It was one of those days that you
just know from the very beginning is going to be beautiful. And by the end, that
was really the only word to describe it. Everything about it gave me a feeling
as if this were a day God had crafted with extra special care and attention in
the hopeful chance that someone, somewhere, might be taking notice. As it so
happens, it fell not on any old box of the calendar, but on Congo Independence
Day. And as it so happens, I was there! For just a week I was back on the red
soil of DRC, and we squeezed so much into that short spell that it’s not worth
me trying to recount the whole thing. But the highlight is easy to spot. It was
leaving the house just as the sun rose over Congo Independence, it was getting
back exhausted but exhilarated after the sun had set, and it was everything
that happened in between. That day, deep in the bush, a party was coming
together, a party in and for the most enchanting community I know.
Kisunka is a community comprised
of five different villages built around a huge lake called Changalele (don’t
worry about the pronunciation, I don’t). The few thousand people who have for
centuries lived in this lost and untouched world are some of the poorest we
support. They have so little. Many starve the whole year round, holding on only
for the couple of months that mangoes grow on the otherwise fruitless trees rising
up between their mud huts. The lake provides all their water with which they
drink, wash, cook, clean, the lot. So you can imagine, sickness is rife. The
nearest clinic (in the nearest town) is so far away that pregnant women end up
giving birth by the roadside. Many more sick and weary people simply never finish
the journey at all. I have stayed in the villages of Kisunka community a number
of times and met some of the most beautiful, genuine, compassionate and caring
people I’m ever likely to know. I’ve also met there in the shadows of those
fruitless trees some of the most hopeless and helpless situations to which I’ve
been exposed. I’ve found miracles there too, miracles born of broken and burnt
out hearts infused with a most relentless and stubborn faith. An old man within
an inch of death one day striding toward us the next pointing his finger to the
sky and wearing a smile as if he’s about to burst into tears of laughter any
moment. Babies whose lives were almost stolen before they had a chance to
realise it had been given, growing happy, healthy and whole. Hearts healed,
souls restored, and all that jazz! It was to celebrate the miracles happening in
that lost and lonely place that we gathered on Congo Independence Day, 200 of
us from across the communities; young, old, village chiefs and village
prostitutes, the highest and the lowest and the most forgotten, all of us
together to celebrate in the loud and proud way that the Congo do best what God
is doing here. And not only what God
is doing but what he is doing through
these people. Because it is here in Kisunka that, with nothing more than a
vision to make a difference, people arose and established the first schools the
community has ever known. They’d never had a school before, now there’s one
within a couple of kilometres of every
orphan and vulnerable child supported
by the care workers. It is here that out of the little they have the community
started providing food, daily food,
for the children that needed it the most. It was for such miracles as these
that a party was coming together in the Congo bush, on the shores of that long lost
lake. There I listened as the head of all the chiefs, the most respected and
wealthy and important person within a 20 kilometre radius, looked at the
leaders gathered and with pointed finger told them, “We think that we are at
the top and the children are at the bottom. But they are the important ones,
and we are their servants.” You hope that in your lifetime you’ll see one or
two such miracles. If you don’t, you’ve probably been walking around with your
eyes closed.
You see this place shows no
memory of a more glorious, fruitful, prosperous, healthy time. Perhaps the village
was born in ashes. But on that God-crafted, hot and humid Congo Independence
Day we came together to sing and dance and speak and shout about one truth,
with one voice: that it will not end in ashes. These children’s lives will not
go up in flame. Something is rising. It’s really hard to put your finger on it.
It’s hard to sum it up in nice words, as it always is when you’re talking about
what God is doing, because he tends to do things that are so unexpected and
impossible that the only reaction left for the world that watches is the one I
had sitting in that chair watching that celebration take place; the unexpected
tear in your eye, the commotion of nerves in your heart that tell you you’re
seeing something breathtaking, unimaginable, indescribable and good.
