Oxfam Ireland: Emile Hirsch's Congo Diary

Day 5: One Final Stop

2009-01-19T12:17:00.001Z

It’s our last day, and we all cram into one jeep for the drive back to Rwanda. I reflect on the trip as we pass through the DRC border, thinking how important it is that these NGOs exist. Imagine if the refugees who came here weren’t given camps. They’d stand a good chance of being slaughtered. For a boy such as Prince, the support from NGOs represent a chance to take his destiny into his own hands. And for a rape victim such as Kimanizani, donations to Oxfam go toward her medical costs and food and give her a chance to rejoin the world.

More than 250,000 people are buried beneath us. We’re at our last stop before the airport: the Rwanda genocide memorial, one of the biggest mass grave sites in the country. Armed guards stand silently all around, and the place has the stillness of a church. Huge slabs of concrete, with no names on them, represent the victims who lie here as one. Inside the memorial building photo panels give a brief history of the events that led to the genocide — how the Belgians codified the Tutsi and Hutu tribes as separate races, primarily as a way of rewarding a small minority of Tutsi to control the majority Hutu; how decades later these fabricated ethnicities clashed, with the consequences still reverberating. There is also an exhibit here on other countries that have endured genocide: Germany, Bosnia, Armenia, among others. What links these incidents is that they all center around prejudice, hate, and propaganda and had desperate, crooked men orchestrating them, warping otherwise normal people into monsters.

For me this trip was an introduction to an inspiring people who live under the harshest of conditions and still try to make the best of things. Liz, Lyndsay, Nabil, Yao, and Jimmie challenged me every day to think a little harder than I had before. These are people who really want to get out into this world and participate in it. Now I look back at some of the earlier parts of this travelogue and almost chuckle at my naïveté. Maybe we can all come together to change the world. Still, as we fly away, Africa disappearing behind thick clouds, all I can see is that boy with the faded red shirt.

HOW TO HELP IN THE CONGO

A surge in violence this past fall displaced an additional 200,000 Congolese, making Oxfam’s work even more vital. If you want to make a donation earmarked for the DRC, you can do so by visiting oxfamamerica.org/drc or calling 800-776-9326. Specify that you want to contribute to the Democratic Republic of Congo Relief and Rehabiliation Fund. It helps with such efforts as installing latrines and freshwater systems in rural villages and camps; assisting rape victims; and reassimilating former soldiers, some still children, into communities through vocational training and reconciliation sessions.

Day 4: The Refugee Camps

2009-01-19T12:16:00.000Z

It’s a 15-minute ride to Mugunga II, a camp of 10,000 Congolese displaced mostly from the fighting between the state and rebel militia, and the impossibly bumpy roads are like a ride on a barroom bronco. The buildings thin out as we leave Goma, and the people walking the roads become more trade-related. Boys with makeshift wheel barrel–like wooden scooters (I’m told they have organized races) cruise by, most hauling lumber or bananas. Women carry large sacks or other containers on their heads. Their sense of balance leaves me astonished. A few big open-top trucks with black-booted soldiers pass by, their AK-47s sticking out the sides like thorns.

At the camp dozens of tentlike huts fastened to roofs made of trash bags and straw are jammed close together. Getting out of the jeep, we are quickly engulfed by a crowd. Kids push against one another to get a closer look. Our guide today, Charles, walks us through the camp. The first thing he points out is the water system. Women and children with plastic jugs get water from metal pipesthat jut about three feet out of the ground. The gushing water is pumped from Lake Kivu to a storage well, where it’s chlorinated, then sent to Mugunga. It is probably the single most important part of the camp.

I look over and see a small tarp on which several heads of cabbage covered in grime wait to be sold. One reason the area is so dirty and barren is the nearby volcano. Hard rock from the cooled lava creates a black dust that gets into and onto everything. For a place with so many problems, it seems almost cruel that an active volcano adds to them.

