Life in the Congo is certainly never boring. The other day my Asian friend's house burned. They were in the house in the evening. The two girls were sleeping and their son was working on the computer. She was in her room with her small son. Her son noticed dark smoke in the hallway. She went outside to flip the power off, and when she got outside she noticed the roof was blazing. She quickly went in and got all the children out. Then she began to call for help to help douse the flames. Well, people came, but they did not come to help. They made a human chain and some ran into the flames and they started passing stuff out of the house. She said she thought they were helping her until she realized they were heading down the street with her things. She said she was actually fearful that the house was going to fall in on the theives! The sad thing is that when my husband was relating the story to a fellow missionary, the missionary stopped him before he could tell him the whole story. He said, "The African's looted the house didn't they?" I was stunned that this is expected behavior.
Well, when I found out about the fire, I started rounding up things for the family. I went by to visit and offered to help paint. They were fortunate to find a small two bedroom house; they had been staying in a motel room which was very expensive. When I first went to the house, they had foam matresses on the floor and they had bought a few dishes. Some people had sent clothes. All they escaped with was the clothes they were wearing; some only had sleeping clothes. Our ministry had some furniture, so after the painting was finished in the small living room, we rented a small utility van and went to pick it up. The road was washed out going to the ministry property, so we hired some workers to help us carry the furniture to the main road. Nothing is easy in the Congo.
On the way through one of the busy intersections between the ministry property and my friend's home, we encountered some traffic police. They are called Roulage here. They are pretty much thieves in uniforms. They were standing around chatting, doing nothing much, until they saw me (the mundele- white skinned person). They instantly came toward me and got in front of my car. I had forgotten to lock my door, so the roulage opened my drivers door and demanded my documents. I gave him a copy of my documents. He was not happy with these and asked for the original. Our national ministry director was in the seat beside me. I told the officer, "I cannot give you my original documents because the last time I did so, you didn't give them back. I ran around looking for them for a month and never recovered them." I went on to say jokingly, "My husband has told me that if I don't have my documents that I should not come home." I then noticed that he had been drinking. I rebuked him for drinking on the job. He finally told me I could go. But then they pulled the public transport we had hired to haul the furniture. Our Director got out of my car and told me to go up a ways, out of traffic, and park. He was going back to help the van driver.
I waited for twenty minutes, with street vendors tapping on my windows begging, before I was fed up with the whole situation. I drove back to the roulage station myself. I got out of my car and went up to the metal container that is used as an office. Our ministry director was standing outside the cut out window. I asked him about the charges. He replied, "He said that the window is broken out of the back of the van and that the furniture is not stacked correctly inside." (The majority of the vehicles here do have not windows.) I knew he was just trying to extort money. I headed inside the office to talk with the officer. I told our ministry director to translate for me exactly. (Sometimes they try to soften my words for me to keep me out of trouble.) I told the officer, "This is very wrong." I related what had happened to my friend and how her house was destroyed. I told him that we were trying to help her. I explained that we had rented the van and wanted to share some things with her to help her through the crisis. I told him "I will not give you any money. What you are doing is wrong. We have done nothing wrong here." He started to laugh. I said, "Please sir, do not laugh. You will be held responsible to God for how you react to this situation today." He got a little angry and said, "Is justice just for the white man?" He told me how his house had been destroyed recently by the previous owners reclaiming the property. I commented, "Yes, and I bet that thieves came in and stole your things also." He said, "Yes." I said, "In my country, when someone dies, you bring food to the home and try to make things easy for them." I said, "What do the people do when someone dies here?" He said, "They come and expect to be fed." I said, "Yes. It has to stop somewhere and it has to stop here today."
He said, "I'm a Christian." I said, "I don't want to hear 'I'm a christian' anymore. I want to see people doing right. Don't do this." He reached over and handed me the van driver's documents. Then he voided the ticket. I asked him, "Do you know Jesus as your savior?" He said, "I am a Catholic." I said, "No, I didn't ask if you went to Church, I asked if you have accepted Jesus as your Savior." He said with a distressed look on his face, "No, how do I do it?" We explained to him that he had to trust in Christ and his sacrifice on the cross for his sins. Before we left, he had prayed to accept Christ as his Savior. Before we left, he said, "If you had not come by with that furniture today, I would not have had the opportunity to talk with you." The neat thing about it was that his name was the same as my brother in America. I said to him, Now I have two brothers with your name, an African brother and an American brother.
Our friend is getting settled in her new home. She is a relatively new Christian herself. Her teenage son was really impressed with how the Church had helped them. He said, "Mom, these people are our family."
My husband has been quite sick for the past few days with malaria or amoebas. We are not sure which, but I praise the Lord that he is much stronger now.
No comments:
Post a Comment