Beautiful People

I'm not sure what it is but the "third world" aspect of this journey is dissolving somehow. I don't mean to say I am getting numb to it or desensitized to it, but it is not seeming to be the separation I expected.  I am certainly getting a sense if connection.  Not to get too lofty, but there is truly something to be said about our interconnectedness to all things on this earth. Now, don't get the wrong impression, we are being treated with some amazing hospitality and certainly, not under the same conditions of the people we are interviewing. It is hard to go to dinner knowing there are some  we have interviewed that may not even get to have dinner. We get driven around while one of the kids we interviewed had to walk 45 minutes each way just to go to a school he wasn't even a student at because he wanted to.  He would sit outside the window because his parents couldn't afford the tuition, doing all the homework and he was just 5 years old!  Because of his tenacity they accepted him in the school free of charge  I found out tonight a father might make $50 a month working security for a hospital, and have to rent a "house" for $25 a month. Running water and electricity are certainly not luxuries they can afford. Put in context that a case of bottled water we just bought cost $10 (bought by our Congolese hosts so it was the true price).  It certainly doesn't offer many options for hope, yet that is one thing all the people we have interviewed have plenty of.

Another conflicting aspect of this trip comes from our just touching their world. Previously a film crew interviewed one of the kids we did. They shot in the child's home. His family's landlord saw the Mzungu (white people) at his house and raised their rent, assuming that they benefited from that relationship. We certainly don't  want to effect their life negatively. We are here for the very opposite reason, so we have to think through all the possible ramifications.

One story today struck me quite hard. A 17 year old was telling of his cousin being shot and killed and his brother having his head chopped off and put in a tree. The young man was speaking in French, so I heard a delayed translation and was sorrowfully moved that neither the tenor of his voice nor the expression on his face offered any hit that he was discussing something so horrific or so deeply painful.

So as not to end tonight on such a sorrowful note even though I find the resonance of this reality truly depicts my profound experience, I will instead share this.

Today in one of the interviews, Randy asked a girl how many were in her family.  She said she has 5 brothers and 5 sisters. When asked again to give her answer in French, the language she speaks more fluently, she said she has 8 brothers and 4 sisters.  As you can imagine, we are quite thankful to have our translators to assist us.

Until another day.