A young boy in a faded red shirt is starving — for not only food but attention. He goes up to all of us and pulls at our hands, wanting somebody to hold his. He never smiles or makes an expression. Not knowing what I can do, I wrest my hand free of his and drift away.

Charles wants to show us how the water pump works, about two kilometers away, so we all pack back into the jeeps. Jimmie shuts the rear door, and the kid in the faded red shirt pops his face up into the back window. Jimmie tries to shoo him off, but he doesn’t listen, and as the jeep heads down a narrow dirt road, he chases us with a group of other kids. The driver stops a few times to yell at the kids to scatter, but as soon as we get going again they reappear. One time the driver brakes suddenly, comically sending the kids smashing into the rear door. At one point Jimmie leans over to see the kid in red clinging to the bumper. “He’s on the back!” Jimmie says, concerned. A huge pothole sends the boy flat onto the ground. He gets up, wincing, eyes blinking, and then begins to run at us again. But the cars have taken too much of a lead, and he can’t catch up. Charles continues talking about water distribution, but all I can feel is guilt for leaving that kid behind.

Mugunga I is our next stop. It’s an older and better organized camp. At Mugunga II the roofs are so poorly thatched that when it rains, buckets of water stream onto the occupants, but here most of the roofs have at least one tarp. Banana fields surround the camp, but they do not belong to the people here. I meet Prince and Hertier, brothers ages 11 and 9. They stand fast next to each other. Neither one goes to school or can read, and most of their days they spend playing soccer. Hertier made a ball out of trash bags and shoestrings strung together. Not even war and death all around them can crush these children’s spirits. The brothers are very different. Prince, the older boy, is quieter, more world-weary, while Hertier does most of the talking. Asked about their future, Hertier says that he would like to work and study. Prince looks at the ground. “Only God knows,” he says. That night Nabil and Jimmie and I go off to Doga, a popular restaurant and bar for the local NGO employees. Jimmie and I get Primus, the local beer, which has a few more points of alcohol than you get in the States. Pretty soon we’re all nice and dandy and talking with a woman Jimmie knows named Sarah. She’s a 30-year-old NGO worker who just got back from Iraq, with horror stories about avoiding hostage situations and receiving death threats. Sometimes it takes a lot of guts, even putting your life on the line, to make the world a better place. After we finish our beers, I drag Jimmie and Nabil back to the hotel. It’s a good thing, too, because Jimmie pukes all night, blood mixed in, and then diarrhea sets in. TIA, baby.

Day 3: Into the Jungle

2009-01-19T12:14:00.000Z

The piercing cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster pops my eyes open, and then drumbeats and chanting begin to fill the darkness outside. Must be a wake-up band. The bell at the top of the rickety church tower tolls five.

This morning we take canoes carved out of single, giant pieces of wood and travel about 18 kilometers downstream. The jungle is on a scale of which I’ve never seen before — twists of massive vines wrapped around trunks of juggernaut trees. On the riverside children of the local villages giggle as they wave and throw us dorks the thumbs-up. Some are barely two or three years old, with no adult in sight. Kids grow up fast here.

Our destination is the small village of Lubao, a former center of the Mai Mai militia. As we approach, two canoes filled with young men singing a traditional Mai Mai song paddle out to meet us. On the shore it seems as though the entire village is waiting for us, chanting and clapping. After shaking dozens of hands (in a special Lubao handshake that I picked up by the third or fourth shake), we make our way through the village. The place is lined with windowless bamboo-framed mud huts with straw roofs. We sit under a shaded tarp while the children, in their white-and-blue school uniforms, dance to the throbbing beat of a drum. The guy who appears to be the host encourages us to do the same, and since I already look like a fool in my Crocodile Dundee hat, what the hell. Dance has the ability to quickly connect people without a need for language.

