A Long Time Coming

Okay, so I know a few of you thought I have been kidnapped or something like that and I guess it is something like that as I have been to faraway places and near places and sometimes I feel like my time has been kidnapped from me. The last months have gone by so quickly it is hard to believe that it is the middle of May already. That brings me to what I have been doing for the last three months. In February I went the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to work on a nursing school at the Vanga hospital and I started to write a blog post but it was just so negative and a lot of it was just about the hopelessness of that is still in the DRC, so I never finished it. Even now I am contemplating whether to finish it or write about the hope of where I am right now at the African Children’s Choir Primary School managing the construction of a football pitch.

Okay I have decided to write about my time in the DRC so here it goes. At the end of January I went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was a very impactful project trip in my life and I am still trying to work out all I saw and experienced there. First I am first going to give a few quick facts about the DRC.

• ·         Holds 70% of the world’s Coltan and 30% of the world’s diamonds
• ·         Has 30% of the world’s hydropower potential
• ·         2/3 the size of Western Europe
• ·         Average annual income of $320
• ·         Ranks last on the UN human development index

The DRC may be one of the most mineral rich countries but since colonization it has been raped and pillaged by greedy and corrupt people. There seems to be a great tolerance for the corruption in the DRC. Okay I am going to try to keep this from becoming a rant but I am going to talk about the bad first and then the good.

How many people can you fit into a van? Life in Kinshasa

You see corruption and bribes as a part of life in Africa but it came to a new level when in the DRC. People government officials would directly ask for money everywhere from the start of the trip going through customs at the airport to the end leaving the airport. When we were driving downtown Kinshasa with one of the ministry representatives and a police officer walked into the middle of the road waving for us to pull over. The driver calmly drove into the other lane around the cop and continued on. She told us that you never give a cop your license you just put it against the window or you will have to wait for hours as they wait for a bribe. Okay that was just one example of the rampant corruption we saw but I will get onto the good stuff.

Vanga from the air

My time in Kinshasa, the capital with 10 million people, was not inspiring but luckily our project was 500km east of the city. Because of the state of the roads we took a Mission Aviation Fellowship plane to Vanga it was super cool I got to sit co-pilot and enjoy the view as we passed over small villages. We even stopped in a small village to pick someone up it was super cool as we buzzed the trees coming in to land.

Once we arrived in Vanga things changed we got away from the corruption to actually meeting people that are doing things to change lives because the DRC government is doing little. Vanga hospital is a 400 bed hospital that serves 250 000 people and attached to it is a nursing school. For 10 days we worked on the site performing preliminary designs for the nursing school expansion. That was neat but the best part was talking to the people there and hearing their stories. Stories of lives being changed, people healed, rebels trying attack. Since this is very long already I will leave it here, open-ended. Lots of stories to tell so feel free to message me if you want to hear more.

Being introduced to the class

View from where we stayed of the river I swam in everyday

A little break from work

In the meantime please pray for the people of the DRC they really need it more than anywhere else I have been. Please keep me in your prayers as I finish up at the African Children’s Choir Primary School and head to western Uganda to manage a project for 6 weeks. Also please pray for my support raising as it is still lacking and if you feel inclined please donate.