In eastern Congo, women make themselves heard
Taking a break from hard work, they celebrate International Women's Day with pride
(Trish Morrow photo)
Tomato growers march in the women's day parade in Uvira, Congo, on March 8.
Coco McCabe, a resident of Ipswich, is a writer for Oxfam America, an international relief agency. Together with a small team from the organization’s communications and advocacy departments, she is visiting the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo to collect stories about Oxfam’s work in the region and to get a better understanding of the current situation for the Congolese people and their ongoing efforts for peace.
By Coco McCabe
March 12, 2008
GOMA, Congo -- Rain on a metal roof makes a racket, but the downpour that hit Mboko on a recent afternoon couldn’t drown out Martha Bobilya. In a small house with cardboard-covered windows, she spoke for all women in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where years of conflict have dragged the region deep into poverty.
“Women really want peace,” she said through an interpreter, “because it’s the women who are doing everything.”
And they’re doing it with virtually no modern conveniences. In the rural villages of eastern Congo, water doesn’t flow from a kitchen faucet; women have to fetch it. They go to nearby streams or communal water taps and lug a supply home on their backs. They rise early and collect wood for their cooking fires. They pound cassava in wooden pestles with massive sticks, they till the earth, and scrub the laundry, and look after the children -- and often they are the main breadwinners, too.
Once a year, on International Women’s Day, the world slows down long enough to think about women like Martha Bobilya and the immense contribution they make. It’s not a holiday people in the United States pay much attention to, if they know about it at all. But on that day, March 8, we got stuck in Bukavu -- the capital of South Kivu -- and I’m glad we did.
What was holding us up on that muddy road jammed with cars near Bukavu’s ferry landing? Women and girls -- in pairs and small groups, some by themselves and others toting babies -- streaming back from a celebration held in their honor. There were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, and they were decked out in brilliant African fabrics tucked, tied, and tailored to their shapes -- hugging their hips, swooping off their shoulders, flaring out at their ankles in a giddy array of colors and patterns. Whole teams of women in matching fabrics strode by our truck, their identical dresses signaling the bond they had with each other.
About 125 kilometers south of Bukavu, in the town of Uvira, Oxfam staffers participated in the local festivities, too, donning their own new purple wraps, and striding with throngs of other women through the main street. There were the wives of men who own bars dressed in elegant green gowns, carrying bottles, and stopping to sing and dance at the beer and soda depot. And there were the women tomato growers, looking crisp in their navy blue and gold dresses. They carried plates of carefully stacked tomatoes on their heads. The women from the Catholic diocese of Uvira wore brilliant blue dresses printed with gold stars and bold depictions of a saint.
But more than just a day for new clothes and a break from the drudgery that marks many of their lives, the celebration, I later learned, was a way for women to speak out, a form of collective activism. Many groups carried banners calling for peace, for justice, for good government -- all the things the Democratic Republic of Congo needs so badly.
Will things change?
They might -- if women like Trish Morrow have anything to do about it. She’s Oxfam’s public health team leader for the rural villages around Uvira. Wiry and high-energy, she was the one who guided us down the long, bumpy road to Mboko to meet with Martha Bobilya and other members of a local conflict resolution committee. While the rest of us schlepped along in dirty pants and muddy sandals, Morrow was elegantly clothed in a long dress with sleeves that exploded into fans at the elbows -- just like the dresses many women she works with had worn in their celebratory march a few days before.
And, like their kindred spirit, she toted a load on her back: a big, battered red knapsack bulging with the tools of her trade. Among the things she carries are a Swahili phrase book, a knife with a pair of pliers, and a collection of plastic critters: a mouse, a few maggots, and a giant cockroach. Why?
They come in handy, she said, for those spur-of-the-moment public health lessons she often finds herself giving in the field. Far removed from the halls of power, Morrow’s work is not the stuff of sexy headlines about war and peace. But it’s efforts like hers -- offered one step at a time in the most remote villages -- that are helping to lay the groundwork for a new Congo.
For more information about Oxfam American and its work, please visit their website at www.oxfamamerica.org. For information on how you can contribute to the Passport blog, please contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at K_Kaplan@globe.com.
