Who cares about Africa? Much less, who cares about the Congo? I have more important things to think about. Like my car that I need to replace. I’ve been eyeing this beautiful white 2008 Saturn that would be perfect. Don’t forget the trip to the Bahamas I’ve been planning for over a year. I can already feel the white sand rubbing between my toes as the sun reflects off the clear blue water. Wait, I almost forgot. How about that fifty-two inch black flat screen I’ve been dreaming about since I saw it at Best Buy. Yeah, that needs to find its way to my living room asap. So you should understand and agree, who cares about the Congo! I care more about my sister’s fabulous wedding this summer, than the hundreds of thousands of women publically and brutally raped in front of their helpless husbands, crying children and defenseless villages.  

Only being twenty-two and living the good life, why should I care about a fourteen year war that has killed six million people? That is more than the whole population of the state of Maryland?  No seriously I have more important responsibilities. I have rent and bills to pay on a budget. Can you believe the Congolese people have the nerve to complain that there are no jobs and are living in severe poverty, while we in the West are in a recession!  OMG!!! Then they have the audacity to make a fuss about starving. While I’m living on Ramon noodles this week since I did steak and shrimp the other night. If anyone is starving, that would be me! I mean I’ve never seen thousands of children die from hunger like those in the Congo, but I’ve lost two pounds on my restricted diet. Frankly, the Congolese scarcity and conflict is not my problem. It stopped being my problem a long time ago.

I’m living in the land of abundance now. I’m no longer Congolese. I am an American.  Let the Congolese people I left years ago help themselves even if forty-five thousand people die a month. Like I’ve said earlier, I have more pressing issues to worry about. Why the Congolese government is so unashamedly corrupt is the Congolese people’s problem. Why its top politicians are multimillionaire despite the fact that eighty percent of the population is living on less than thirty cents a day is a little puzzling, but I make twenty one dollars and thirty cents an hour so that really doesn’t affect me.  It really shouldn’t affect me. I don’t want it to affect me, but it does.

I try to look away from the broken hearted orphans telling their stories of how their parent’s throat was slit in front of them and their childhood taken. I try to ignore the embittered tears that fall from a nine year old boy eyes as he tells of how he wasn’t able to protect his brother from the Mai Mai bullets. I try. I’ve tried. I’ve quit trying.

You see there’s an inner conflict that I can no longer ignore. Actually, I gave up ignoring it a long time ago. I gave up silently turning my eyes to the atrocity occurring in the Congo. An ongoing war that has been more deadly than World War II is difficult to overlook. Especially since my family and I were victims of Congo’s government corruption.  As political refugees my family was miraculously able to come to the United States. Furthermore, it was by the grace of God that my father is still alive. He was imprisoned many times for being outspoken of the inhumane corrupt government. My family and I constantly were on the move. In fear of the secret police we never stayed in one location for too long. My father was so passionate about liberating Congo, that he named his newborn (me) after the man he believed in, the great hero Patrice Lumumba. I was only a baby, but the eternal memories within my family of suffering, extreme hunger, and feelings of helplessness still remain.

That is why I can’t ignore what is happening in my country. Though I have been in the United States for twenty years, the Congo is still my home. No matter how Americanized I become. I used to feel so helpless to hear of a war that has slaughtered more mothers, brothers, and innocent children, than the massacres in Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Rwanda combined. I no longer feel helpless. I’m taking a stand. The saying goes, “If you stand for nothing you fall for everything.”  I’m no longer going to allow my innocent sisters and brothers to silently fall. Congo is not someone else’s problem but it is mine and yours. It is my duty as a human being to speak for those that have been silenced. So I am now speaking.

So who care about Africa, much less the Congo?

I do!

I care about Congo!