room preparing to enter the sanctuary awaiting the que of the all familiar tune regardless of the language it is sung in, Open My Eyes, Lord, to my left sat a baby coffin – empty but ready to be filled. Just the sight of this solemn symbol of death made my stomach uneasy.

The melody started ushering us inside and I didn’t have time to contemplate the sight before me. After the opening prayer and hymn, my peripheral vision to the left caught sight of a room full of women. Laying there rested a very still and perfect baby. Perhaps the baby is just sleeping, I thought. It only took me a few minutes to realize this was the very precious child that had exited this world and it’s mother’s arms only a few hours prior. The fact that this little being didn’t move in an hours time and was clothed in probably it’s whole wardrobe and two blankets in 90* heat confirmed my initial assumption.

At the end of the main service, the funeral commenced without the presence of the father, as he already died months prior, or the mother as she herself lied in a hospital bed to ill to attend her own child’s funeral. The empty coffin easily swallowed up the innocent body. The hymns of mourning and the tears of grief flowed. Sitting there, I couldn’t help but feel as though this small child is departing this world alone. The church was filled with other people who loved and cared for this infant but not the the same degree of the mother’s. Her absence was a weight in my heart – the one’s whose arms greeted this new life with joy and the arms that were forced to let go in premature death.

The funeral continued with a procession to the cemetery. The small coffin was placed on a motorbike followed by the mourning mass on foot and chanting choir to the freshly dug jungle grave site 5 kilometer’s away. Today, a sweet lifeless child rests awaiting the opportunity to actually live.



As I witnessed all of this, in many ways I felt like just an observer, removed from it all. Of course there were words that were spoken, cultural practices that I didn’t understand but the reality of death transcends all differences and the loss of life, especially a child, is horrific no matter what background you represent. I was surrounded by physical pain and suffering and I found it challenging to connect to. Normally I am quite empathetic and all too easily feel the pain of those around me. Has something died in me as well ? Have I been desensitized ? These questions in and of themselves horrified me. Then I realized, in some ways I envied this baby. He only knew the joy expressed in his birth, the protection of love, and now the overwhelming display of affection and grief in his loss. Of course he didn’t get the opportunity to experience the other joys in this life but those also come at a cost of significant pain. This child entered this world innocent and departed innocent, only marred by the grip of death – which is inevitable for all. He does not carry the scars this world so easily wounds us with. I was reminded that this is how we were meant to be : perfect, innocent, unscathed. Tossed around, battered, and suffering is not natural and it should never be considered as such. We can only endure for a short period of time.

I didn’t exactly grieve the same way as everyone else who attended this event thus provoking my initial self-questioning but I did grieve for the human race as a whole. The death of a child I didn’t even know brought a piece of me to life. It revived in me the consciousness that being jaded is not natural ; death is not natural ; and pain is not natural. But hope is. Hope is the only thing that keeps us going day in and day out. Hope is the only thing that can allow a mother to release the body of her deceased infant – hope that she will hold that child again, healthy and alive. And at the end of the day, hope is the reason I do what I do – the belief that somehow, someway things can and will be different.

Two Page Broken Heart

Beni Airport Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Last week I was leafing through an East African tour book checking out different places in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya. I randomly stumbled upon the Democratic Republic of Congo section. Due to the size of DRC, it can be considered West, Central, or East Africa. I wasn’t sure if it would be included in this book but it was, all two pages worth. Two pages ? Seriously ? Congo is the largest country in Africa now after South Sudan’s split from Sudan, it is the size of western Europe and there is only enough tourist info to fill up two pages.

I am presently reading a book called Blood River. The author risked his life in 2004 traveling the same route the great explorer Stanley traveled in the 1800s down the Congo River. It was estimated that the exploration in 2004 was more dangerous than Stanley’s voyage in the 1800s despite Stanly facing cannibals, tropical diseases without modern medicines, no technological resources, or language capabilities. The Congo River forms the shape of half a heart thus labeling DRC the broken heart of Africa joining the other equally depressing name for the DRC – the Heart of Darkness.

Throughout this book the author recounts how beautiful and marvelous this mighty country once was. Like the majority of other African countries, Congo had very harsh colonizers. The height of DRC’s economic stability and flourishment was towards the end of the colonial period in the 1950’s. There was an amazing road, train, and river transportation system ; medical care ; and booming industries.

Unfortunately the rest of the world doesn’t realize that Congo is not the broken heart of Africa but rather the lungs of the world, well, perhaps they do as exploitation and corruption continue to ravage this mutilated society. DRC has the second largest rain forest providing oxygen to this half of the world and is the richest country in the world with natural resources such as gold, diamonds, and coltan – a mineral used for cell phones where 90% of the world’s supply is found in Congo. Unfortunately at the end of 2011, the Human Development Index rated Congo dead last on the list of developed countries, number 187.

Amongst all of my interest for this continent, no country has intrigued me more than the Democratic Republic of Congo. I can visibly see how beautiful Congo was sixty years ago as the remains are still standing rusted. At the same time, I can imagine what Congo, and even Africa in general, looked like one hundred and fifty years ago as this country has sadly backslidden to that point today. Democratic Republic of Congo 2012 is a glimpse of Africa 1900. Everyday I wish that these walls could talk and tell me their story, because I know there is one and it is unlike any I have ever heard.