Afterward, as we introduce ourselves, I mutter to Yao that I’m not going to announce myself as an “Oxfam ambassador” again. Back in Goma, at the border, immigration officers burst out laughing when I told them that. But Yao explains that the people of the DRC are very concerned with titles. So against my better judgment, I reiterate the title to the village, which at that very moment goes stone quiet. Until the deafening laughter begins. And damned if I don’t deserve it. Face burning red with humiliation, I push my testicles back down from my chest and we start the tour.

This village has been under an Oxfam rebuilding program that, among other things, has led to the construction of a well for drinking water and sanitation. On a walk through the forest, with children grabbing at our sides, we come to a site where a spring is being turned into a manageable, constant water supply. Next we visit a medical facility, which consists essentially of three sparse rooms and mostly empty bottles of over-the-counter medicines. There is no permanent doctor in this village of several hundred people, and the nurse has no formal training. Jimmie and Liz comment that the medical facility is one of the best they’ve seen in a village like this. I can hardly believe it. Still, this is a village that is clearly getting better; just a few years ago it was marked by chaos and violence from rebels clashing with the local Mai Mai warriors.

Liz and Lyndsay go off to talk with some women in the village. Other than Yao, who translates, no men are invited. They return a half-hour later nearly moved to tears. The women, they learn, lack the access to sell goods in Kindu and instead are forced to make a shitty middleman deal with a local boater, who gets them an insanely small price. Lyndsay proposes that Oxfam start a water-transportation program to boost trade for all villages on the river. And that, I’m realizing, is pretty much what’s going to end poverty — the simple nuts and bolts of improving commerce.

The last man I meet before leaving Lubao is Assane, a six-foot-tall Mai Mai warrior with a face cut from marble. In his sister’s hut he calmly explains to us how he lost his left leg. In 2002 he was a soldier fighting a few miles upriver. He was shot in the leg, and without proper medical care it became critically infected. This is when the men in the village decided to amputate it in the traditional way, using nothing but a blazing hot machete. Now Assane sells tables and chairs in Kindu, going upriver twice a week for a small profit. He tells Yao that he still believes in the legend of the Mai Mai, which says that tribe members can dodge bullets. When Jimmie asks how he then can explain being shot, Assane cracks a slight smile. “Because,” he says, “at one point I retreated. Once I did, my invincibility shield was broken.” I look at Jimmie in disbelief.

Back in Goma we meet Justine Masika Bihamba, a Congolese woman who heads the Synergie des Femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles, a project that helps rape victims recover physically and psychologically. She shows us around a small compound with 24 beds. Eight women, sitting against a crumbling brick wall, are knitting clothes and weaving baskets as part of the process of healing, so the women feel they are not worthless. We walk into the operating room. Here a surgeon treats conditions such as fistula, repairing the wall between the rectum and the vagina that’s often severely ripped during rape. Without the operation many women become outcasts in their communities, shunned for being unable to control their bowels.

We enter a small, dark room with two beds and meet Kimanizani, who is 20. She looks frighteningly gaunt, her chest rising and falling in shallow, tired breaths. With a voice that never rises above a slight whisper, she explains that two months earlier she was in Rutshuru, north of Goma, working in a field with her two-year-old son, when two armed men came out of the nearby forest and raped her. When her husband found out, he rejected her as his wife. Emotionally shattered, Kimanizani began to drastically lose weight, reaching a fragile 66 pounds. That’s when Justine brought her to Synergie. Today, for the first time in a while, Kimanizani manages to stand, her body trembling. What gives Kimanizani hope are the other recovering victims around her, who wait on her and embrace her as a sister. The visit really confirms for me that women are the heroes of the DRC. They tend the fields and make the food and get the water and raise the children, and all the while take all the shit guys seem to have an endless supply of. Even Justine has to overcome physical assaults on her and her family — attempts to silence her cause.

When I get back to the hotel I’m exhausted from the day and disgusted with the violence men wreak on the world. I pass on dinner and lie down. Tomorrow will be a big day.

