Meet Nadine

Just over 2 weeks ago I was in the DR Congo with the rest of the Christian Aid gap year volunteers, visiting some of our partners there. We got to meet a lot of incredibly inspiring people, people who do an awful lot of good with limited resources. One of those partners we meet was Vorsi Congo, a community organization that works through the church to combat AIDS.

They travel across the whole country, training religious leaders, who in turn get their religious communities talking about the issues, often for the first time. Rodger, the technical director, estimated that across the 11 provinces of the DRC, their message has reached about 8million people. They try to break down the stigma surrounding HIV using mediums such as song & drama.

“Before, if you were HIV positive, no-one wanted to sit in the same pew as you at church. Now people are more happy to sit with them & even take communion with them.”
[Rodger]

I meet Nadine when we visited Vorsi Congo. She is the pastor of a church, and also is a woman living with HIV.

At one point as she shared her story with us, she said, “If I hadn’t have worked with Vorsi Congo, I’d be buried.” It really is a matter of life and death for people. The level of stigma surrounding HIV is still massive, and though Nadine is doing well, there are many people who have been shunned by their families and their churches when they find out they are HIV+.

We use this phrase a lot at Christian Aid, about ‘living positively with HIV’, and it’s only after meeting Nadine that I’m starting to understand what that really means. Nadine doesn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself, but instead she’s throwing herself into being a part of the solution. She’s using her story and her position in the church to help educate people.

To find out more about the issues surrounding HIV/AIDS, visit our website here.
To support our DR Congo crisis appeal , click here.

A personal privilege...

I was speaking about DRC at the Queen's University International Prayer Meeting yesterday; presenting stories from our trip along with some prayer points. It was great to get to pray with these students about the trip in general, but the prayer of one of the girls really stood out:

"Lord, I thank you that we can pray not only for the Congo as a whole, but also for these individual people: their lives, their hopes and fears."

This just made me realise that, although it is a privilege to have even been to the Congo and seen a glimpse of the country and its culture, the real privilege is that we got to meet such amazing people and talk to them about things that mattered to them. These people aren't just "people from the Congo" or even "people from 'Partner X' in Kinshasa". They are Nana from Project Photo, who told us about the stigma surrounding HIV in her family; Santa from the university in Kinshasa who confided in us that she can't trust her male lecturers; Neil who is part of the VORSI Congo choir and spoke to us about their work. They are real people. And I think its important for us to remember this as well, as we go out and tell their stories - to remember that they aren't just a name in our notebook or a face in a photograph.

How privileged we are to have met them! Though we can speak of the Congo as one whole, massive country, its these individual lives that make it, and that made our trip. I hope I never forget them.

West vs East

I recieved my first injection of western culture when we landed in Heathrow...things were orderly, people swanning around in their smart suits, clean toilets e.t.c. but just like an injection, I felt the pain when we arrived. The pain of seeing the two extremes...the western developed world vs the Eastern developing world. I felt like I had just experienced two worlds in the space of 24 hours. Arriving into a world where our priorities all seem upside down, a time when buying is at it's peak at Christmas. The reverse culture shock was alot worse than the culture shock I experienced when I first landed in Kinshasa.

I have been back in the UK for a week now and I still don't feel that I have quite accepted the culture we live in. But I don't think that is a bad thing. I don't want to find myself becoming so comfortable in it that I forget about the people we met in the DRC. But I reassure myself that these people have had such a deep impact on me, that this won't be possible. Flicking on my TV to see the DRC as a main headline just fuelled my passion even further to get out and start yelling the message of desperation but yet hope of the DRC to the UK.

I keep coming back to the phrase one of the students said to us when we were out there 'we are living for a better tomorrow', and I want to have my role in making it a better tommorrow for them.

