Congo Kinshasa: Happy New Year 2020 from Francis Hannaway!

Five years ago, I started my adventure in the Congolese rainforest. I remember sitting uneasily in a flimsy canoe with outboard engine, on the River Congo. Greeted by familiar faces in Basankusu, I was soon rudely awakened to the realities of forest poverty: untimely death from childbirth, from malaria and from poor diet. I enthusiastically started my work teaching candidates to Mill Hill Missionaries and looking after the accounts.

Early in 2015, a group of Belgian eye-doctors arrived for a 2-week mission, performing cataract operations for next to nothing. Despite insecurity, they visited every year after that to do the same.
I set up a malnutrition centre. It’s the only malnutrition centre in a diocese half the size of England. I started making wheelchairs for people whose only way of getting around was by crawling on the ground. I’ve now given 24 wheelchair bicycles for those disabled by polio.

From the start, I’ve been harassed by corrupt officials, mostly immigration police who see me as a soft target.

Francis Hannaway with the malnutrition centre volunteers

I started teaching at the local minor-seminary, which involved an exciting solo ride on a dirt-track motorbike, through the forest, each week. It was difficult at first, but I eventually got the hang of it.
In April 2016, our house burnt down. The paraffin fridge had caught fire and there was no way the control the flames. After the fire, I took a trip to Kinshasa with Fr. John Kirwan mhm while he got an emergency travel-document to replace his incinerated passport. It was a welcome break for me, too.
In Kinshasa, I welcomed a little boy and his mother for medical treatment. Judith, who helps me run the malnutrition centre, came to help guide them through the process. Tensions were high as people waited for a presidential election. We were robbed by, probably fake, officials in the street, on our way to give the sick boy’s mother some money for food. Soon afterwards, Kinshasa turned into a bloodbath, with demonstrations being brutally put down by the police. The next 2 years would see many such incidents, and many people, including people at mass, inside their church, were mercilessly shot down, before elections finally took place at the end of 2018.

After the election, I left my work at Mill Hill (we’d cut the teaching program after the fire) and concentrated solely on malnutrition. Sadly, the poverty caused by bad governance has made my centre even more necessary.

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Since I arrived in the Congo, we’ve treated over 3,500 malnourished children. We’ve been menaced by Ebola and are now struggling with a rise in numbers caused by the current measles epidemic. I’m still struggling to renew my visa, but I’m really looking forward to 2020 to see what more, with your help, we can achieve.

Congo Kinshasa: £50 million for jewellery is obscene

Bernie Ecclestone is worth £2,600,000,000 - that's two point six billion pounds, more than the economy of a small country. His daughter Tamara has about £300,000,000 three hundred million pounds.

Tamara Ecclestone
Wikipedia

When Tamara had £50 million worth of jewellery stolen this week, I suggested that to have that amount of money to spend on 'sparkly things' was obscene.

As you know, I work in the Democratic Republic of Congo on a project I set up 5 years ago for treating malnutrition. Malnutrition has several causes - but the underlying one is poverty.

I wrote on facebook and Twitter:

Some of Tamara's jewellery
Daily Mail

How can sparkly things be worth £50 million! If I had even a fraction of that I wouldn't need to raise funds for my malnutrition centre. I could probably run the whole province for several years - hospitals, schools and road building - with that amount. First world problems.

... several people disagreed with me, "What belongs to someone else is none of your business!" was the gist of the response. On Twitter my thoughts were accepted more.

Bangles and watches

So, I had a think about how long it would take to get just the price of Tamara's jewellery by working for it. I wrote:

To give an idea of £50 million, imagine a really high salary - imagine taking home £100,000 a year after tax. Imagine if you saved it and didn't spend any of it. After 500 years you'd have £50 million. And that was sparkling on her fingers and around Tamara Ecclestone's neck.
Just to add, I've never had a salary anywhere near £100,000! But just to imagine someone who had a really highly paid job.

Necklaces and chains

If we imagine that people have a right to be rich, we have to consider people in England whose ancestors came from France - the Normans - and killed our ancestors and stole their land. The Duke of Westminster is worth £13 billion! How did he become rich? His great-great-great granddaddy killed my great-great-great granddaddy and stole his land. His land happens to be half of central London. He inherited it and never worked for it. Should he give it back? Should he help the poor?
I'll explain further.

In the Congo, at the time called Zaire, I taught candidates to Mill Hill Missionaries. I taught them English and about the wider world – the world outside the forest.
The president was a dictator who’d developed a personality cult around himself. It was difficult, in fact, illegal to criticise what he did.