Regardless of the story of 50 years ago or even 150, I know the story of today. I am living it. I don’t need to hear the walls talk, I can just look out my window. The citizens of Congo still face insecurity. People are dying of curable disease like malaria because medicine prices have gone up and treatment is not affordable. There is political gridlock in the capital, Kinshasa. The east is still fighting over land rights. People are worked like slaves in the mine fields to supply the rest of the world with diamonds and cells phones.

The tourist guide for Democratic Republic of Congo should be its own separate book, not a mere two pages combined with Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Burundi, probably all combined together equaling a quarter of Congo’s land mass. Despite the evident darkness and brokenness that still claims much of Congo, this Heart of Darkness has brought much light to my life and this Broken Heart of Africa has mended many pieces of my soul.

Dreams Come True

I remember as a child being fascinated with missionary stories, especially when they were stories from Africa. I would always skip through Christian magazines to the missionary section first scanning the page for exotic pictures and afterwards hanging on every word. In between the lines, I would be pretending that it was my life and name that was being written about. That life sounded so exciting, adventurous, and in some ways romantic.

I remember reading about people flying over jungles, crossing rivers, facing diseases, speaking funky languages, encountering random villages, eating weird food, living in extreme climates, and defeating daily odds which seemed so unimaginable from my upstate NY couch.

The other day I was flying over Congo. I saw the vast openness of this country, the rivers, and small isolated villages where you can't help but wonder how they survive without obvious access to medical treatment, a commercial center, or social community. It finally struck me that I am living that same life I was always fascinated by in the magazines. However my life didn't feel exciting, adventurous, and romantic like it did reading it on the page. My life like this is normal but the fact that it is normal was in itself exciting, adventurous, and romantic. It demonstrated a sense of comfort, completeness.

It is so easy for me to forget the journey that I have been on marked by quite amazing and significant steps and life decisions. Sometimes it takes flying in an airplane over the Congolese jungle to remind me that I am actually living my childhood dream. Childhood dreams I think are one of those things that we never really expect to actually happen and when they do we are a bit surprised. It was a good reminder that dreams really do and can come true.

Tulear: Ville du Soleil

I should stop being surprised by the unexpected. For some reason life’s hiccups still amaze me and catch me off guard at the most obvious moments, traveling for example. My friend Dee and I decided that we would make this Christmas in Madagascar memorable since we were both away from our families and Madagascar naturally provides a significant amount of adventure. After many discussions, our indecisive brains compromised on going to the beach outside Tulear on the west coast adequately called by the locals « Ville du Soleil. » (City of the sun)

This unforgettable journey commenced Thursday afternoon with a plan, something I should learn not to bother with. The plan included leaving that afternoon by taxi brusse (local bus transport), spend the night with my friend 4 hours south of us, and catch the next bus early the next morning for Tulear. As history repeats itself, I should have known better than to rely on this plan. Five p.m. we departed, only an hour and a half later than scheduled – not bad. While on the way, I received word from my friend we were staying with that there were no buses to Tulear the next morning but would have to wait until tomorrow evening. Having a slight understanding of Malagasy transportation system, I didn’t hold onto that disappointing news too strongly but calmly told myself to go with the flow.

My friend Anna met us at the taxi brusse station four hours later, by now almost 9pm. After a brief update on the transportation situation, Anna found out that the Director of Transportation of the region was leaving to Tulear the next morning on his family vacation and was looking for people to split the gas with. We jumped on the opportunity to not ride 14+ hrs in a bus; however this little luxury required us to depart at 3am per the director’s wishes. So off we went to Anna’s house to eat noodles, sleep on a twin bed, and enjoy the blessing of having a friend in a foreign city hooking us up with sweet deals.

Three a.m. arrived sooner than anyone wanted. We hustled to get our sleepy bodies out the door, brush our teeth and pee in the dark, and walk a couple of kilometers with luggage in blackness. We learned through this early morning jaunt that Mr Director was not a patient man calling us every 2mins to get our location update. We met our transportation hosts, settled in four to the back seat, two in the front, and about six in the truck bed lounging over luggage, chickens, and pots. Despite a five person vehicle carrying about 12 passengers, we had a better hook up than a taxi brusse.

And we were off, well until 6am that is when it is normal for Catholics to attend morning mass on Friday morning for thirty minutes in a random town while in route for family vacation. We took this opportunity to eat some bread and eggs and walk to the market, only to receive a phone call from Mr Director informing us the 30mins was over and he was ready to hit the road. The journey commenced again only then stopping another three hours later to drop off my friend Anna and eat an official breakfast.

Mr Director and his wife were very gracious giving us brief history lessons and pointing out things along the road that tourists should be interested in, which he kindly scolded me I slept through all the important parts. After a brief family roadside chat about 3 hours later in a random town, we were invited to eat lunch with them at Mr Director’s sister-in-law’s house. They treated us as one of the family. It is always a bit awkward accepting blessings from strangers and a great lesson in humility. We hit the road again only stopping once more along the way to buy some charcoal to add to the already overloaded truck bed. Despite all of the stops, we arrived in good time in the Ville du Soleil 12 hours later, however, the trip was not over.

Dee and I boarded a pusse pusse, man pulled cart, destination taxi brusse station for the final leg of the trip; unfortunately this bus was a real crap shoot. Poor Dee was stuck in the truck bed with about 25 other people, children, and chickens as I was up front sitting on a seat made for someone 5 feet tall, fumigated by the chain smoking chauffeur, and listening to a chatterbox passenger. About 6pm, 15hrs after the commencement of this epic trip, we arrived ! We collapsed. We ate. And we did nothing for 5 days. And then the trip home greeted us again.