CHAPTER TWELVE

KINSHASA—2000

Brazzaville!” 

Workers raced about the boat shouting, “Arrival! Brazzaville!Republic of Congo! “

 

The boat bumped into its berth, and Arketa seized the edge of the bench where she sat. Thanking God for yet another day of surviving, she drew her children close and lifted her toes as passengers surged by. Swarms of people—those crowding aboard and those disembarking shouted hellos and farewells in West African languages: French, English, Kituba, Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili, Mboshi. Elbows clashed as some hefted parcels to their heads and others swung children into soft slings. As she was leaving the boat the English-speaking missionary woman brought the Zambakaris two bananas.

            

“Oh. No thank you,” said Arketa. “We have eaten.” They hadn’t eaten, at least not much, but this was the African way to say ‘No thank you.’

                        

Days ago (or was it weeks?), when Arketa boarded the boat and UN workers said goodbye, she was handed some Central African coins—payment for food along the way to Kinshasa. But she may as well have held rocks from the road for all she knew about currency. 

 

Each morning and afternoon of the first five days on the river, independent food vendors delivered tea, small bananas, sardines, and African bread—its shape round and squatty like a Canadian curling stone. Shopan,Arketa called it; bread common to West Africa. She recognized it—cassava flour, honey, and water mixed as heavy dough, wrapped either in banana leaf or cornhusk and boiled. Peel it and eat. When Arketa made her food selections, she held out the coins. The workers took her coins and took advantage. By the fifth day of her long journey, her money was gone. 

 

“No thank you,” she said to the vendors after that, “We have eaten.”

 

After the fifth night the children slept—hungry—but they slept. The two girls spooned on the wooden bench with a small sheet under them and another as cover. Christopher stretched out down the bench from them with his head to their feet and his slender feet clearing the bench end. Arketa sat on the floor centered between her children and propped her back against the bench. Nothing on the boat encouraged comfort and even if it had, Arketa couldn’t sleep. She was a resourceful woman but in this situation she was sapped by helplessness. The sound of driving rain, an ordinary part of her whole life, completely frustrated her. The unrelenting smell of cigarettes and sweat—who in M’boki didn’t smoke and, ha! Sweat? Familiar. Ordinary. But now the smells made her swat at the air in anger. Any unexpected pitch of the boat starboard or port terrified her. Pythons and green snakes, leopards and charging elephants—against those she could defend herself—but the pitch and roll of a creaking river vessel?  And what could she do about food in a place where she couldn’t pull crops from her garden, or spear game, deliver babies or work for cassava flour? How could she secure food for her children? 

 

All this roiled through her mind while Arketa couldn’t sleep.

                        

On the sixth morning, a member of the boat’s crew approached Arketa and asked, “Where is your morning tea?” 

 

Before she could hush her son, Christopher said, “My mom doesn’t know the coin and the money for tea is gone.”

After that, for the remaining mornings of the trip, each morning the worker brought tea and bread. In the afternoon he brought tea with sugar. Each morning, Arketa divided the bread and carefully saved some for the children to share in the evening before they slept. “So dey don’t think dey are hungry.” 

            

“BRAZZAVILLE!”

 

At the end of countless days, as noisy passengers rushed off the boat, quiet swept in, and Arketa relaxed. As the white man had, the children peeled the missionary woman’s bananas and ate them. The worker brought tea. One more sleep, then Kinshasa. That evening the children coaxed Arketa to a mosquito-netted window. 

            

“Look!” they said. “Look across the river, Mum. Those are the lights of Kinshasa where tomorrow we are going.” 

 

°  °  °

 

Since the day she left M’boki, thoughts of where we are goingscuttled through Arketa’s mind like rats in a maze. She wished to travel toward Sudan rather than farther from it but word of her country’s expanding miseries had reached M’boki before she left. Even after nine years, Sudanese refugees continued to pour into Central African Republic reaffirming their sorrows. 

 

“Listen,” came the warnings from new arrivals. The government has allowed migratory Muslim Arab herders (blacks called-not-black), to move against settled non-Arab Muslim agriculturalists (blacks-called-black). Sudanese Farmlands were trampled, villages burned. In 2000, the news of home was news of famine, displacement, brutalities, disease, kidnappings, slavery, and destruction. Millions were dead and millions more displaced. 

 

If she couldn’t return to Sudan, then Arketa wished she had stayed in M’boki. She was the man of the house.It was the January dry season—time to clear land, prepare gardens for planting; time to replace termite-infested grass roofs and worn mats. She was indispensable. She should have stayed in M’boki.

