Return to Mitwaba

It was in 1998 when the General Board of Global Ministries in New York City decided to evacuate all United Methodist missionaries from the DRCongo. I was in the mountains in the Mitwaba District when the call came on the district superintendent's ham radio. I left.

Now in 2010, I arrived at the border of the Mitwaba District at the village of Kyubo, greeted by a wave of United Methodists. Those who have visited the communities in Africa know what these greetings can look like. This was all that and something much, much deeper personally. These were my people. I was their missionary. (Sorry about the colonial/paternalistic sounding language, but pastors know what I mean.)

Since my leaving, these people have gone through the most under-reported human tragedy since the Holocaust, 4 to 5 million Congolese killed, and I was stepping onto this hallowed ground. As I stepped into the district, I saw the remaining bricks of the burned out church. 85% of the village had been burned. (UN numbers) Then I was taken to the mass graves, marked by three simple wooden crosses.

First the May-May (pronounced My My) came through burning and killing. Then government troops swept out the May-May, likewise burning and killing. The slaughter was indiscriminate and brutal, rape and machete being the weapons of choice.

I'll write later on “Everything I Know about the War in Congo I Learned in the Village,” but keeping it short, when the regular Congolese troops were shown to be no match against the invading Rwandan and Ugandan armies, the May-May arose as the “saviors” of the Congolese people. Think Khmer Rouge. They were saving the people through a reign of fire and death. The name May-May means Water-Water. Spiritually high (and drugged up), the May-May believed that bullets passed through them like water. They were led by war lords who wore necklaces of human body parts (genitalia). They terrorized the land. That being said, when the government troops finally displaced them, the village experienced death and destruction all over again.

With DS Mulongo and DS Mutombo of the Mitwaba District, I had just entered what had come to be known as Le Triangle de la Mort (The Triangle of Death), also known as the Route Rouge (the Red Road). As we rode north, we saw village after village with the same story. Villages that at one time were things of beauty, now looked like the bush.

Here's just another tragedy: I'm the first emissary to visit these villages (and I'm five years late.) I now know why I had to come and why I had to ride a bicycle to Mulongo. It was the only way I would have seen this.

Bob
Mulongo