I Put My Head in the Sand; Therefore I Will Be

“There are no opponents in Zaire, because the notion of opposition has no place in our mental universe.  In fact, there are no political problems in Zaire.” –Mobutu Sese Seko

...Not far from where we sat, a paraplegic was busy capitalising on the latest twist in market forces.  Helped by friends, he was struggling to balance a pair of giant jerry cans filled with petrol onto the back of his tricycle.  At that moment, the militia fighting in Brazzaville meant fuel there was scarce.  Kinshasa’s petrol, itself in short supply, should sell for a high price over the river, high enough, in any case, to justify this polio victim running the risk of becoming a tricycling firebomb if a cigarette spark went astray.  “Thanks to the war, I should be able to sell the petrol on the other side for twice the price,” he said.  “Then I’ll bring milk back in the same jerry cans.”

...Depressingly, the people who led the soldiers to the farm each time were local villagers.  Far from regarding the farm as a project worth encouraging, or at least tolerating, for the investment and employment it might bring to the area, they monitored the farm through the years like schoolboys watching a ripening fruit, waiting for the moment when a breakdown of law and order would provide the cover for some neighbourly appropriation...  [The farmer] appeared to harbour little rancour, attributing the repeated pillaging to the hunter-gatherer instincts on which the Congolese relied for survival until so very recently.  But something... appeared to have snapped [after the third looting], perhaps overwhelmed by the realization that those around him had never regarded him as anything more than just another white colonialist to be taken for a ride at worst, deferred to at best. 

...Between the start of the Zairean economic crisis in 1975 and Mobutu’s departure in 1997, Zaire received a total of $9.3 billion in foreign aid...  The corruption in Zaire, [Erwin Blumenthal] argues, is not a generalised blight, a plague without face or source...  Yet the IMF and the World Bank were still giving Mobutu’s reform plans serious consideration at the start of the 80s...  “There will certainly be new promises from Mobutu and the members of his government and the ever-growing foreign debt will be rescheduled.  But there is no – I repeat no – chance on the horizon that Zaire’s many creditors will recover their funds.”  ...By the time of the report, there had already been four failed IMF stabilisation plans.  But the rescheduling of Zaire’s debt went on – nine times between 1976 and 1989.  ...It was to take eight long years before the two institutions finally reached the same conclusion as the testy German banker had spelled out in 1982:  money was not the answer to Zaire’s ills, rather, it lay at their very root.

...Mea culpa.  Throughout my interviews, I had kept expecting to find signs of it, only to be constantly surprised by its failure to make an appearance.  There was precious little from the Washington financiers who granted billions to a known thief, whose institutions will one day have to explain why the Congolese should be held accountable for leans made in bad faith.  Even less from the US and French officials who, motivated by strategic reasons, decided with cool cynicism what was best for this most fragile of post-independence states.  There was none at all from the Congolese aides, ministers and generals who helped mould [Mobutu’s] policies, still adopting the ‘I was only following orders’ excuse judged insufficient at Nuremberg.  And... the colonial power that first sent Congo on its wayward course had nimbly succeeded in dismissing the very notion of blame.  To explore the roles they played – from the raids of the slave traders to the amputations carried out by the Force Publique and the wishful thinking of the World Bank – is to move from exasperation at a nation’s fecklessness to wonderment that a population has come through it all with a sense of humour...  Now that the US, France, and Belgium have distanced themselves, now that Mobutu is dead, the country has lost the last excuse for its predicament.  A population that has set its sights little higher than survival has to learn to take responsibility for its own destiny.  ‘What do the French want of Congo’  ...alternated with the equally infuriating, if equally understandable ‘What do the Americans want?” ...must now become ‘What do the Congolese want?’

-- Wrong, M. (2000). In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. London: Fourth Estate, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers

If I could compile a compulsory reading list for the next Seed cohort, it would consist of:

1.      King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild

2.      In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz by Michela Wrong

3.      Dancing in the Glory of Monsters:  The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns

In that order, no exceptions. 

