AMICUS and the Accra Speech

This morning I attended the opening of a week-long seminar on the right of citizens to government information, what we in the U.S. call Freedom of Information. This is surely the first time this topic is publicly debated in DR Congo, and there is some hope that it will pave the way to actual legislation. The seminar was created by AMICUS, an association whose full name is AMItie Congo-U.S, which groups alumni of the various International Visitor programs the embassy has sponsored over the years. One of my first experiences upon arriving here in Kinshasa almost 2 years ago was hosting a reception for a group of returning International Visitors, who are chosen among the best and brightest in Congo in all fields. (This reception was where I met Sr. Marie-Bernard, who introduced me to the Franciscans I have often blogged about. It's a small world: a few weeks later I had to go see her about a Self-Help project, creating youth groups all over the country to learn about democracy, using Catholic parishes as the infrastructure - in many areas, the Catholic Church is the ONLY infrastructure. I'll have to find out how this project turned out.) The seminar was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Deputy Chief of Mission (Sam) gave some background history of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, how it was first passed in 1966, and how Watergate and the Vietnam War spurred tighter and more effective legislation. But as he said, legislation is just one component: civil servants, the courts, the press, and the public have to, not only follow the letter of the law, but believe in its vital importance before it can really happen and make a difference in how we are governed. After him, the Congolese Minister of Information gave his speech, in which he recognized the value of the right to information, noted that it was already guaranteed in the 2006 Constitution, but almost immediately remarked that it had taken other democracies many years to formulate (centuries even), that even in the most advanced democracies it was naturally limited by the right to privacy and for national security reasons, and then went on to explain at length that any legislation of such rights would have to take into account the cultural traditions of the Congo. Beware of writing legislation that would be a thousand leagues from cultural norms, he said; it would be dangerously irresponsible to mimic others, given the inertia of certain cultural traditions. How does all this connect to Obama's speech, you may ask? Well, I've been looking at comments sent to President Obama from the DRC after his Ghana speech at the America.gov website. One of them caught my attention: it was from a Congolese student deploring the lack of freedom of speech in this country. It made me think of the goal of this morning's seminar. Freedom of information is very important, of course, but freedom of speech is so BASIC that we immediately added it to our Constitution, in the Bill of Rights. In this emerging democracy, still struggling just to stop the murderous conflict inside its borders, while trying to create democratic institutions, feed its people, send its children to primary school and build civil society, it's fascinating to observe the push and pull of democratic ideals and modernism elbowing for position between entrenched interests and "cultural traditions" (of secrecy and corruption, for example, or the forced marriages of young girls, a form of gender-based violence). On the one hand, Obama, widely acclaimed by all here, stating self-evident truths about Africans taking responsibility for their own fate; on the other hand, an African minister publicly expressing his reluctance to create legislation that might too effectively create transparency; on the one hand, a group of the best and brightest Congolese spurring society and government to debate and pass laws that the most advanced democracies are still in the process of installing; on the other hand, a student decrying the lack of one of the most basic human rights. This is Congo today: one foot stuck deep in the jungle, the other trying to step into the 21st century. ************* Anuarite Women of Courage Award As Secretary of the International Women's Club, I've been working closely with AMICUS to create an award for Women of Courage in the DRC. It's been a very instructive experience. We had many debates about how to define what makes a Woman of Courage, and then about how we would find such women. We created a nomination form, translated it in Swahili, Tshiluba, Kikongo, and Lingala (from the original French); we're still tweaking it to post it on websites and distribute it through email contacts, even though the project was officially launched and sample forms were distributed to the press last Wednesday; and we're still trying to figure out how we'll proceed after we receive the nominations, whose numbers none of us dares to guess right now. One thing is certain: it will be really exciting to receive and read them. I wish I had time to tell you more about the award and the process of creating it, but I'll have to leave it for another post. And tomorrow, I'll be interviewed by Radio Okapi about this award!

La Grace de Dieu, 2

Thursday, I went back to La Grace de Dieu, with three other Foreign Service Spouses, Linda, Erika and Sonia. Erika had bags of clothes she'd brought back from her trip home, and she and Sonia had bought food in bulk; we also had five bags of groceries donated by Steve, a Foreign Service Officer, and I brought a large bag of breadfruit chips, remembering seeing a breadfruit tree over the wall of the orphanage. Our cook, André, has perfected the art of making breadfruit chips: they are completely addictive. We had received 4 huge breadfruits from the British Embassy just 2 days before.

