Yashar

I have to go back; I have a huge debt to repay. I’m not sure how one payback personal experiences, but I’m eager to find a way when I go back to the battered city.

The people I spoke with before going made it sound like a death sentence – friends working for the UN’s stronghold in Nairobi, another friend at a Parisian NGO... even the unfriendly woman at the Canadian Embassy in Kigali. Although everyone said ‘no’, my heart knew ‘YES’; people are afraid of what they refuse to see, but I believe things can be different. I needed reason to keep believing, so I turned West towards the city of Goma, under fire in the powerful Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It was only a few weeks after the Generals had sparked off the hostilities again, desperate for a new excuse to exploit the land. Gold, diamonds and women were up for grabs; I was even offered the chance to buy a baby Silverback gorilla, its fiercely protective family massacred so it could be stolen and sold on the black market. Only chaos and violence would allow for such exploitation, and the so-called rebels, and the western backed government alike, pillaged and raped away.

Against this harrowing backdrop, a man named Damian receives a phone call from his younger brother, asking if he would send one of his seven daughters down to Kigali to take back a strange foreigner he had met a few hours ago in a taxi. Forty-eight hours later, I was met by a young woman at the taxi-rank, sent to take a long, uncomfortable journey back with me back to her war-torn town.

I didn’t know what I was getting into – I never predicted the love I was to be shown. Damian emptied one of the two cement rooms where he lived with his eleven-person family so I would have a safe place to rest my head. He always shared the little he had, even if it meant he wouldn’t have any at all. The days I spent under his roof were some of the most memorable of my life, as the Kalashnikovs and pistols spotting the nights became merely background noise, overshadowed by demonstrations of kindness, selflessness, and generosity which reassured me that what unites us as people trumps all which divides us. Food was scarce, but they shared plantains and potatoes, rice and bread, whenever they had it, and in light of the despot situation, only my mother’s cooking could satisfy my belly more; such was the flavour of their generosity.

Although we did not even share a common language, through mutual respect and appreciation we found a way to communicate as global citizens; smiles and laughter are an international language we are all born with. No modern communication lines will connect me with Damian and his family –no phone, no letter, no email. I need to go back; I owe many meals and memories, laughs and smiles I’ve yet to share since.