The sinusoidal wave from the nightmares of Belgian colonialism to the often slightly hysterical mismanagement of Mobutu, to the chaos of the human psyche in carrying out genocides and war should prepare the team nicely for the seething insanity – covered in a layer of genial greetings and four-part harmonies - that will meet them here. 

Please understand:  I don’t mean to say that other countries are any less vibrantly insane (believe me; I’m kind of Indian).  Just perhaps that the Congo has greater reason to be this way.  

Or maybe I’m biased.

It all stems from the fact that I want to be Michela Wrong when I grow up. 

She manages to infuse a generally insane dictator driving his country to ruin (with lots of help) with a desperate sense to see his country – those he sees as his children - united and successful, who used and was used by this ministers until greed and malice did them part.

I don’t read non-fiction.  I especially don’t read non-fiction to vaguely admire or pity despots.  I already love Snape (Brene Brown does too – vulnerability is the new name of this girl’s game, baby) and I have no room in my heart for real-life humans with their motivations and grey areas. 

I want to hate The Bad Guy. 

Singular proper noun. 

End of story. 

But I can’t. 

Every bad thing seems to have coalesced into today, and everyone’s just been complicit in watching it slide – as long as they receive a benefit - and it continues.

This country’s main import has been foreign aid for a long time, in exchange for some of the world’s most demanded minerals, and I still see the search for money rather than change.  The movers and shakers follow the money:  into corruption, into theft, into NGOs, into exploitation, into churches...   

I want to shake someone and say, “This is crazy!  Do you understand that?!”  But it’s really just transference – I’d much rather grab my brain and shake until I don’t know my amygdala from my hypothalamus, until all the knowledge I’ve managed to retain about the Great Lakes settles and the truth drifts in gentle eddies to the top. 

The truth is that corruption is not okay, even if everyone else does it.  Stealing is not okay, even if you’re poor.  Searching only for cases of horror, rape, and trauma is not okay, even if it buys aid.  Supporting an ineffective, authoritarian government is not okay, even if it ensures cheap resources, because the balancing weight is scores of lives eking out a living far below the poverty line and under constant threat of violence.  But how to share this, how to live it, when the country and its issues are not a part of me, not ingrained into my skin?

This vast, horrible knowledge is disturbed and broken by my small, daily, petty battles that I cannot win - as I think about my responsibility to be a witness for Christ in my workplace, in my organization, on my team, at home - when I, myself, am a liar, a thief, a coward, and a lover of money...   

Our house helper finally left my bed alone.  In a fit of thwarted rage, he mopped the floors, washed one pot holder, and disposed of various quantities of peanut butter, sunflower oil, olives, biscuits, and chocolate – either in his stomach or in the garbage, I’m the last one to know. 

I was in a snit of epic proportions, never mind the fact that none of those items were mine (they belonged to the previous owners of the apartment) – why would you eat the peanut butter when all I want is for you to mop the floors one day a week?  And one pot holder?!

He’s almost as bad as the lizards who, having realized that I’m not very disturbed by them any longer, mostly hide and leave poop in strategic locations. 

But none of this jolted me as badly as when I thought I saw a familiar face on my bus.  I debated between confusion and morbid fear for a while, finally settling on the latter when I decided he was the Burundian suitor who’d accompanied me on the way over from Rwanda.  I’d buried my Rwandan phone and refused to add him on Facebook, for which I believe his memory will forever haunt me – which is why when (I thought) I saw him in the flesh, I went into convulsions.  I convulsively threw my scarf over my face, convulsed my way off the bus and past him wrapped like a mummy, and convulsed home, where I found him climbing a chair to fix the wiring in our apartment and remembered that he was, in fact, our electrician. 

In my defense, they vaguely look alike. 

You tell me how I’m supposed to contemplate the mysteries of the human condition in a recovering war zone when daily life is a psychological roller coaster.