A Resilient People

Monday, August 13, 2007

My impressions of Goma have matured in the 24 hours since we arrived. Today was an intense day. After a wonderful breakfast at the Lusi’s home (which sits right on Lake Kivu) we drove to the HEAL Africa hospital. We were given a tour of all the wards, operating rooms, labs and offices. We met some astounding people who were caring for the hundreds and hundreds of hurting people in facilities that are far better than most medical facilities in Eastern Congo but way below what most of us would expect to find in any hospital in North America.

Goma is a relatively stable place (there are about 5000 UN troops here out of a total of 17,000 in all of Congo). But Goma is surrounded on the north, west and south by regions that continue to experience instability and conflict. HEAL Africa is a battlefield hospital. That’s the best way for me to describe it. As we walked through the wards we met people who had endured unbelievable trauma and are experiencing tremendous suffering.

You may not want to read what I’m about to write. I want you to read this. I think you should read this. I’m going to tell you a little bit of what we saw today at HEAL Africa. As we were led through the hospital by two of the male head nurses we met a woman who had been gang raped just 2 days ago. Sexual violence is a tool of war in this country that continues to experience conflict generated by rebel troops still in the Congo from a war that was supposed to be over 4 years ago. It was heartbreaking to come face to face with a person who has personally endured what we have only read about. We prayed for her as she tried to manage the excruciating pain in her abdomen. In the intensive care unit we saw a boy about 10 years old who had been shot in the head and was barely concious. Part of his brain had been pushed through his skull and was still on the outside of his head. We met a little boy in a wheel chair who after watching rebel soldiers kill his father had his own leg hacked off. In the radiology department we saw the x-rays of a woman who still had a bullet lodged in her pelvis because she had been shot through her vagina after being sexually abused. The main surgery performed on adult women at HEAL Africa is for fistulas (or tears) in a woman’s vagina that can be caused by the insertion of sticks or gun barrels, gang rape and traumatic births, causing urine to leak continually. In the pediatric ward we saw an infant with hydrocephalus (a condition where fluid on the brain causes the child’s head to be nearly twice its normal size). We also discovered that the hospital does not have a working incubator for premature babies. When we were in the operating rooms we learned that the general surgery theater is running out of stitches. Stitches!

In the middle of all this I experienced the profound gift of being held by God. It was as if he was personally walking us through the wards, showing us what has happened in Goma. At the end of the day we visited a demonstration garden that has been instrumental in showing people how they can grow crops on the volcanic rocks that covered 40% of the city. We saw amazing vegetables and seedlings that will one day become great trees, even a bush that is used to treat people with malaria. It became a metaphor of what I see God and the people here in Goma doing: re-growing life on the top of tragedy. My initial impressions of Goma were incomplete. What I now see are resourceful, intelligent, passionate, innovative, resilient people rebuilding lives that have experienced great devastation. What an honor it is for us to be here.

Grace and peace,

Tim, Bridget, Timo, Dan, Sarah, Naomi, Melissa, Paul and Ryan