Hi all! Not that my "news" is anywhere near as "newsworthy" as Bob's, since he's actually IN Congo right now, but thought I'd share this, since it came out last week. Here's the article my department wrote about my trip to DRC in their newsletter.
Congo Mission by Margie Keaton, PsyD
Emily Johnson is a 3rd year PsyD student who had the most interesting experiences in the Congo. She became involved with the trip through her church, and stated, “When I heard about the trauma that women had experienced, I felt like I might be able to help. I had always wanted to go to Africa, and they really needed a woman with some background in psychology who could speak some French. So it was a good match. I went as a representative of Friendly Planet Missiology, which is a missional organization that is very humanistic-based on the principles of liberation theology. We strongly believe that the community already has the power and resources they need to solve their problems, and we go simply to partner with them and help them in any way they might request of us. We never try to "convert" anyone, and half of our team are Congo-lese people living in the Congo, doing the real day to day work.”
When I asked Emily if she had any frightening experiences in the Congo, she replied, “I was there for 6 weeks. I never felt my life was in danger, in terms of violence or anything like that. The biggest threat in most of the Congo is disease and sanitation. The only time I was ever “scared” was about 2 weeks before I left-- I got a parasite and I was starting to feel really sick. I was traveling in a small outboard motor boat on the Congo River, and I realized I was at least two days travel from a hospital with running water, so that was kind of stressful. But, I was traveling with a Congolese doctor who took very good care of me-- once he treated me I felt a lot better. Emily admitted that it was a “really hard trip” and that she was “almost always exhausted.” However, she met a lifelong friend there that was the most rewarding part of the trip. “The most rewarding thing was traveling with Mary, a nurse, who was my guide and companion throughout the whole trip. The most rewarding part was how connected we became, and how I never felt like I was "better" than her, but that we were just partners. She really became family to me, and now I have this family member on the other side of the globe that I can never forget or live without.” Emily said that the all the theories she learned about human development and human nature she saw “in the raw” in the Congo. She stated, “my perspective about life are completely different. Also, it's worth saying that being in a country where "psychology" as a field doesn't really exist due to lack of infrastructure and higher education is really humbling. I learned that being human is far more important in my therapeutic interactions and in my day to day life-- every interaction I had in the Congo was therapeutic. I was a therapist from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed.”
Emily has written an article about her experiences in the Congo that will be published in a February 2012 in an on-line magazine. For more information on Emily’s amazing experience on the Congo here is the site to visit in February:
http://www. hippocampusmagazine.com/
FPM's website is: www.friendlyplanetmissiology.org
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