He started off as an army officer who eventually staged a coup to become president. He would do things to become richer. For example, people would mine diamonds locally and Mobutu would send a plane full of money. The plane would fly back to him, leaving money with the people. Mobutu controlled the production of money, so when he needed more, he just printed it. It’s what we would call today Quantitative Easing. It caused inflation of 3,000%! This meant that the money that the people received was soon worthless!

When I arrived in the Congo in 1992, 1,000,000 Zaires was worth £1. Yes, just £1! But it 1985 £1 was equivalent to 10 Zaires. Quantitative Easing had allowed the president to buy up quite a lot of ‘things’.

I set up a lesson with my students. I told them to bring their worldly possessions – 20 things that they had (they didn’t have much). A textbook, an exercise book, a bar of soap, a bedsheet, a cassette, a pen, … just the things they had.

I took some airmail paper and made some pretend banknotes – I called the money "pounds sterling". There were only seven students, and I gave each of the students £200 in this play-money. They were in two groups. For the first hour one group played the part of sellers, the others buyers. Then they switched roles and sellers became buyers. They could set their own price and were encouraged to haggle. The object of the game wasn’t to accumulate money, but to accumulate ‘things’. The diamond sellers ended up with worthless paper money, whereas the president had diamonds which couldn’t lose their value. A bedsheet can keep you warm at night, and a bar of soap can be used to wash yourself, a cassette can give you music … but money by itself can’t do anything for you!

I left them to play shops and returned in the evening. I’d made some more money to solve any disputes they might have. Yes – we do have problems! I asked for £20 for my book and he just threw £10 at me and took it! … and so on. I showed them that I had more money and their eyes lit up. The aggrieved and aggressor were both given money and their problems disappeared with the lust of money. I topped up each student’s money with a further £200 and all was well. Of course, the number of things available remained the same. They were unaware that the money in their pockets had now lost half of its value.

We continued the game the following morning, but this time I showed them that I had even more money and asked if I could join in the buying game. Their eyes lit up again with the thought that they could also get my money by inflating their prices.

A basic wooden blackboard stood in the corner of the classroom on an easel. I told them that I would buy things and put them underneath the blackboard because it symbolised my village. I called my village Gbadolite (that was the name of the president’s village). Each time someone tried to buy an item for £5 I bought it for £10; if it was £30, I gave £60. I soon bought around two-thirds of everything.

And so, they started to see how the president was able to manipulate their lives. The people did the work and produced goods, but the president took the wealth in the form of goods, land, properties and so on. I stripped their world of assets by buying their goods; I left them with worthless money. This is how the rich remain rich and how the poor become poorer.

Those people in the developed world have a moral obligation to help those without anything, the poor, the sick, the landless, because the rich have created that poverty by their actions. Creating wealth is good … but to have the equivalence of an executive’s salary for 500 years work just in your jewellery box must be immoral.

I’ve helped over 3,500 malnourished children with donations from people who live ordinary lives. I run the whole project on about £1,000 a month and don't get a salary. Imagine if I had as much as only £1 million to do my work!

Perhaps Robin Hood was right.

Congo Kinshasa: Giving birth in Basankusu

A new baby is born - Giving birth in the Congo - by Annaïg Louboutin.

As every morning, Mamá Julie leaves her home in search of the daily food for her family. But there is a difference: she is heavily pregnant. Mamá Julie is 34 years old and expects her fifth child. She goes on foot, a basket on her back, walking 13 km looking for fish. On the way back she gets contractions and her waters break. Instead of stopping at Bonkita, the nearest parish, and giving birth there, she decides to continue her walk right to Basankusu, praying to the Lord that nothing serious will happen. In her mind she can‟t give birth elsewhere but at home. She does not like to be surrounded by unknown people and on top of that, it would be too expensive for her husband. No, without a doubt, God will help her to reach home. God does not sleep and Mamá Julie finally reaches her house at sunset, with her basket filled with food on her back, and with the onset of labour well advanced.

Children collecting firewood with their granddmother
(Ngombe tribe)

She has hardly arrived when she lies down on the muddy ground which is barely covered by a home-made woven mat. With the help of her husband, who pushes on her belly (he‟s getting quite experienced; it is the fifth child his wife has brought into the world in these elementary conditions) she tries to give birth.

Within a few hours‟ time, in the rain and in the almost total obscurity of the African night,

Mamá Julie and her husband manage to deliver a big baby of 5 kg without a caesarean section. The baby seems to be fine; it cries aloud. It is about 11 o‟clock in the evening. But the afterbirth does not want to appear. The husband continues to press on his wife‟s belly for a long time; but the placenta is too high up.

