WHY CONGO?

One day, a colleague asked: “Jean-Pierre, why would you decide to go back to the Congo and start an education project? Doesn’t your family need you?”
This question went deep in my soul. I felt hurt. I almost lost my composure, giving space to emotions. Then, I realized that this question was coming from someone who knew me, who had worked with me, with whom we have shared laughter and jokes. His intent was not necessarily to discourage me. It was an invitation for me to verbalize more about what I was thinking silently. It was an invitation to rationalize. As Emmanuel Kant would have said “it was about explaining things in the limits of reason and of reasonable”.
After a decade in Canada, the first thing I have to say is that I love Canada. It is my home. It might not be my native land. But, it is now my only land. Canada is the only land I have on this earth. The day I took the citizenship oath to the Queen, I lost for ever my Congo rights. I might have been born in Congo but Canada is my life. It is my future. Congo does not accept dual citizenship.

I have not been in Congo for more than a decade. My Congolese friends have made new friends and their friendship has grown stronger and deeper. Most of the colleagues of my first year teaching in former President’s High school have passed away because of changes in their lives. Most of them have died of illnesses they would have never thought of dying when we started working together in early 1996.
My parents? I have lost them long time ago to the Congo war. Relatives? I was not that close to them when my parents were alive. So who do I have in Congo which will make me go back?

Nobody of blood will make me go back to Congo. No incentives. I have lived in other African countries which I would like to revisit. Senegal for instance. I would love to go back and seat at the Atlantic sea eating again those sea foods which sent me to Dakar hospital when with friends we were dreaming of creating a synergy of African resources to solve hunger challenges in Africa.
I would love to go back and visit Tanzania because I felt in love with the humanity of its people. I would love to go back and visit Kilimanjaro and see if the feelings I have for Niagara Falls are similar to the one I had for Kilimanjaro. I would love to go back and seat at Indian Ocean and look in the direction of Australia.

I would love to go back to Rwanda where I lived for two years before the genocide destroyed all my friends. I would love to visit Kigali, Cyangugu, Kamembe, and Butare and see if similar beautiful ladies I used to see when I was a teenager are still walking the streets of Butare.

I would love to visit Burundi, its small capital Bujumbura and climb its Kiriri hills to savour the eagle view of its capital. I would love to visit the University of Bujumbura where a stranger gave me a disc which, twenty five years later, music still lingers in my ears. I have tried everywhere on YouTube to find it, unfortunately with only “tago mago” in my ears, it is not enough to locate it.I would love to go to its Tanganyika lake and look at heavy Hippos swimming.

I can keep going different places I visited or lived in. Unfortunately, Congo would not come on the list of countries I want to visit for fun and for memories. The reason is that my memories of Congo are of betrayal. My native land has not given me the reasons to live on its soil.
However, this year 2016 I want to go back. I want to go back for different reasons. Not to see my friends.
I am not going back to see my relatives.
I am not going back to reconnect with my tender memories.
I want to go back to help.
I want to go back and give the gift of education to kids I don’t know. In the same way, some centuries ago some Europeans decided to go to Congo or Africa to offer the best they believed in.

The best I believe in is the right for every child to know how to read and to write. I believe in the power of thinking critically. I believe in the pleasure of connecting to the Internet, the wonder of twenty first century.
That’s the reason why I want to go back this year to Congo. I am convinced that only education can set people free. I am convinced that only education makes us become humans because it embraces universality. It creates community beyond blood, beyond races, beyond cultures, beyond religions. It brings what we have in common, truly in common: the strength of reason and the sense of purpose, both key ingredients to dignity. 

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