Dispatches from the Congo – A Journey of Love (Part 2)

By Erin Pohland

[Read Part One HERE]

After choosing to join a pilot program and adopt from the Congo rather than Ethiopia, I broke the news somewhat gingerly, aware that such news might not be welcome. The reaction was mixed. Friends and family members who were more savvy about world affairs were immediately worried; the Congo is not exactly the place where you want to send someone you care about for a few days, let alone an extended period of time. A certain loved one (who shall remain nameless) is an avid Fox News viewer. Given that Fox News doesn’t exactly specialize in coverage of humanitarian crises, the Congo was not on this person’s radar. The response I got was priceless: “You’re going to the Congo? Oh, that’s nice, I’m sure that will be a good place to visit.” My parents were largely ambivalent about the Congo versus Ethiopia (it’s all Africa to them; after all, their globe still says “The Belgian Congo”). Their ambivalence ended when they searched for the Congo online (at which point I cursed myself for teaching them to use Google). Thank goodness they didn’t discover the State Department’s Travel Warnings until the adoption was already finalized!

Regardless of whatever anyone else had to say, I soldiered on. I was particularly struck by the idea of adopting a girl from the Congo, which is widely considered to be the worst place in the world to be a woman. Given that my agency was operating out of Eastern Congo — where rape, murder and other forms of violence continue due to fighting between rebel groups and government soldiers — I felt that it was particularly important that I take a girl out of that situation. There are no guarantees anywhere in the world, of course, but her chances of being raped were far lower if she moved out of the “rape capital of the world.”

Once I had decided to adopt from the Congo, I started to assemble my dossier — the bundle of paperwork that goes to the country for them to “match” you with a child, and which will eventually be submitted to the local courts. My dossier for the Congo included everything from pictures of myself and my home to a health clearance from my doctor to a letter explaining why I wanted to adopt a child from the Congo and how I will ensure that the child will maintain his identity as a Congolese person. Gathering all of this paperwork is a mind-numbing exercise in bureaucracy; I’d have to do things like find a notary willing to meet me at my doctor’s office to notarize her signature on the health clearance form. My primary care doctor is a saint; she signed three of these documents three different times, without complaint or a charge (for the home study, my Ethiopia dossier and then my Congo dossier). After certain documents were notarized, I’d have to send them to the Lt. Governor for his certification that the notary stamp was authentic, and then to the State Department for its certification that the Lt. Governor’s stamp was authentic, and THEN to the Congolese Embassy in DC to authenticate the State Department’s seal. Luckily, I was given the name of a great expediter in DC; I would FedEx everything to him and he would take the documents to the State Department and the Embassy and send it back to me. The fees do add up, though, particularly when you’re dealing with an exceptionally poor country. When I sent my documents for my Congo dossier on a Tuesday, the fee to have the authentication done was $200 per document. The very next day, when my expediter got to the Embassy, the fee was $300 per document. I simply sighed and sent yet another money order; there wasn’t much to do about it other than pay. For comparison, the State Department charged a grand total of $15 to authenticate the very same documents that I paid $600 to have authenticated by the Congolese Embassy. If nothing else, it was a preview of what was to come when I traveled to Kinshasa.

I finally submitted my complete dossier to my agency on August 15. Exactly one month later, I got a call telling me that I was close to getting a referral, and asking me if I would accept a boy and/or a sibling set rather than a girl. I said yes on both counts, and began the incredibly anxious wait for news of my future child or children.

While assembling my dossier and waiting for that all-important call, I made what would turn out to be a crucial mistake. At the time, I viewed it as the responsible and correct thing to do: to learn as much about my future child’s home country as possible. In retrospect, it might have been the worst thing that I could have done. The story of the Congo isn’t an easy one, particularly the story of the past 10 to 15 years. What was academic to me in August became nightmare-inducing once I knew who my child was and exactly the type of world he was living in, half a world away.

The Congo has been engaged in a bloody civil war since 1998, although it “officially” ended in 2003. Calling it a civil war is a bit of a misnomer, as its more apt name is the Great War of Africa. In addition to approximately 25 rebel groups, this war involved not only the Congo, but Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It started after the end of the First Congo War, when Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s rebel troops — with the support of Rwanda, Uganda and Angola — overthrew the corrupt government of Mobutu Sese Seko. Side note: Laurent Kablia’s son, Joseph Kabila, is currently president of the Congo, and a candidate for reelection this November. When Kabila took power in 1997, the country’s name was changed from Zaire to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a violent crackdown ensued, ostensibly to get the country back under control. Much to the consternation of many Congolese, Rwanda remained a strong influence on Congolese politics, particularly in the capital of Kinshasa, until nearly a year later, when Kabila kicked the remaining foreign military forces out of the country.

The Second Congo Civil War, the Great War of Africa, began on August 2, 1998 in my son’s hometown of Goma. An ethnic rebel group, actively backed by Rwanda and Uganda, had emerged and taken control over the mineral-rich eastern provinces (which is why yet another name for this war is The Coltan War, for one of the Congo’s biggest and most lucrative exports). The war grew larger with the exploitation of bitter ethnic tensions still simmering after the Rwandan genocide; the Tutsi-led Rwandan government was backing the Congolese rebels, while Kabila enlisted the help of militant Hutus and agitated against Tutsis. There were reports of lynchings of Tutsis in the streets of Kinshasa. The war became incredibly complex, as regional aspirations and land grabs coupled with long-standing ethic tensions. The result was essentially a bloodbath. Unimaginable atrocities were happening on a daily basis, including the use of rape as a tool of war. If you have an ability to read about such things without falling apart (which I thought I did until I became the mother of a Congolese son), I recommend reading “All Things Must Fight to Live” by Bryan Mealer. It’s the non-fiction account of a journalist covering the war in the Congo for 3 years. It’s simultaneously compelling and horrifying, and exceptionally well-written.

I am far from an expert on Congolese history, and this is certainly the condensed version of events, but my understanding is that this war was largely fueled by a desire to gain control over the Congo’s vast mineral wealth. A number of Western mining and diamond companies — including those from the United States — threw their support behind the Kabila government in exchange for favorable business deals. Numerous other countries, from Libya to Sudan, are said to have supported the rebel groups.

The war formally ended in 2003, although violence continues in the Eastern Congo. The ongoing conflict is driven both by ethic tensions between Hutus and Tutsis and by the struggle for control over the vast mineral wealth in the area. The region is marked by looting, rape and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, the high death toll of the war is growing from the after-effects of such large-scale violence; widespread disease and famine continue to take lives as an astounding rate.

With all of this information in my head, I got the call.

On October 15, 2010, I heard the happy news: it’s a boy!! I was stunned, overcome with a kind of joy that I had never before experienced. I was looking at a picture of my son! My entire world turned upside down, and I fell hopelessly in love with this almost year-old darling baby boy.

I thought that the hard part was over; little did I know that it was just beginning!

And so a new wait — the wait to get on a plane to Kinshasa — began….

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