Day 2: “Ambassador” Hirsch

2009-01-19T12:03:00.000Z

In the morning, as we drive through the city’s mud-soaked streets on our way to the airport, I’m sucked into the world outside the car window, completely separate from my own life. The young man with the hardened eyes walking alone, carrying his plastic water jug down a pebbled road, does not know who we are or where we came from. It is tempting to feel as though we do not belong here. But it was that kind of thinking, in the form of nonintervention by most of the world’s biggest players, that allowed the genocide to happen.

As we wait on the runway, Lyndsay points to a demolished plane nearby. Two months ago it crashed as it tried to take off, catching fire and killing 21 people. Gulp. From the air Goma looks bigger than I thought it was. Roofs crumbling from the ravages of time and neglect, dirt roads, and occasional fires pepper the landscape, and about 10 construction workers stand by the burnt and twisted remains of the crashed aircraft, slowly taking the pieces away. Beneath us now is a lush rain forest in the Mitumba Mountains, with titanic cone-shaped peaks jutting up from the trees. There are still ancient tribes of Pygmy down there, says Yao.

After two hours we land in Kindu, the capital of the Maniema province. We’re staying at a relatively nice guest compound, courtesy of the local Catholic church here, run by an exceedingly old man whom we all come to call simply “the father.” Provoked by Nabil’s insistence, we head out for a walk. The sight of us Westerners causes such a commotion, it’s as if the Beatles have arrived. The kids cluster around us, morphing into one giant being of enormous energy and tenacity. A 16-year-old boy selling bike parts sits on an old broken-down lawn chair, shaded by a generous tree. I can’t believe it, but he’s wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt. As we walk farther the crowd around us grows. A young man, perhaps 17, starts flirting with Liz, playfully at first — until he kisses her and pinches her ass. She pushes him off; Jimmie repeats a few times to the young man, “No, she’s married,” and we decide we better get back to the church. Liz, who before seemed downright fearless about charging into the jungle, now has the pause of someone who realizes she is no longer a removed spectator.

Today is a day of meetings. After we sit down with the province’s “governor at interim,” we meet with the “president of the delegation,” which is a bit awkward because he was under the impression that someone from the U.S. House of Representatives was with us. Oops. I’m introduced as an “Oxfam ambassador,” which is kind of embarrassing. If the guy from The Girl Next Door is the only public figure the people of Kindu can get to visit them, then what the fuck, right?

We cruise over to a United Nations compound and meet Ahmed Shariff, head of operations for the United Nations peacekeeping program in Maniema. Ahmed comes across not so much as a military commander as a professor, which, it turns out, he is: He left his position as a political science teacher at Penn for this job. He understands the broad issues that need to be addressed to develop the country. The biggest improvement would be to simply create functioning roads, which would allow more rapid development of trade. That would require paving more of the many dirt roads, rebuilding neglected ones, increasing security, and stopping illegal “tolls” imposed by the local militias. With its abundant minerals and timber, the DRC has the resources to be the most powerful country in all of Africa. But the constant violence and general disorganization keep it functioning at a basic, impoverished level. (Ahmed criticizes local politicians for not formulating programs when they run for office; instead it’s just a mad dash for power, then chaos.) Until those things change, foreign companies will be deterred from investing here.

Day 1: From Cali to the Congo

2009-01-19T11:41:00.000Z

Right now I’m sitting in seat 24H, 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, on my way to the heart of Africa: the Democratic Republic of Congo. On my lap is a packet from Oxfam America, the humanitarian aid organization. The pages are filled with all sorts of information about the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsi and Hutu civil war, and other injustices, and so far I’m having to read everything three or four times because none of it is really making much sense to me. Oxfam brought up the idea of this trip a month ago. Another actor and I were to visit camps of displaced people, meet local officials, and see relief efforts firsthand to help make others aware of this ongoing crisis.