 

No,she argued with herself. It was right that she left M’boki. But Central African Republic’s problems—governmental corruption and violence, insurrectionists’ bullets, broken bridges, starvation and poverty also kept her in danger and made for a dead-end jungle existence for the children. In CAR, untreated AIDS cases multiplied, unschooled and underfed children represented half the population, and nowhere was there hope for employment. Did she want that for her family? The answer had come from Lucia, from that firm glance that brooked no further discussion. No.Arketa would not stay in Central African Republic. She would move forward, seeking a better life for the family.

            

Arketa felt dah river rock dah sleeping boat in Brazzaville. She looked across the wide river at the lights of a large city and wondered what to expect in Kinshasa. Thank God, she didn’t know.

 

°  °  °

            

Passengers went crazy when the boat docked at Kinshasa. The Zambakaris held each other’s hands as they wove their way through the frenzy. The children very nearly invited whiplash looking left then right, trying to dodge the ruckus and turmoil of trampling feet. 

 

“It’s okay,” Arketa shouted. “We have arrived safely. We are at dah ground now.” A man that she called “dah leader of dah boat” signaled for Arketa to follow him. He would assist.

 

“There!” he said, pointing to a man and woman walking toward them carrying a sign that read, ‘ZAMBAKARI.’ “These are the people now who will take care of you,” the leader of the boat said, speaking Lingala.

 

“Arketa, welcome,” said the protestant pastor. His wife smiled broadly as she bent to greet the children. These people were friends of the Haitian U.N. worker who oversaw Arketa’s departure from M’boki. In their church compound was a guesthouse with a room prepared for Arketa and her children for the duration of their stay in Kinshasa. 

 

“Ah! The Zande language! Granted, this was Congolese Zande—not the Zande of Central African Republic or Sudan, but Zande nevertheless and while the children were baffled by what should be familiar but was not, Arketa understood well enough. 

 

 “Hold the hands of your children tight,” the pastor said. 

 

“Aaaiii!”Arketa stepped from inside the boat to dah middle of dah sunshine and spotted the gangplank. “Dah steep bridge to walk over dah river down to dah ground, to keep people from jumping. Was it safe?” 

 

Fear upon fear. Arketa held fast to Nathalia and Christopher. The pastor’s wife lifted Sarai to her arms and the party moved swiftly enough that Arketa was swept along from the deck, through the crowd on the ramp, onto the quay where giant ropes secured the boat, to the riverside road packed with food stalls and squabbling people, and finally to a city corner where the pastor warned against crazy drivers. There, he hailed transportation. 

 

“What’s going on?” the children asked in their Balanda language.

 

“Don’t ask,” Arketa answered. 

 

“Don’t ask,” because Arketa had no idea what was going on. She shushed her children and left the answer in her mind: How do you tell a child dat maybe youare alive now but maybe not tomorrow?Or, today we are in dis town—and what town is dis—but tomorrow? Huhhh! Don’t ask dah question I cannot answer.

 

“Aaaiii!”The cry checked itself in Arketa’s heart. She dared not gasp in front of the generous Congolese couple. But, what wasthat thing coming to carry them? It was not a taxi-car. She knew the shape of taxi-cars. This quivering, exhaust-spewing thing was… at dah head of itlike a motorbike. She noticed that the driver’s seat was a single space while behind him was what seemed like dah box for people.She balked but was assured that six people could fit in it—as long as they were not heavy. 

 

“Dah driver of dos things don't want who can bend dah whole thing down,” she was told. 

 

She wasn’t worried. The Zambakaris were not big and they only carried one small bag with extra tee-shirts for the children. Arketa was working it all out in her head while everyone settled—squished—inside and the driver started the vehicle. Bruuu, bruuu, Pop! Bruuuu. She stored the sounds in her mind to repeat for her mother—when next she saw her. She repeated it for me.

 

“Look!” Arketa pointed the children to the few things she could see. Kinshasa was built allllthe way up to the river. Arketa craned her neck as much as she could to take in her surroundings but the box that her family was packed into had sidewalls. She could only look out toward the front where the driver sees things. She saw enough. Big buildings. Big—five floors, ten maybe; close, all of them. She learned about them soon enough. Many of those big buildings were empty, abandoned, collapsing under years of neglect or abuse. Many of them had been built during the years of Belgium’s brutal occupation. Just as many had been destroyed by years of unrelenting war. But, who knew.

