The survivors came with burns, machete wounds and babies about to be born. They were exhausted after walking for weeks or months without much food or water. They carried emotional wounds from watching family members and neighbors massacred in front of them.
Ever since 2017 when survivors of brutal fighting in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo fled to the city of Kikwit, the Communauté des Eglises de Frères Mennonites au Congo (CEFMC, Mennonite Brethren Church of Congo), based in Kikwit, has been ministering to them with faith and action.
Individuals welcomed people into their homes and offered clothing and food. The CEFMC hospital staff provided medical care and their churches became temporary shelters. When the needs proved greater than CEFMC could meet alone, Mennonite Central Committee worked with the local CEFMC committee to empower displaced people.
The church is called to meet the holistic needs of its people, says Antoine Kimbila, CEFMC general secretary. When a person’s spiritual and physical needs are met, they are more likely to experience peace.
“Peace is a synonym of shalom,” he says. “When we say shalom in Hebrew, it is the total salvation of mankind. What (MCC) brings to us in the community as projects … when it is married with the word of Christ, that brings peace to humankind.”
But peace didn’t come to Kikwit immediately. The arrival of displaced people caused conflict, says Jacqueline Kafuti, who was the first CEFMC elder to invite people to live in her home. Other neighbors hosted people from Kasai too, she says, but there were those who pushed the newcomers aside because resources were already limited.
In addition, some displaced people acted out because of the trauma they had experienced, says Kufutama Kafaire, another CEFMC local committee member. “Someone who runs away, is displaced because of war, his head is troubled. It looks as if the war has been following him even where he is,” Kafaire says.
Building connection
Providing equal education was one way that CEFMC helped to strengthen the connection between the two groups. By giving school supplies to primary school students and paying secondary school fees for displaced teens, the burden on host families was lifted. CEFMC also provided trauma training for the teachers.
Colette Koy Mazao, whose sixth-grade class doubled in size with the arrival of displaced children, struggled at first because displaced children self-segregated in the back of the classroom and did not speak the local language of Kikongo or the academic language of French.
Some displaced children were violent. Others would sometimes cry when she called on them. When she asked why, they told her, “We are thinking about the situation that we have passed through.”
Through the training, Mazao and other teachers learned the importance of mixing students in the classroom, instead of allowing them to sit in separate groups. Teachers organized outside activities so that students from both groups would be on the same teams.
In the classroom, Mazao learned to pay more attention to the emotional needs of the displaced children by drawing them aside when they looked upset. If a student is absent often or sick, she visits the student’s family to see if there is a problem she can help to resolve.
Mazao also learned to be less serious in the classroom and joke with the children. “It has helped not only the displaced children, but all the pupils to live in peace with everybody,” she says.
She’s happy that this year one of the displaced children in her classroom is at the top of the class academically. He also helps monitor the classroom behavior when she is absent.
“Things didn’t change so quickly,” Mazao says. “We worked progressively. Now there is a change.”
Understanding trauma
At the CEFMC hospital in the Kanzombi neighborhood, staff struggled initially with the behavior of people who were displaced. Dr. Jacques Tangudiki, a CEFMC local committee member responsible for health care, says displaced people demanded to be treated first and tended to be violent and noncompliant with treatment. This created tension between nurses and patients.
“Imagine your father was murdered in front of you; your mother was raped in front of you,” Tangudiki says. “They were living with all of this.”
Sometimes they would express anger when there didn’t seem to be a reason for it.
Tangudiki says the nurses have learned to understand this trauma response and how to help people deal with their emotions through the trauma training MCC provided. The hospital also provides primary care to displaced people for free, including disease prevention and medication for common ailments, such as malaria and waterborne diseases.
Holistic efforts
CEFMC has also worked with MCC to lower the rate of waterborne diseases, which cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, by drilling two boreholes (deep wells). Potable water from a borehole drilled in Kanzombi in 2021 has reduced waterborne diseases treated at the hospital from 38 percent to 9 percent, Tangudiki says.
Clean water has improved the health of thousands of people in Kikwit. It also reduces the fighting that commonly took place at remote springs where people used to get their water, even though it wasn’t potable. Youth, whose parents expected them to get water multiple times a day, would fight over who could access the single water pipe first.
Now that the boreholes are located near where people live, adults can get water throughout the day. They have time to get water and work together in the fields that CEFMC provided to the most vulnerable displaced people and their host families.
“Without water, there’s no life,” says Kimbila. People need water in their bodies. Clean water helps treat diseases, education helps people to understand things, and agriculture helps them to eat. “So all of these projects need water to help humans survive.”
He compares CEFMC’s holistic work with the people who were hungry and tired while listening to Jesus preach. He fed them by distributing one boy’s fish and bread to the crowd.
“That man (Jesus) came,” Kimbila says, “not just to save the soul, but the body. Salvation is total, and salvation is holistic. God takes care of us, not just spiritually, but physically, too. For this reason, we as the church work with partners to save people holistically.” He adds, “It’s difficult to bring someone who is hungry to peace.”
In the city of Tshikapa, which is a 10-hour drive from Kikwit, Communauté Mennonite au Congo (CMCo; Mennonite Church of Congo) currently is implementing projects that are similar to the ones CEFMC is doing. Communauté Evangélique Mennonite (CEM; Evangelical Mennonite Church) in Kabwela also carried out projects with MCC in the first two to three years following the Kasai massacres.
Once-strained relationships among the churches and with MCC have been resolved as the groups worked together to respond to the needs of the displaced people and their hosts. With MCC training and former representative Mulanda Juma’s conflict resolution skills, local committees within each denomination are equipped to respond to crises.
Women from CMCo and CEFMC also have trained together to create Women Situation Rooms. Through these local organizations, women are actively using the peacebuilding skills they learned to resolve conflicts among their family, friends and community.
As a result of all the peacemaking work, humanitarian and spiritual, displaced people are gradually settling into life in Kikwit.
“Since they came here, they completely lacked a lot of things, but now they have first the joy because many have become members of our church, an important step,” Kimbila says.
“Because they are at our side, they feel there are people who love them, with whom they can live.”
By Linda Espenshade, MCC U.S. news coordinator
Mennonite Central Committee is a global, nonprofit organization that strives to share God’s love and compassion for all through relief, development and peace. MCC is committed to relationships with their local partners and churches. As an Anabaptist organization, they strive to make peace a part of everything they do.
