Yesterday I Went Home
May 27 2006
19 years
after setting out for far and distant lands, I finally once again set foot on
the soil of Nyankunde, the town of my birth and home for the first 9 years of
my life. It was somewhat saddening to see what has become of this once idyllic
little town in the intervening years. In September 2002, Nyankunde was attacked
and pretty much destroyed as a result of tribal conflicts and jealousies in
this unstable part of the world. In the intervening 3 1/2 years, progress has
been made, reconstruction has begun, the hospital is once again open for
business, and the locals are beginning to return to their homes. But it is sad
to see the many homes still without rooves (the tin rooves having been removed
by looters) and the generally unkempt nature of what I remember as being such a
tidy, well-kept little town. Unfortunately, we didn't have long, so I didn't
have time to visit the whole town, but at least managed a quick tour of the
hospital and a visit to our old home. The whole experience, though, was highly
surreal, as if I'd passed into some darker, dirtier alternate universe. My mind
recognized old shapes and forms, paths and buildings, but everything was shabby
and forlorn, run down and ruined. Almost like some bad dream from which you
hope you'll soon wake up.
The
hardest part, I suppose, was coming to terms with the fact that the old
Nyankunde, the Nyankunde of so many happy memories, no longer exists. The old
Nyankunde of lessons in the morning with mom and running wild in the bush in
the afternoon with friends and roasting whole pigs by the swimming pool and
bonfires at the end of the runway and going down in our white and blue minivan
to meet the MAF airplane; the Nyankunde of going for hikes in the bush and
climbing trees and church outside under the eucalyptus trees on Christmas
morning... The old Nyankunde which I can still picture so clearly in my head;
every house, every path, every tree (well, almost)... A place that was once
home, a real, honest, true-to-goodness home, where we had our very own house,
with my very own bedroom, now no longer home at all. The story of my life, I
suppose. Old homes left behind, now strange places inhabited by strangers.
Starting anew in new places, with new friends, new ways of living, new rules,
new customs... Such is the life of a nomad like myself...
The
other interesting part of the trip was observing the general state of affairs
in this part of the world. Everywhere along the road between Komanda and Bunia,
UN troops are everywhere, barricaded behind barbed wire in various camps along
the road (and government troops at various spots in between, asking for
"tolls". Fortunately they leave us wazungus alone). One gets the
feeling that if these UN troops were to leave, this part of the country would
very quickly once again fall into lawlessness and anarchy. The truth, I think,
is that at this point in time, the Congo (or parts of it) consists more or less
of fedual fiefdoms ruled by various warlords, and the UN is the only thing
currently holding it together. One can come up with various theories for why
this is, but my theory is that there are various stages a country must go through
on its way to becoming a nation-state and various prequisites for each stage.
For example, maintaining control over an area as large as the
The
good news, though, is that at the end of it all,
Jeremie Wood