 

The hospital built by Belgians was pointed out—but it isn’t working good now, she was told. People were everywhere. Trees between close buildings along the boulevard struggled for life. Trash blew about between darting traffic and policemen stationed in the middle of intersections waving their arms and blowing whistles in vain attempts to control things.

 

“That was the big French hotel,” she was told somewhere along the way. But the hotel is “apart now,”thepastor said. Nobody was in it, even before Mobutu was gone. Arketa made a mental note to ask the meaning of Mobutu but it would not be long before she learned about him, about the violent condition of Kinshasa, and aboutLaurent-DésiréKabila, the president of Democratic Republic of Congo. But as the taxi-car moved to the outskirts of town, she was peacefully unaware of what she would soon come to call “the situation.” 

             

°  °  °

 

THE SITUATION: Kingdome of Kongo / Free State of Congo / Belgian Congo / Republic of Congo / Zaire / Democratic Republic of Congo

 

Although humans had inhabited this area in West Africa for about 80,000 years, the population changed drastically around 2000 B.C. when a great migration of Bantu people, the tall people sharing Niger-Congo languages, arrived from the northwest. They pushed their weight around the forested area where indigenous Pygmies lived, forcing the Pygmy people to the mountains. 

 

The conditions in this region may well have been bad, even violent, before 15thcentury Portuguese explorer Diõgo Cão[1]discovered the mouth of the Congo River, and placed a pillar there to mark the “overlordship” of Portugal. But to his credit, Cão did establish a mutually beneficial trade agreement with King Nzinga, fifth in succession of the Bantu dynasty of Kongo—slaves and ivory in exchange for a bit of European civilization, for some cheap Portuguese trinkets, and a new religion. 

 

Things changed drastically in the 19thcentury when the explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, discovered not only Dr. Livingston, but also the abundant natural resources of the Kingdom of Kongo. Stanley’s description of riches pleased Belgium’s King Leopold II—a man aching for an empire.

 

In 1885, Leopold II claimed and named the region as his private property—Free State of Kongo. Yet, he wasn't the only non-African seizing African land. In 1870, ten percent of that continent was under European control and by 1914 the end of years called the “African Scramble,” Europe controlled ninety percent of the continent. 

 

In 1908, bowing to international pressure, the Belgian parliament took possession of the sorely abused Free State of Kongo. Ten million people had died: starved, overworked, or murdered—nearly half the Kongolese population. Its new name was Belgian Congo.

The tactics used by Leopold’s rubber traders included raiding villages and using captured women and children as the incentive for working men to increase the supply of rubber from the forest. Unmet quotas were commonly met by chopping off the hands of delinquent workers. While the Congolese suffered, Leopold touted his Kingdom of Kongo venture as a sterling example of his commitment to protect and “civilize the Negroes.”

 

By the late 1950s, although true that Congolese people were no longer being shipped to European fairs and zoos as popular attractions, their subjugation had hardly ended. Angry enough, beaten up enough, the Congolese were finally bold enough to risk revolt. And Belgium? They’d had enough of Africans who had enough of white masters, and granted the Congolese their independence.

 

In 1960, with pomp and ceremony but no preparation for self-government, Africa’s second largest country, bordered by nine other nations and the Atlantic Ocean, took on both independence and a new name: Republic of Congo. White flight and internal warfare followed. Yet, this time around, modern weapons were employed in a mess resembling a thousand-piece puzzle dumped on a table with rival gangs of teenaged miscreants tasked to put it together. Things didn’t go well. 

 

Over the next five years, a Congolese president was installed (Joseph Kasavubu), the army mutinied, regions seceded, Belgium and UN peacekeeping forces interceded, and President Kasavubu staged a coup to oust democratically elected Prime Minister Lumumba. The Army Chief of Staff, General Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, delivered Lumumba to his executioners. UN forces pulled out.

 

In 1965, President Kasavubu was ousted in a coup led by the bright, missionary-schooled Mobutu. By 1971, Mobutu had eliminated opponents and renamed nearly everything, including himself. He was now President Mobutu Sese Seko, which meant, "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.”  

Mobutu’s country was now called Zaire. The capital city was no longer Leopoldville but Kinshasa. Not only fire in this warrior’s wake, but bodies. Forthirty-two years Mobutu ruled. Brutal, despotic, and kleptocratic, Mobutu built patronage, bought loyalty, and broke any possible power beyond himself. He staved off all opposition, destroyed the economy, and sent any hope of stability to hell in a hand-basket. By the mid-90s, Zaire’s inflation was at an unfathomable 24,000%. Mobutu’s cronies cranked out counterfeit currency, looted diamonds from state-owned mines, and filled their deep pockets through money laundering schemes.