Heavenly beings and neon lights

Life changing I was told and I didn’t know what to make of that. I was almost waiting for the life changing moment I had been told about. I got off the plane, nope my life felt pretty much the same, I got in the minibus still having the same life I did a few moments ago and so it went on. In fact it went on so long I was starting to think I may have missed the life changing moment and what a bummer that would have been. I had been waiting literally my whole life for this moment, and then I go and miss it. I started to get frustrated. These life changing moments should be obvious, I thought, there should be an angel present just before it happens holding a flashing sign saying ‘your life changing moment is just about to occur, please prepare yourself’, just so people don’t miss these moments. I had two weeks in the DRC and didn’t have my angel flashing sign moment. Then I came home. Still no angel and no flashing sign, but I’ve realised life isn’t like that (at least not for me). We’ve posted on this blog about what we did, who we visited and what we saw while in the DRC and it was incredible, sometimes shocking but there isn’t one life changing moment for me to pick out. There were days I laughed with people and days I cried with people and the variety in the trip was brilliant. Two weeks isn’t a massive amount of time but we filled it with an amazing amount of stuff. Now I’m back in the UK it’s all starting to sink in, or perhaps a better way of putting that would be to say now I’m not in the DRC I’m starting to realise how incredible the two weeks were and how much it has given me to think about. It will take a while for me to work out the impact of the trip on me and maybe a while longer before I can communicate that properly but it’s good to get started on that process. I feel passionate about the DRC, the Congolese people and the work Christian Aid does there. I would encourage everyone reading this to not limit their knowledge of the country to what’s on this blog but to take this as a starting point to discover and understand more about what makes the DRC and its people so incredible. Maybe I’m not the best person to judge if the trip has changed me as a person, others could probably judge it better. I don’t think I ever will get my angel and the flashing sign but that doesn’t mean my life hasn’t changed, it’s just more subtle than heavenly beings and neon lights, and I rather like the fact that it is.

Paradise found?

As I sit here on a cold morning in a country cottage in the heart of middle England, it is surreal to know that 36 hours ago I was in the Kinshasa, the bustling capital city of the country which is dominating our headlines with images of war and an ever growing refugee crisis. My mind is full of contrasting images; lush tropical rain Forrest and the polluted congested roads of Kinshasa, my luxurious home and the thousands of abandoned villages.

The last two weeks, without any exaggeration have probably been the most informative and life changing two weeks of my adult life so far. I could write for hours on exactly what we did but I'd like to say share a few thoughts.

I think that I have learnt what 'development' as a concept away from its theoretical explanation, looks like in reality. Development is not pouring food aid into a country and sticking a plaster over its wounds. It is not building a school for a rural village, who lets face are generally more capable of construction. Whilst these are sometimes necessary, real development needs to come from the country itself. Christian Aid are always talking about 'partnership', which although I always thought sounded like a nice idea, I am ashamed to say was slightly dubious about. However, I have seen first hand how it is investing in 'partnerships' with local people who know what they need and how to do it which can develop communities and change lives. In our short visit to the DRC, we saw time and time again, how just a small amount of money from Christian Aid could provide the resources for a community to start training people in a new skills which would the be multiplied when they taught other. Our partner PDI, focus on training people in more efficient and sustainable ways of farming. They have set up some training centres where people can come on courses ranging from just one day to a couple of months, they then go back to their communities and train others. Similarly, in the area of HIV, our partner Vorsi Congo, focuses on training religious leaders on HIV awareness to not only combat the spreading of the virus but also the huge stigma attached to it. They realise that by training the local church leader or Imam, they can reach whole communities because of the importance of religion in society. They estimate that through the country they have educated literally millions of people through this programme. It is still a drop in the ocean but it is far more effective than a government sponsored pamphlet that no-one respects let alone no-one can read or. May be this is true meaning of Christian Aids strap line, 'You add. We multiply.'

I also understood the importance of the accountable governance work which is being done. We visited an organisation called RECIC which helps educate people on their rights and responsibilities as a citizen and to work together as communities to hold the authorities to account. We don't get party political, but we do support politics. As long as people are intimidated by a policeman with a gun demanded money for a fine which the population is completely ignorant of then corruption will never cease. And if corruption doesn't cease the country will never be able to function. It was so exciting to visit one of the groups that RECIC has been supporting, we could see how their community had really been changed by standing up to the authorities and demanding their rights.


And yet, despite all this success and sense of hope, underlying it lies the reality that the projects we saw are not going to change the country whilst there is still war. Organisations like Christian Aid cannot bring peace but simply aid those who are suffering in the mean time. But when peace eventually comes, which I believe it will, hopefully there will be a society which is strong enough to develop and be the paradise it was made to be.

Au revoir, DRC...

Well, not quite yet. Right now we're still all in the office, but we have already been to Air France and checked in for our flight tonight (and left our bags there, so they have to get to the airport, then to Paris and on to London... place your bets...)

We're doing a photo exhibition this afternoon for around 70 guests (including possibly the British Ambassador) and have each been asked to choose2 photos to display. However, although we have each chosen 2 photos that mean something to us individually, weve just been looking through all the pictures for it and every single one brings back memories. It really has ben unforgettable!

That's all for now - I should let someone else get on the computer! May post tomorrow when I'm back in Norn Iron!

Rach x