Entry 8 - Victor and Therese

Victor and Therese live in a little cement house with a main room, about 10’ x 10,’ with a tiny little room on either side. They and their 6 children sleep on dirty, ragged pieces of foam in the tiny rooms and on a nearly collapsed two person sofa in the main room. Actually, the side rooms are a little less hot, they each have a window, thank God. In the couple’s room, a few wires were up from which their change of clothes was hanging, and in the main room, a funny little plastic pine cone decoration suspended from the ceiling was were they stored their 2 tooth brushes. A non working refrigerator is their cupboard.

He is thin and wiry and has a bum eye. She is younger than he by many years, which is incredible to consider. Her hair was tinged with orange, and I don’t know if it got burned from something, or if that is from hunger. She has enormous cheekbones and sweet, soft eyes, especially when her husband is looking at her, which he does often.

I met this couple to learn about how their lack of information about family planning has ravaged their lives. Married 30 years now, and sharing an evident bond, they now use birth control and swear by it. I could easily see why.

Altogether, Therese has had 9 pregnancies, 3 of which, out of mad desperation, she aborted with herbs obtained from friends. Each time, this was a painful, protracted agony lasting 5 days. But it was that or have more babies for whom Victor and she could not offer anything near adequate care, given they were already barely surviving.

(I asked what the herbs were and if she ever knew as a child older women who used herbs medicinally. The answer was no to both questions. It is really sad to me, the loss of traditional knowledge.)

One day, PSI staff who go door to door visiting people to offer education about family planning arrived at their household while Victor was out. Therese listened keenly, told her husband what she had heard, and they went to the clinic I had visited earlier to learn more. Characteristically, Victor was concerned the birth control might have some hidden, long term detrimental affect on Therese’s health: he had already seen her suffer so much. Eventually learning from medical staff it was safe, they’ve been using an injectable birth control every 3 months.

We sat in the shade of a fine tree as this sweet couple shared their success with family planning. This is a positive achievement, no doubt, and in no way do I diminish its meaning. It is very likely Therese and other of their children would be dead without birth control. But looking at the rest of their lives, there remains such struggle. Their one mosquito net, dating to her last pregnancy, it tattered and out of date. They eat one meal a day, close to bedtime, and sometimes nothing at all. The water is not safe and they experience episodes of diarrheal disease. Therese’s parents died when she was very young, she was very sickly, and dropped out of school after 4th grade, both are unemployed. There is violence in the neighborhood, especially because of moonshine made from a manioc processor nearby, and Therese is terrified of the rapes, of which one hears much in the neighborhood.

There is more, but why go on? Isn’t this enough?

One day when they were still children, Victor saw Therese as she was at the river doing wash with other girls. She was 9, he a bit older. He said his heart began to beat really fast. He asked friends about who she was, and discovered where in the neighborhood she lived. Eventually, when she was 17 they married. 30 years. Can you imagine? I told him when the going gets tough in my marriage, as it does with any relationship from time to time, I will remember them and take courage.

Entry 9 - “Lydia”

God is a Good without drawback, and a well of living water without bottom, and the souls is made in the image of God, and therefore it is create to know and love God. ~ Johannes Tauler

I came through the door my hotel room and disrobed standing inside the threshold. I went directly to the sink, where I put my underthings, and the shower, where I put myself. I watched the grey, fine ubiquitous dirt stick to the tub before it finally sloshed down the drain. I used my scrubby cloth from home and tea tree soap and scrubbed and scrubbed.

As we were leaving Kingabwa, a small child was standing in a plastic tub being lathered by his caregiver. He was soaped head to toe, a right good lather, even as he tried to push her off him. Her hands were sure, though, and his little boy resistance to a scrub made no difference. His tub was in a dirt courtyard with their and other’s sweltering cement and tin homes a few feet away.

I came to Kingabwa, a hilly slum neighborhood that abuts the banks of the mighty Congo River, to meet Lydia, a 28 year old hair stylist who was able to retire from sex work after she was reached by PSI at the age of 23. By that time, she had been supporting herself and her 3 living siblings with sex work for 10 years.

She began a child sex worker at 13 when she had been returned to her father from her grandparent’s home up river in Equator by a bossy cousin. Upon the unpleasant surprise of seeing 4 of his 5 (one had starved to death) children by his second wife upon his door, he had said, “Go eat dirt.” Homeless, the 4 kids lasted as long as they could without shelter, food, and clothing until Lydia succumbed to being paid for sex.