 

Deep in the rainforest, some six hundred and some miles from Kinshasa, in his family village of Gbadolite, Mobutu built a $153 million grand palace complex complete with ponds, pools, gardens, guards, and surrounded by a gold-topped fence. His imported sheep and cattle grazed serenely in massive pastures. Alongside the palace, cut from the jungle, was the new “International Airport” where a Concorde jet was ever ready to shuttle the president to Kinshasa, bring dignitaries to him, or carry his family to France or China for shopping. 

 

Mobutu and King Leopold II shared a penchant for greed and power. I haven’t read that Mobutu cut off the hands of children or chained the wives of rubber plantation workers and used them for sex relief for his soldiers as the Belgian king’s men had, nevertheless, Mobutu’s atrocities were up to snuff. He was notorious for corruption, nepotism, and the billions of dollars he managed to embezzle during his reign. Mobutu, the “archetypal African dictator” reigned for over three decades

 

Enter Laurent-Desire Kabila, a known Congolese thug and opportunist who, after years away in Tanzania, resettled in northeastern Zaire near the city of Goma—a hop, skip, jump from Rwanda’s western border. Kabila, the man who amassed a fortune from trafficking gold and ivory, mattered to the Zambakari story. 

 

Back in 1965, one of Kabila’s useful friends was a friend and fellow worker with the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Zaire, Patrice Lumumba—the man Mobutu had betrayed. Since that time, Kabila had planned violence against Mobutu. By the mid-1990s, he had found the help he needed in Goma, among warring Rwandan refugees. 

 

°  °  ° 

 

Arketa in Kinshasa

Arketa meant to be in Kinshasa just long enough to have travel papers drawn up for her departure to some country where hope might be found—a day or two, a week at the most.

 

The church compound where the Zambakaris stayed sported a strong fence, the small brick sanctuary, the pastor’s small house, and a guesthouse where she and the children shared one windowless room. The pit latrine was close enough to the guesthouse that Arketa let the children head that way on their own. Nearby it was, but especially in the mornings, the line of people waiting to use it was long. Arketa’s children danced on their toes, “needing to pee bad, Mum.” On those occasions, as many did, the children ran behind the guesthouse for relief at the back wall. 

            

“Dis was dah place where we take dah shower. Everyone who can’t wait in dah long line to pee will do dis.  When you shower, dah water you use washes dah urine smell away. If dah children poop? I put it in dah plastic bag and when no one is at dah latrine, I drop dah bag in it. 

 

“Behind dah building is a bucket. You fill it at dah pipe and take dah shower—standing. Dat first night off dah boat? Eeeeiii!Dat water washing us was good.”

 

In M’boki, Arketa had the luxury of finding firewood easily enough. In a pot large enough for the children to climb into, she poured heated water for baths. She kept fires burning in the veranda and at night, in the tukul. Now, the shower water was cold. The only fire she built was for outside cooking the evening. 

 

Like the city itself, the church compound had plenty of trees and from the old, old mangos, church members and guests cut and collected dead branches and twigs. But Arketa was a guest. She was careful with how much she took. She shushed her children’s complaining when they jumped about in a brief, cold shower.

 

“What—you want to go out of dah compound into the city for finding firewood? You heard dis place is dangerous. No. Dah food can be hot. Dah shower? Cold. If you use dah firewood to heat water, how will you cook?

 

°  °  °

 

“You cooked over firewood outside. Did you eat inside?” I asked.

            

“You eat in your room,” Arketa answered.

            

“You had a table in the room?”

“No.”

 

“No table?” Arketa caught my question’s embedded incredulity. 

 

“That building was not made for people living for a long time. In dah room was one local bed for dah children together. I took dah big box and made dah place for my sleeping on dah floor.”

 

“The box,” I said. “A cardboard box?”

 

“Ummm, I was sleeping on dat. Yeah. It was okay, Barbi. Dat church was very poor. Maybe fifty people. But dey gave us what dey had. Dah good is dat dah church takes care of orphan children, so my children go to school with dem under dah mango tree close by. Dah pastor’s wife was dah teacher. By dah time we leave DRC, dah children are speaking Lingala and French, good.”          

