I should probably apologize for not writing this sooner, but I didn’t want to jinx things until I was sure all the pieces were in place. Three weeks ago, while taking a summer institute class at the U of W, I leaned of a group of people taking part in an election observer mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I immediately went to the supervisor/director of the project, and asked how I could get involved. See, I’ve been studying the situation in the Congo for quite some time now, and have been following the progress towards elections with great hope and anxiety. The war(s) in the Congo have killed over 4 million people in the last eights years – that’s more death and suffering than any other war since World War Two – yet the west has barely even noticed. The country has not had an elected government since 1965. So when, in 2003, the peacebuilding process began to move towards power-sharing and democracy there was hope. But with dozens of potential spoilers, and a number of disparate militia group vying for power it’s difficult to be optimistic. How can such a conflicted society that has known only fighting as a means of problem solving move towards democracy? Perhaps this is too negative of a characterization. I have personally had the opportunity to meet with one of the peacemakers. But he had to flee his home because of the fear and intimidation, coming to Canada to carry on in his work from the outside. And it worked, at least with me. Serge influenced me. He made it all that much more real that these are not statistics, or facts, or sad stories that make our life here in Canada uncomfortable if only for that contrast with another reality – these are real people’s lives we’re talking about. These are not strangers, aliens, foreigners. Just because they might look different than me, they have lived different lives, and suffered different burdens, does not change the fact that we are all brothers and sisters in the same family. If your sister was raped would you not do everything to console her, to help her heal, to work so that that kind of suffering wouldn’t happen again? If you saw your mother hacked to death with a machete right in front of your eyes would you not want to do everything in your power to make it so that no one ever had to see that ever again? So why is it different if it wasn’t my sister but his? If it wasn’t my mother but yours? Would you not hold my hand and walk with me towards a better future? Given the opportunity, wouldn’t you at least want to try to contribute to healing that horrible pain? Even if it’s just a drop in the bucket, I have seen what flood can come from the rains. And now there is even more reason for hope. With the election only nineteen days away the opportunity exists to push this torn country in a better direction. The fact of the matter is, a lot of people don’t want the fighting to end. They don’t like the fact that power will be shared because maybe that means they have less chance of more control, or that those with more money and more influence might sway the vote, or that the same murderers and pillagers that have raped this country are now seeking legitimacy to what – to be able to claim a right to keep doing as they have always done? There are those who do not believe in the power of democracy, who believe that their version of what is right is more important than what an apparently uneducated population might claim to want and need. These are the reasons to fear. But when we all sit back and do nothing the world goes to hell. If I stay home, watching the fires on the news while lamenting the heat, if I care in my heart but let it wither out of sadness – all the love in the world means nothing if all it means is that we cry for those who die. But the uncomfortable reality is that sometimes if we want to help someone we have to do more than just care. Sometimes we have to do whatever it is we can do so that next time there is change it is a positive change.
I leave for the Congo in eight days fully aware of the risk that confront me. And as much as I love and care for every single person that will be thinking of me safely back at home, I simply could not continue to sleep at night knowing I passed up the opportunity to help. Going to the Congo as an election observer will change my life, but that hardly matters. My main concern is that it changes the lives of those millions of people who have not known peace.