Women retourning from their vegetable gardens in the forest,
carrying vegetables including cassava root and cassava leaves, and firewood

Powerless as he is, he decides to appeal to his neighbour‟s wife to rid her of the afterbirth. This after having asked the help of the nearest nurse, who, a few hours previously, had answered that the husband should bring his pregnant wife along to his house, on the back of a bike, if he wanted any help at the delivery. In an effort to get rid of the placenta Mamá Julie, just having had her baby, has the bright idea of blowing into a horn. The neighbour‟s wife rubs her belly continuously whilst imploring God to come and assist them. After half an hour or so, their fervent prayer is answered: the afterbirth comes out. In the traditional African context it is very important to recuperate the placenta. It‟s buried in the house next to the afterbirths of the previous babies. It is a way of perpetuating the eternal cycle of life and death by returning to mother earth and the ancestors the envelope that contained the embryo.

After this digression, let us return to the delivery. Now they need to cut the umbilical cord that still connects the naked baby to its mother, though more than two hours have passed.

A woman selling locally pressed palm oil in a beer-bottle

Mamá Julie asks her husband to get the razor blade she has hidden under the mattress. „You know that‟s the blade I used to cut Félicité‟s hair and Gidéon‟s nails.‟ When the neighbour‟s wife hears this, she proposes to get a clean blade and so avoid infections. The umbilical cord is cut and everybody goes home after a night full of tensions and emotions. The following day, like any day, Mamá Julie goes to the spring to fetch water, before she prepares cassava leaves. That‟s life!

You just followed, nearly live, the nocturnal, natural and nearly solitary birth of Mamá Julie's fifth child. The baby is now two weeks old and is fine, like its mother, who has not suffered any serious tearing and whose bruises on her belly have already disappeared.

I do not know whether God exists, but could I even doubt it in a case like this? Do you think that.

Mamá Julie is an exception? You are right to say that unfortunately many women give birth in the old way, on the ground, without any medical assistance, the difference in Mamá Julie‟s case was that she had fallen out with her mother and her siblings, and that, normally, women in a similar situation are surrounded by other women who advise and encourage them throughout their delivery.

Since the departures of the Doctors without Borders, our situation has deteriorated considerably. From 70 FC for the complete medical care of the mother and child at the hospital, the costs of a delivery have risen to 15,000 FC without any warranty of success. Just for the last few months it seems seven women and their babies did not survive a caesarean operation at our hospital.

I leave you wondering about the wonderful adventure of giving life, wonderful only for a relatively small number of women on our planet in 2011. It‟s often their faith that pulls them through.

Annaïg Louboutin - author of this article

Annaïg Louboutin.

Congo Kinshasa: there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas

I love the Russian story of Babushka. A woman is visited by the Three Wise Men who tell her that baby Jesus will soon be born, and they are on their journey to Bethlehem, and “why don’t you come along?” Babushka tells them that she will join them soon just as soon as she’s got the house ready. … and, when she’s finally ready, she’s too late. We all prepare, but we shouldn’t leave things too late.
I’m doing my own preparing right now. Before leaving the Congo in September, to go to a family funeral in Middlesbrough, the bishop of Basankusu instructed the diocesan Caritas group to write an invitation letter for me, which he would sign, and which would get me a new visa. My current five-year-visa runs out December 14. There should have been plenty of time.

I arrived in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, 23 October, to powerful tropical thunderstorms! Still no sign of a letter. “No, don’t worry,” I was advised, “there’s still plenty of time. The bishop has gone for a week of meetings and will be back Sunday evening, 3 November.”

Babushka and the Three Kings

Soon, central Kinshasa, hot and muggy, was completely flooded. We managed to manoeuvre down less popular roads through about a foot of water, while others saw their parked cars completely submerged.

I met up with Huang, our Chinese friend. He’s also trying to renew his visa. He took me to a Chinese restaurant – what a treat in the middle of Kinshasa! … and then on to a really modern bar/nightclub (don’t worry – I was back home by 9pm). Kinshasa has made some improvements recently.

I realised that I was seriously running out of time for my visa. Like Babushka, my deadline was coming up, but the preparations continued. I was eventually able to get in touch with Brother Paul from Caritas, who works with children accused of witchcraft.

Huang Haiwen of Basankusu

“Don’t worry,” he assured, “the bishop will discuss your invitation letter, Tuesday morning at 8:15.”
“That’s great!” I replied. “Will they send it to me the same day by e-mail?”

“No, then it will have to go to the territorial administrator to be certified – and then it will be sent to you, and then you can submit it with your passport in Kinshasa.”

I pondered the situation. If my visa expires while it’s being processed in Kinshasa, I’ll be stuck. If I have to return to England without a visa, I’ll have to begin again from scratch – a process that could take several months.

Francis with Judith in Kinshasa ... waiting for his visa

While I’m sure that there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas, I’m not sure if I’ll be successful with my visa. Perhaps I’ll be like Babushka, still in a never-ending circle of preparation.

Have a great Advent!