I first came across Oxfam through the story of Christopher McCandless, the young man whose journey of self-discovery, with its ultimately tragic conclusion, was well-documented in the book and film Into the Wild. I played McCandless in the latter. He had given his life savings of $24,500.68 to Oxfam before setting out on his two-year odyssey to Alaska. Inspired by that, I also donated to Oxfam, and it still feels like the best money I’ve ever spent.

So here I am in 24H, my little blue bag I bought at a CVS pharmacy for $20 buried deep in cargo. And now, due to unexpected reasons, the other actor, one I’d counted on as my brother in arms, isn’t next to me. He canceled hours earlier. So as far as actors with no relief work experience whatsoever go, I’m on my own. And I’m reading these pages and thinking about the $600 in 20s and 50s I was told to carry for “security reasons” and part of me (a big part) is a bit scared. I mean, Jesus — the Congo?

I’m starting to put together a picture of the situation in the DRC. In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, more than 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children were brutally and systematically murdered by Hutu extremists over 100 bloody days. The Tutsis, through the Rwandan Patriotic Front, fought back, eventually sending the Hutus into retreat. The Hutus fled, and over a few days in July 1994 nearly 1 million refugees crossed the border into Goma, an eastern city in the DRC. This strained an already unstable situation in the Congo, a country filled with civil strife. A lack of supplies and basic water and hygiene led to new levels of suffering and starvation. Since 1998 an estimated 5.4 million people have died from the hardships.

The other actor may have dropped out, but I’m not alone. Before I departed Los Angeles I had been joined by Lyndsay Cruz, Oxfam’s “public figures liaison.” My first impression of this blond-haired, blue-eyed 30-year-old was more California beach babe than humanitarian worker. Turns out the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Also onboard was photographer Nabil Elderkin, who has a restless energy and a toothpick forever glued to his mouth. He’s a wise 26, having grown up in Australia and traveled the world shooting photos since he was 18. When I offered him a beer in the airport lounge, he told me he quit drinking on his 21st birthday, which sounded ass-backward to me. “In Australia we start at 14,” he explained.

The rest of the team joins us at a stopover in Frankfurt. Liz Lucas, a short, multipierced 27-year-old blonde, is Oxfam’s press officer. She mentions that only a few days earlier militia fighters stormed into a refugee camp in Rutshuru and opened fire with machine guns, killing nine and injuring many others. This, at a camp just like the ones we are supposed to visit. I’ll be honest: Right now I’m scared out of my fucking mind. I keep going over how to get out of boarding the next plane, but there’s just no way without giving up some manhood.

The fifth member of our group is Jimmie Briggs, a journalist and author. About 6-foot-3 and black, with nerdy-cool retro glasses and long, thin dreadlocks, Jimmie, 38, has a charisma that puts me at ease right away. He wrote a book, Innocents Lost, about child soldiers around the world, and spent six years researching it, so this guy knows what he’s doing. At our next stopover, in Ethiopia, Jimmie and I sit at a bar and drink Fantas together, chatting about what I expect from Africa. I give him a lame answer about trying to manage my own expectations, which basically means I have no idea. But later, when we all grab some food at an Ethiopian restaurant, I turn to Jimmie and readdress his question. What do I want? To help make the world a better place. That’s why we’re all here. Jimmie puts out his fist to me. That’s the truth right there, he says. I take his word for it.

On our way to the plane two African men blatantly cut in front of us as we go through security. “TIA,” say Jimmie and Nabil, chuckling with each other. TIA. This Is Africa.

We touch down in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, and meet Yao, a 32-year-old Congolese Oxfam worker who looks exactly like the pop star Seal, but without the scars. His English is perfect, and he ushers us into two jeeps, painted purple to render them unusable if stolen. We drive for three hours, winding around cliff-hanging roads at sphincter-tightening speeds, until we reach the city of Goma, just across the border in the Congo. We’ll spend the night here.