Kids here seem to watch out for each other. Yes, there’s brawls in the street and egos and minor jealousies or tragic-seeming injustices committed but in general, they all take care of each other. I’ve seen this happen in the USA between siblings, particulary older watching out for younger. But here, when there are several families living within one parcelle, with business conducted in the street, kids grow up in a community where they know and rely on each other. I see kids picking up ones who have tripped and fallen, and carrying each other around, and holding hands as they walk down the street.
An action I noticed first off when coming to Kinshasa was how many men held hands. After asking, it was explained to me that when you hold someone’s hand here, you are telling them the truth, from the heart. It gives a whole new meaning to the old men I see holding hands as they walk down the street, or the long handshakes I get from Monzon some mornings when he asks how I am.
My boss told me a story the other day about his walk to work. He saw a little boy in school uniform, about 6 or 7, getting off a taxi and paying for his trip. The man he was paying refused to give him his change, and the van started driving off. That change was the little boy’s lunch and ticket home, and he chased the taxi yelling. People on the street started taking notice, and when he tripped and fell in the road everyone rose up. The taxi stopped and the man was ripped out of it, forced to give the boy his change, and then ran as fast as he could down the road with the fear that he was going to get his ass kicked by the crowd.
I’ve heard many of the people I work with refer to their “brothers”, even if I know that they don’t have any. The term “brother” or “sister” can extend beyond blood ties to those people you love deeply and depend on. I get this, as my best friend that I’ve known since I was four years old seems more like a sister than anything else, and I like the loose boundaries between the family you were born into and the family you choose.
We have our own definitions and ways of building community in the USA, but I think that there are some qualities in this flexibility of inclusion that we could expand upon. I am in no way saying Kinshasa is perfect—there are horrible crimes committed by people toward each other, a high murder rate, and an astonishing amount of deception and lying. But there are great things we could learn from—in the USA I would like the idea of family to be more inclusive, I’d like more honesty in handshakes, which have evolved to largely symbolize a business deal. I want kids to watch out for each other, I’d like streets of people to rise up when injustices are commited. I’m sure that the dependency on each other here in Congo is partly due to the struggle that is existing in Kinshasa-that if there’s only one breadwinner in the family they will be expected to support more than just themselves. Neighbors take care of each other’s kids while they go to work and lend each other money. I’m a total idealist, but maybe, in this time of deep recession in the USA, we’ll learn a little bit of how to simultaneously depend on and support each other with respect and understanding once again.