 

° ° °

 

“Did you have chairs?” I asked.

            

I wanted there to be something in that room for her. Kind though she tried to be, she didn’t feel well on the day of this conversation and it was impatience that met my inquiry. 

 

“Dah bed was in dah room, dah local bed with dah mat from dah pastor’s wife. No chair, no table, no window, no. I slept on dah box. We sit on dah floor to eat. Or, we can sit outside on dah ground where dah fire is made for cooking. Dat church give me two cooking pots, one for making fu-fu when dah firewood is available. Doz people give us what dey could—flour, and sometimes a can of three small fish like sardines. I divide doz to be for all day. The pastor’s wife brought two shopan each day. Dis is the word you asked how to spell and I said ‘s-u-g-b-e-g-i.” Maybe it is easier for you to use dah word in Songo, ‘Magbere.’ Dat is the old, old word for dis bread. Sometimes we had sweet potato leaf and sometimes rice.”

 

 “Clothes?” I asked.

 

“We had dah clothes we wore on dah boat and dah change given to us in Bangui. I didn’t ask for things.” 

 

The Sudanese Embassy in Kinshasa refused to help its refugees but the UN quickly processed all the necessary paperwork, snapped the necessary photos, and within a day or two had all the necessary Zambakari travel documents prepared. 

 

“Dah pictures of dah children was in that passport with me,” she said.

 

If it all seemed too good to be true to Arketa, it was. When she walked to the UN building to pick up her travel papers, she was told, “Keep this document with you at all times. We will notify you when it is time for you to emigrate. You will be going to the United States of America.” 

 

That seemed good.

 

Arketa didn’t know what “United States” meant but she knew about America. This required an airplane. She knew that and didn’t like it. Her thoughts and fears about flying matched her feelings about boats and the thought of it pushed into her mind like a kitten squeezing into a small box. The UN worker was still talking and Arketa’s attention to her returned at about the time the worker said, “Expect to emigrate in two to five years.”

 

“’WHAT?” 

            

Arketa panicked. She ran back to the church compound. She sought out the pastor. “Let me go back to M’boki,” she demanded. 

 

She pled. She begged. She regretted. She tried to plot an escape. She couldn’t plot. She was powerless. Spent. Exhausted. Grieved. Broken. It didn’t work to hold her heart. All the courage of all the years collapsed. She cried. In good African style, she wailed. 

 

“God, God, God, just let me die here.”

The Congolese pastor called Bangui to reach the UN worker from Haiti. The Haitian called the church and spoke to Arketa. He assured her. Admonished her. Encouraged her. Challenged her. Comforted her. He informed her about her family in M’boki, reminding her of her mother’s displeasure should she return to the camp. He reminded her that someday she will say ‘Thank you’ for this journey. It was a god-awful time. Arketa folded into resignation. 

 

Finally. Resignation.

 

“I just say, ‘Better to stay five years den my whole life in M’boki.’ I didn’t put it like something heavy den.”

            

For the next nine or ten months, Arketa isn’t sure exactly, the children went to school under the mango tree with the orphan children of Kinshasa. They picked up math, French, and Lingala. Arketa sat outside watching the children when she wasn’t helping arrange chairs for church services, assisting with the cleaning of buildings, chatting with other guests, or becoming proficient in French. But for the required trips to the UN, she never left the compound. In the stifling city heat, she wished for a breeze as steady and strong as the rumors of danger that blew through Kinshasa.

 

°  °  °

 

February 2001

“Dey thought Christopher was Rwandan. Dis is why he was in dah prison,” Arketa said. 

 

I was immediately pulled to the second sentence. Her fifteen-year-old son, Christopher, was in prison in Kinshasa. Initially, I missed the importance of “because dey thought he was Rwandan.” Several conversations later, I thought to ask why being mistaken for Rwandan mattered.

            

“Ah, why! Dey are light-skinned Africans, like Christopher.”

 

“But, what was the problem of being Rwandan in Kinshasa?” I asked.

            

“Ah! Why. Dat is dah important thing I don’t know. You will find dis for us,” Arketa said.

 

° °  °

 

I started reading about Rwanda and found its history even more sorrowful than that of the Congolese people—if that is possible. 