Her time with her grandparents, while not ideal (Angel starved there), sounds idyllic compared to this. When his first wife said “enough” at 8 children, the dad found a second wife, Lydia’s mom. They 3 adults and 13 children lived in a 3 room house until the dad, who was in the Congolese military, retired, at which point the mother suggested they take a boat to Equator to source goods from there to bring back to Kinshasa to sale. They took the 2 week boat ride, and not long after arriving, the mother mysteriously disappeared, and the dad abandoned the children to the grandparents. The kids lived in a grass hut that was spacious and had windows. The water source and garden were 5 kilometers away, Lydia, who is a very sensitive and soft soul, spoke fondly of the time there, excepting the loss of her sibling, Angel.

Then this odd cousin on her disappeared mother’s side stepped in. She, for whatever reason, decided these children had a dad, and Kinshasa, and by God, that’s where they belonged. She snapped them up, took them to the boat, spoke with the captain (she knew river people), and said, “Drop these kids off at Kingabwa.” The 4 of them slept on the deck of the boat for the week long journey back. Their arrival, as described above, was a tragedy.

Lydia did not want to talk much about her 10 years as a sex worker. Except for saying she earned $2 per client, that that covered all types of sex, that clients found her in her neighborhood or that she’d walk about 2 kilometers away to make herself known, and that usually the time was in briefly rented hotel room. She mainly wanted to talk about her health during those times and her wonderful (by comparison) life now. I reassured her, when she vehemently reminded me she no longer works in sex, that I believed her, and that my curiosity was about gathering information in order to help other women in this ordeal.

Being a child, Lydia said she knew zero about sex. It was all terrifying and on top of that, she became pregnant right away. Some friends in the business told her to go to a pharmacy to buy pills that help delivering women provoke contractions. She as many as she could afford and spent 5 days inducing an abortion. However, the result was not an abortion, but rather the death of the fetus in her womb. She stayed this way as long as she could, knowing she could not afford any kind of medical care, but eventually she went to the hospital. She showed me a vicious, long scar from the surgery, as the doctor said she had damage in the womb as well as a giant cyst and infection.

Back into sex work straight away (how else would those 3 siblings live? The memory of Angel’s death haunts her still), she then had a severe problem with her legs. Showing me more stone-age looking scars, she explained a priest had taken mercy on her and paid for the surgery. Shortly afterward, PSI entered her life, and the story improves vastly.

In hospital, a woman stared at Lydia. Excited, she asked her name, and to their mutual joy discovered the woman is Lydia’s aunt on her mother’s side. The woman, Marceline, took her home and Lydia and her siblings were taken in by with Marceline and her husband, Dominic.

If all this sounds like a far fetched soap opera, it is not. How Marceline and Lydia never crossed paths before, I don’t know. Maybe she and Dominic had left Kingabwa and returned around the time they found one another. One can only wish it happened sooner.

Educated about the incredible risks to her health as well as her client’s by Elivre, one of PSI’s community outreach HIV workers, Lydia was shocked by what she learned and her life made a very rapid about face. She was very teachable and with Elvire’s support, entered into job training as a hair stylist. It’s been 5 years since she worked in sex and she is highly regarded in her neighborhood for her artistry. In addition to styling hair, she does color, facials, and manicures/pedicures. In fact, she gave her baby sister “un style soiree” for her recent wedding.

One brother works as a fisherman and another a mechanic, but her responsibilities for others continue. She now financially supports her aunt, uncle, and their 6 children. When asked where she’d like to be in 5 years, she cited financial independence as key. She is still too wounded to be interested in a boyfriend, and in case a love relationship does not come her way, she knows she needs to make sure she is financially secure. Her dream is to have her own salon, and yes, a room of her own.

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Lydia’s neighborhood is horrifying. Her road is a steep, raw ribbon that slopes down to rice fields that abut the Congo River, and it is laden with sewage and strewn garbage. On either side of the narrow road are concrete house with corrugated tin roofs that bake under the African sun. There are spigots at intervals, and some electricity. Merchants who have gone to the bigger markets set up little tables (or boxes) on which they attractively arrange their wares, and mind both the tables and hoards of neighborhood children who roam freely. One woman bakes bread and sells it, and wondering if like a boulangerie she rises early to bake in the cool, she said no, she has to bake all day to make sure she can sell enough to live. The heat must be extraordinary. She was a really sweet older woman and I made sure when I was leaving I went passed her table again.

