Sometimes I find myself rather perplexed by the Congolese. This is only natural since I’m not Congolese and my cultural frame of reference in this life is, while not entirely different, still a long way off in many respects.

I sometimes wonder why generally and individually there seems to be a lack of forward-thinking. That may sound like a gross and insulting generalisation, but there’s one very understandable reason for it. What is there to look forward to? When you don’t know what will be coming next, and all too many times the ‘what’s coming next’ could send you back to life’s square one despite all efforts to the contraire, I can understand why it can seem in vain to ‘plan for the future’.

I’ve been particularly conscious of this during the week as I’ve helped with the recrutment of a new staff member. You’re scanning through piles of CVs…unemployment is very high here…and it’s standard practice here to write in your CV the reason for the termination of each jo. How many CVs in New Zealand would have reasons like “Eruption of volcano, forced to leave Goma” or “Reignition of armed conflict, forced to leave” or “NGO employer expelled by state authorities” or “Funding cut by donor, programme closed”…which reminds me, you could say this is almost the ‘end of the line’ in the trickle-down effect of the recession. How can you ask someone in an interview what their career ambitions are for the next five or ten years? It’s far too easy to get on an Occidental high horse thanks to the relative macro-stability within which we live our lives.

This Sunday too, being Passion Sunday, the priest spoke frankly and sensitively about the hidden suffering amongst the community. He talked about the way we all hide such suffering. And to a greater or lesser extent, it’s true…How many times do you respond “Yeah, I’m great thanks…” when really you just had THE MOST shoddy day.

And this tendancy to cover our sufferings, sufferings that Christ knows and has lived deeply to the core…I have to remember this tendancy as I work alongside my Congolese colleagues. When they bemuse me, when I can’t quite figure out why they just can’t seem to get this or that done, why I feel like they want to take advantage of me sometimes…I have to remind myself that while I may come and go, and for the moment this place seems relatively calm, and life seems to go on as relatively ‘normal’, pretty much everyone I work with, every supplier I meet, every guardian, every waiter, every chauffeur, every sales rep, every nurse, every cook, every cleaner, every nutritionnist, every depot manager…has lived through multiple conflicts, chronic insecurity, volcanic eruptions that levelled the city only several years ago, the threat of unemployment always too close for comfort…

Yet day after day they try to live some sort of normality, and who wouldn’t? They rise again, present themselves to the world as any dignified human being wants to, often dressed smartly too. They smile proudly when you enquire about their families, their background, their home region; they celebrate weddings, babies, deaths as we would too. While their surroundings have at times been turned to turmoil and custard, things never rest in anarchy forever, they re-establish relationships, rebuild community ties, and get on. The scars remain, painful but hidden… in the same way Christ was resurrected wounds and all, these people try to reconstruct their lives, not healed but in hope of final healing one day. I’ve got to keep a humble spirit as I come and go so fleetingly – it’s a privilege to be let in on their lives if only for a short time.