 

It was Belgium again—barging into African purposes, and by the early twentieth century measuring Rwandan necks and noses to establish a superior rank among their people. The width of Tutsi and Hutu noses differed by a measurement equivalent to the height of two stacked US dimes, enough for Belgians to express a preference. The narrower Tutsi nose was aristocratic, superior to the Hutu’s coarse nose, said European experts. Therefore, Tutsis, those with longer necks and noses, won favor and privilege. Hutus, representing eighty-five percent of the population, became an oppressed people. For the first time in Rwandan history, racist ideologies fostered an ethnic divide among ethnically and culturally united people. Years of violence followed.

 

Mounting hatred between Hutus and Tutsis led to slaughter, years and years of it. Tutsis prevailed, Hutus ran. Hutus prevailed, Tutsis ran. People of both tribes ran across the mountains that separated Rwanda from Zaire’s northeast Kivu region. The area’s population became essentially Rwandan and Rwandans became essential to the cause of Laurent-Desire Kabila, a wealthy, disgruntled Congolese man with a long memory and a penchant for power. 

            

By the time of Kabila’s return to Zaire, about two million Rwandans lived in northeastern region of the country. Among those refugees were Hutu militants, the Interahamwe, those very people responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide (the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days), people eager to finish off the extermination. The Interahamwe (meaning “those who work, or fight, together”) turned refugee camps into military bases, and the region into a war zone. In October 1996, under Kabila’s leadership, Tutsis backed by Uganda and the Tutsi-led Rwanda government, fought back. By December, Kabila’s forces controlled the volatile Kivu area.

 

In May of 1997, Congolese Kabila’s army of mostly of Rwandan Tutsis from south Kivu marched the thousand-some miles, moving and massacring along the Congo River, till they reached Kinshasa to overthrow Mobutu. Toss into his mix of southern warriors the anti-Mobutu rebels—the Katangan Tigers, then add the vicious and brutal Kadogas, his boy soldiers and Kabila had all he needed to take Kinshasa. Which he did. Thanks to Rwandan Tutsis.

 

Mobutu fled, and in September 1997, Kabila named himself president. He renamed the country: Democratic Republic of Congo. DRC. He suspended the constitution. 

            

By 1998, the Congolese people wanted all foreigners, all light-skinned Africans, out. Hutus and Tutsis in the Kivu regions—out. Tutsis in Kinshasa, regardless of importance—out. These foreigners held far too much power. 

 

Kabila agreed. He dismissed loyal Tutsis from important posts but then he feared a Rwandan reprisal so he endorsed hatred and fueled contempt. He called for a pogrom against Tutsis and slaughter followed. Around the country, Rwandan men, women, children, were routed, pushed out, pushed to the bush or murdered. 

 

In less than one year, heroic Tutsi liberators were unwanted, humiliated, and hunted down. Congolese celebrated their expulsion. In less time than it takes for the moon to phase, outsiders joined the fray. In August, a new war exploded. Rwandan soldiers from Uganda flew in and freed thousands of imprisoned pro-Mobuto, anti-Kabila fighters. Kabila’s former allies, the Rwandan and Ugandan Tutsis, turned on him—as he had them. 

 

By 1999, in DRC, Uganda held the northeast, Rwanda held the south, and Kabila and his allies, the west. To some degree or another, whether by troops, equipment, or funds, the land was overrun by Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Angola, Unita, Namibia, Chad, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and some say, even the Sudanese rebel army—the SPLA.  The First Congo War morphed intowhat is called the “All African War.”

 

All parties looted and plundered the country’s rich resources: diamonds, gold, timber, and the dull, black metallic coltan ore. Tutsis from Goma gain control over the dam that provided electricity for Kinshasa. No power. No water supply. Kinshasa was threatened with starvation and invasion.  Hatred of Tutsis infected the Congolese population like the Ebola virus.

 

Deep in the country, starving people slaughtered endangered gorillas and elephants for food. Greed ruled. The once lovely country of DR Congo was divided and in shambles. By 1999 millions were dead and thousands more died daily of starvation or disease.

            

In late-January or early February 2000, she isn’t exactly sure just when, Arketa arrived in Kinshasa. She was told to hold tight to her light-skinned children. They resembled Rwandans.  

 

In a matter of months, her hold proved not to be enough—violence will steal a child. 

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Coming Up: CHAPTER THIRTEEN:  Africa to America—2001

Kinshasa – Tuesday, January 16, 2001  

“Christopher!” Arketa didn’t recognize the ruckus and uproar in her Kinshasa neighborhood but in her year’s stay she hadn’t heard such screaming or seen people running in the streets like a family fleeing fire. She yelled for her light-skinned son. Something was terribly wrong and she knew the drill. Hide.

“Christopher!”