Last day in Lubumbashi

Today is our last day in Lubumbashi. In the morning, we fly to Goma for a few days of meetings there. Quick update on some of our activities the last few days.

Over the last few days, we’ve visited a few sewing training centers and some maternity clinics, in addition to our office meetings. At the sewing centers, we met some amazing women. In one of them, all the women had formerly been prostitutes. Through various means, they all managed to find help through a local program, and then received some sewing machines and sewing training. They now make enough money making garments and other tailoring for the local community that they can fully support their families and send their children to school. They talked with us about the changes in their lives and their dreams for the future. Right now, they are using a room in a community training center for people with disabilities. While that has helped them get on their feet, they are currently saving to build a center of their own.

In another, we again met a group of women that had been unable to care for their families. They also received some sewing machines and some training. Over time, they have been able to save money from selling their products to build a small house in which to do their sewing. You should have seen how proud they were of this small brick building. They told us how they made the bricks and built the house all by themselves with their own hands. Their next step is to find out how to get the community leaders to bring electricity to the area so that they can use electric instead of manual sewing machines. As with other groups, we asked them many questions about their work and their lives, then at the end, we always ask if they have any questions for us. This group asked one question. They asked us to share best practices on how women in our communities at home in the US come together to help one another and their community. They wanted to learn what we do so that they could do more to help not only their own families, but their community as a whole.

Now this is a great question. And sadly, one I found hard to answer for two reasons. First, our cultures are very different, so things we may do, may not be appropriate for this group of women. But secondly, because I could not think of one thing that the women in my community do regularly and collectively to give back to our communities and to improve them. Obviously, we do things in our schools and churches. We pray together, volunteer for various organizations, etc. It’s not as if we are disinterested or as if we do nothing. But their real question was, “How do you and the women you live closest to, come together daily to support the others in your neighborhood?” And the answer is, “well, I see my neighbor occasionally, and wave, right before one of us closes our garage door.” I think we need to learn something from these women.

So how did I answer the question? Well with an example of a wonderful group of women Caregivers in Zambia that had started with sewing, and then bee-keeping, and then small vegetable farming, and were now reinvesting enough in their communities to send about 80 orphans to boarding school each year. They saw that as a challenge, and started immediately talking amongst themselves. The name of this sewing center is the “Courage Sewing Center”. I think they have the courage to set big goals like that. If I am ever able to visit them again, I think we’ll see them be a huge force in changing their entire communities.

We also have visited some maternity clinics in several of the locations we’ve been. These clinics are typically small 4 – 6 room buildings with nearly nothing inside. In the first one we visited, two doctors showed us the operating room where they do Cesareans. We had a bit of a language barrier, but if I understood right, they do 100 or so operations a month here. I saw no anesthetic equipment, no drugs, no antiseptic equipment, but the doctors were very proud of their operating room. They are definitely wonderful, caring people, but I can’t imagine working in conditions like that. We also asked about sterilization, and were assured that after we had walked in the room, it would be sterilized. The room was definitely clean, but you could see right outside the door the stains on the floor, doors and walls. Clearly, not every operation goes well.

In another clinic, we met with a wonderful nurse who runs a clinic that handles 70 to 80 births a month. On this particular day, the pharmacy was running low, so no painkillers for any mother in the clinic. There was a room for admittance, one for delivery, another for recovery, and then another ward for women to stay 3 or so days after giving birth. They had many women come this week, so they were staying two to a bed, along with their newborns. Imagine two women on a twin bed with a very thin mattress, one facing one way, and the other the opposite, their newborns right beside them. In one case, the bed was also shared by another one of the women’s children, a boy maybe 1 ½ years old. And this is probably one of the better equipped locations.

After our visits and meetings, we began the long drive back to Lubumbashi. It took about 7 ½ hours, same story as told in the prior post – lots of dust and very bad roads. On the way back, we saw several overturned trucks, really emphasizing how dangerous the travel here is. It looked like the trucks were travelling too close to the edge, and one of the wheels slipped down the soft side, turning the truck onto its side on the side of the road. We asked our host how they get assistance, and he said it basically takes a long time. There are no tow trucks, but eventually, the truck gets righted somehow, fixed, and back on it’s journey. Hard to believe, because in some cases the container on the truck had burst open. In another, the axles had separated from the trailer. I think some of these will be there for years. Luckily only one very bad one. Looked like two trucks had hit each other head on and burned on the side of the road. I was very thankful to get back to Lubumbashi that evening!

Along the drive, our host told us a little more about his family. He is one of 11 children, and all of them completed secondary school. 7 or 8 of them completed college. All on a small village school teacher’s salary. We thought that was amazing for any culture, let alone rural Africa. He then told us his father’s story. When our host’s father was young, his father (host’s grandfather) would not allow him to go to school. He did not believe it was necessary. After some years, some missionaries came to the village, and his mother asked them to take the boy to school. The story from there is a little long, but let’s just say the father was not happy, and would not send the boy to school. The mother told the boy to hide, and when the father found out, he burned the place where the boy was hiding and tried to kill him. The boy eventually escaped with the missionaries, and the father had to come to terms with this. That boy didn’t start primary school until he was 13 or 14 years old, and after 6 years, became a teacher, later married, and had 11 children, one of whom is our host. Talk about learning the value of education and pursuing at all costs! And picture the legacy that the grandmother has given by helping her son get to school. Not only was her son educated, but the importance she placed on education influenced the lives of her son’s 11 children, and now their children.

Tonight, our host invited us for dinner to meet his family. We had a wonderful dinner, and were very thankful for a home-cooked meal. During the dinner, he talked about how he and his wife have also taken in 3 of their nephews, and all three are now going to university. The grandmother’s legacy lives on. And these are not wealthy people, but hardworking, and very smart with the lessons they teach their children and the direction they put in their lives.

Enough for now. I’ll post about the Goma trip in a few days.