This time I had my new camera, so you get to see pictures.


This is what you see when you step in from the street. It's already improved from my first visit, when the whole yard was strewn with large broken pieces of cement.





We arrived unannounced, despite days of dialing Sr. Victorine's number, but we were greeted warmly. I had expected to find few children there, thinking they'd be in school. But instead, I found all the children, plus a teacher. It must be less expensive to pay one teacher than to pay all the expenses of schooling three dozen children. And safer. But that means the children spend most of their 24/7 on this small compound... When I remember my childhood, going to the playground, museums, parks, etc., I just can't imagine what growing up in a place like this can do to a person.

We were treated to the usual songs and poems. I have a video but after several busts at uploading, in spite of cutting the video down to half a minute, I've given up. If there's a volunteer among my readers with DSL or cable hook-ups, I could try to email you the file, and you could upload it for me...? (assuming the email uploads...)

Sr. Victorine asked us to introduce ourselves. Erika started in Lingala: "Kombo na ngai Erika" (word for word, "name of me Erika" - "na ngai" is pronounced like "none guy" without a break). When I did the same, the teacher exclaimed, "We have an Odile too!" and a little girl ran to me and gave me a big hug. Linda announced her name in French, "Je m'appelle Linda", to great acclaim, and another little girl ran up to her. (I have this on video too, with the bongo drum beating in the background.)

Everyone cheered again when Sonia also found a namesake, then Erika, who hadn't had as much luck with her name, more than made up for it by pulling several bright green tennis balls from her bag, and throwing them to the kids.

While the happy children played and fought over the balls, I told Sr. Victorine about the Embassy project to renovate their toilets. She was elated. "Dieu vous bénisse!" (God bless you!).

For more about the project, please go to http://congoorphans.pledgepage.org/. This is a webpage I've created hoping to be able to raise funds for this effort. There are two consecutive national holidays next Wednesday and Thursday, and 14 embassy employees including masons, plumbers, electricians, etc have volunteered to spend that time completely overhauling the toilet, shower and septic tank. This is very generous of them, who certainly have their own homes and families to take care of.

...ALL I HAVE TO DO IS RAISE TWO OR THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS BY WEDNESDAY! <:o

This is the latrine (hope this photo doesn't violate blogspot rules about decency. In fact, it IS indecent that children have to live in such conditions. But they're still much better off here in this orphanage than on the street. This is what happens to countries after decades of plunder, pillaging, and war. Anyone tempted by the "less government" rhetoric I hear from some American politicians, please come for a visit. I'll give you a personal tour.)

Then we went to visit the babies, who live in "girls' dorm", door all the way to the left in the first picture. I was pleased to see that new bunks with mattresses AND SHEETS had been added in this room.

The inner rooms look much the same as before: as dark as caves, no mattresses on some of the beds, no linens, no pillows, no pictures on the walls...

A nice-looking young woman was taking care of the babies. The babies are both absolutely beautiful.

This is one of the two deaf sisters. They go to a school for the deaf, but it's far from the orphanage, and Thursday (maybe most days?), they didn't have the bus money. They proudly wrote their name for me, but when I wrote back in French, "Do you like reading?" thinking I could give them some of the books that illuminated my own childhood, it drew blank stares. Either they can't read, or don't know French. They both have striking, very light blue eyes.

Sr. Victorine gave the breadfruit chips out to the children by handfuls, to everyone's delight. She asked me what they were. MY CUE!

If you've read my previous posts, you know it's my personal mission to get all of Congo to love breadfruit as much as I do.

By then I had noted that there isn't just one, but there are FOUR breadfruit trees within sight of the orphanage. I pointed to them. "Momboya?" she said. Then her face lit up. Could I show her how to make momboya chips? I could see the small-business wheels spinning in her head. Remember, we had "discovered" La Grace de Dieu when she had submitted an application for Ambassador's Special Self-Helf funds, for seed money for a fish-salting business, with which she wanted to produce income for the orphanage.

"You bet!" I said. She gave me a high-five.

Please go to my snapfish album at the link below for more pictures.

http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=557111200074894166/l=342532367/g=108896982/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

and don't forget to check out the Congo Orphans Pledgepage:

http://CongoOrphans.Pledgepage.org