One younger woman guesses at what everyone will be having for dinner, but really, I am glamorizing her life. They all eat the same thing, cassava, fou fou (a pulverized root mixture), sweet potatoes, and horrible looking air-dried little fish from the river that should have been thrown back. Regardless, she had a few tiny red peppers, some individual herbs, and I thought the presentation was lovely on her very small table. However, I have to check myself again for idealizing. You know how some really high end produce markets set out 6 gorgeous cabbages, 3 perfect peaches, and it is art? Well, she had those 7 peppers set out because that’s all she has, not because it is a philosophy of food expression.

There was a little corner shack with a spiffy white and red paint job that serves as communication booth, and a little barber shop was in the middle of the road, which consisted of 3 plastic chairs, a small handheld mirror, and a comb. As today was Labor Day and a national holiday, it was a great day to visit Kingabwa, everyone was home and the kids had no school. One could even say, Labor Day, in parentheses, Hair Day. Everyone was either freshly braided or styled, being checked for lice or otherwise examined closely, or they were walking around with it half done, maybe running home to get something before finishing up. The ones with the hair standing on end made me remember when I’d travel with Mamaw and Papaw during summer vacation. If she missed her Thursday beauty shop appointment with Kay, she’d backcomb her roots herself, popping out of the bathroom from time to time to amuse me with her briefly enormous hair that stood out for a foot all around her head.

I hope I have conveyed something of the vitality of this neighborhood, while also stressing the abject poverty of it. The energy it has must be due to the perseverance of the human spirit; what else could possibly explain how these people find the will to live every day? The children are uniformly malnourished or outright starving. Their growth clearly stunted, their hair should be black but instead it is tinted with orange. Yet they spent so much energy smiling at me today, enjoying our presence, putting on little shows for us, and generally following us and making lovely nuisances of themselves. When I think of the calories it took for them to maintain their exertions, calories they haven’t consumed in days, I truly wonder how they are upright, much less smiling.

There was one wee boy in particular who was enjoying himself enormously at a spigot. He was standing in a plastic tub and splashing himself with great relish with water. Buck naked and cute as a button, I watched him for a while. Eventually, I took his picture and when he saw the digital playback, he shrieked like a banshee and laughed a throaty, guttural laugh, a deep, real laugh.

That is the siren song in Kingabwa, laughter. Immediately, 6 or 7 kids materialized. They posed and cut up, until their mother somewhat irritated corralled them. It was dinner time, I was told. It was a sweet moment, a normal moment, a universal moment.

Except for the fact that none of them will actually have enough supper, and it was their only meal of the day. But, yeah, actually, for most of this world, that is indeed normal.

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I was at my limit, not in terms of visiting vulnerable people, but my ability to cope outside of their lives. That is a strange dynamic. I have great stamina with poor people, and rarely want to leave them (I tried to crash a neighborhood church meeting to prolong my time in Kingabwa, but rain was coming and more practical heads prevailed that we did not need to be in trash when a flash flood came, we treat cholera and aren’t supposed to get it), but with my own kind, I burn out and cannot deal and need to retreat into quiet time. I found myself annoyed in the car on the way home, wanting everyone to be quiet and still, so I decided it was time to take care of myself and make sure I didn’t get into people pleasing behaviors. I took a time out, listened to my iPod and looked at the window. At the hotel, I declined an invitation to out to a great little joint for goat, wished everyone a fun night, and came to my room.

After my shower, I made lavender tea and ordered my standard meal: grilled fish, green vegetables, rice, no seasonings at all, bread, and butter. I burnt a bunch of incense, as if in a Native American smudge, watching it burn, thinking, listening to Ashana’s ethereal voice sing Ave Maria accompanied by Tibetan Bells.

Theresa came over to review my long speech for the U.S. Embassy event tomorrow night. They guest list has swelled from 200 to 400. Oy vey. I will need to do the things I know to do tomorrow night before hand: set a strong, healthy boundary, get on my knees and ask for help, make sure I am well fed and watered in advance, and take little breaks when I can. I like the speech. It’s pretty kick ass (she let me re-write it to my voice). It’s a searing telling of the stories above, as well as a few others, and some hard core rabble rousing. My kinda deal.

For now, it’s bed time. I cannot know if the tears will come, only that sooner or later, they will.