Congo Dawn Read online

  Robin suddenly wanted very much to linger in this cozy room with the teakettle already steaming on the cooking range. To delay her return for at least a little while to a camp filled with hard-bitten mercenaries and Wamba’s mangy militia, where she had to remain constantly on guard and watch everything she said and did. But she hesitated, her glance sliding sideways toward Michael.

  Without lifting his eyes from the computer monitor, he hunched broad shoulders. “Hey, don’t mind me. I’m heading back to the clinic as soon as I drop Sam an e-mail that his flight’s a go. But do stay. We’d hate for you to think we’re poor hosts here at Taraja.”

  As though taking Robin’s acquiescence for granted, Miriam was already bustling around the kitchen area, whisking a red-checkered cloth over the table, setting out enamel mugs, shaking assorted store-bought cookies from a tin container onto a plate, pouring hot water into a porcelain teapot so old its flower-and-leaf pattern had almost worn away.

  “Mama?” Miriam’s small daughter appeared through the curtain of a doorway, rubbing her eyes as though just waking from a nap. Swinging the toddler into his arms, Ephraim carried her over to sit on his lap at the table. Robin’s hand radio had remained silent, so when Miriam began pouring tea into mugs, Robin slid into a chair across from Ephraim.

  Miriam handed Robin a cup of tea, then passed the plate of cookies. “So tell me what you’ve been doing since Michael saw you last. How did you ever find yourself in our rainforest? Such a small world!”

  If the store-bought cookies were rather stale and crumbling from humidity, the tea was excellent. As Miriam asked one gentle, probing question after another, Robin found herself sharing far more of the last five years than she’d planned. But she carefully skimmed over her father’s death. Kristi’s health difficulties. Leaving the Marines for the private security world.

  Across the room, Michael had switched off the computer. But if he had to get back to the clinic, he sure wasn’t hurrying to leave. That he was listening closely, Robin could see. That her halting explanations were as much for him as Miriam, Robin was well aware.

  Robin glossed even more carefully over the role Kelli and Colonel Duncan had played in the mix-up of five years ago. But Miriam didn’t let it slide. “I don’t understand. Your father was a Marine officer. Surely he at least would have received a full report about what really happened on that mission. Why would he not have told you?”

  Robin went still. She saw Michael’s back stiffen across the room. Both Miriam and Ephraim, even little Sarah, had their eyes fixed on her face, clearly expecting some explanation. Robin set her mug down on the table as she groped for words.

  “I can’t explain why my father did what he did. But you must understand he was a proud man. A proud Marine. From a proud and honorable line of Christopher Robert Duncans. And every one of his children had failed him. Once Chris was gone . . . well, my father was dealing with cancer, knowing he didn’t have long and that his heritage, the Duncan family line, was now dead with him. I . . . I think it just—confused him.”

  As kind a description for it as any!

  Robin hoped that was the end of it. But Michael spun around in his chair, exploding into speech. “What are you talking about, dead with him! Your father still had two live children, didn’t he? This is the twenty-first century, isn’t it? Let me tell you, from where I sit, it wasn’t his kids who failed him. It was Colonel Christopher Robert Duncan who failed his kids. And if he isn’t—wasn’t—proud of the woman his daughter has become, that’s his loss, not yours!”

  The heated vehemence in his tone took Robin by surprise. Warmed her heart despite herself. Michael broke off, red suddenly staining his cheekbones. Jumping to his feet, he strode out the door without looking back.

  The corridor guard had watched his comrade hurry forward to intervene. Once the other guard had escorted the intruder from the premises and returned to his post, the corridor guard stepped out the clinic’s rear door. Here a lawn of cleared brush swept down to a patch of banana palms with the river visible beyond. Closing the door, the guard looked around to ensure no listening ears were close enough to overhear. Then he slid a small hand radio from a pocket.

  The guard would have liked to ignore his standing instructions. Pretend this scene never happened. But somehow, as though by dark magic, the man to whom the frequency belonged would inevitably find out. And if the guard did not understand the purpose behind his orders, he knew too well the personal consequences of disobedience.

  When the voice he feared crackled from the speaker, he summoned up instead what excuses he could muster. “There is a foreign woman here. The same female soldier who brought the prisoners. Because she works for the mzungu mine owner, I was not able to prevent her entrance.”

  “And? If you have disturbed me, she must have had speech with your charges. Have they disobeyed their orders?”

  “Not the boy Jacob or the others. But there is a woman. She spoke aloud the name of Jini and much else. I do not know how much the foreign woman understood. But if she returns to speak again to this woman—”

  “Set your mind at rest. She will not return. As to your in­competence in permitting the mzungu woman entrance, if you will do what must be done, perhaps it will be forgiven.”

  Miriam looked thoughtfully from Robin to the empty doorway, but a small smile was curving her mouth. What wrong impression had Michael just sent running through her pretty head? Robin jumped into the silence.

  “Hey, this is way too much about me. I’d love to hear more of your story. Do you have other siblings? Did you never return to the United States like Michael to study?”

  Without intention, Robin’s own glance slid to Ephraim. Miriam’s smile became wry. “You’re wondering how I ended up here married to Ephraim instead of settling down stateside with some nice American boy. No, that’s okay.” Miriam waved off Robin’s instant protest. “Everyone wants to know. We don’t mind talking about it, do we, Ephraim? It’s a rather wonderful story.”

  Miriam’s loving glance drew a flash of white teeth from her husband. The Congolese doctor rested a hand briefly on his daughter’s tight curls as he spoke up. “Both Miriam’s people and mine ask many questions. There are even those who disapprove of such a marriage between a mzungu and a Congolese. But Miriam and I know it was God who brought us together out of darkness and despair and made us one to serve the people of Taraja.”

  With a laugh, Miriam took pity on Robin’s confusion and curiosity. “In brief, I had planned to return to the US for college, the usual path for missionary kids. Until the massacre intervened. Exactly ten years ago now, in fact. I’d just graduated from Rift Valley Academy over in Kenya.”

  Robin knew Rift Valley Academy, a boarding school run by missionaries outside Nairobi, because her own mother had attended there. Ten years ago would make Miriam a year older than Robin herself.

  “Michael was back stateside. He was barely twenty but had already finished his bachelor of science degree thanks to AP classes and was on his way to medical school, planning to be a surgeon like our father. I was here packing up to follow his footsteps, except my plan was to specialize in pediatrics. There’s always been unrest between the two major tribal groups in northeastern Congo. One was historically less prosperous than the other. They felt the white colonialists, then later Mobutu’s government, favored the other. Gave them more land, better education, government appointments. Rather like the Hutu-Tutsi conflict that ripped apart Rwanda a few years back. And there might have been some truth to it. Certainly the dominant tribe held most of the power in Bunia.

  “That’s all changed, of course, since peace talks put the rebel leader Wamba into power. But in our part of the Ituri, the two groups have intermarried so much, I for one sure couldn’t tell them apart. Ephraim’s a good example, his mother from one tribe, his father the other. Certainly here at Taraja, we had both groups living side by side in peace. Attending the school. Receiving medical treatment. Because of that, even when fighting b
roke out again after years of relative peace, we felt safe. We were wrong.”

  Miriam’s hand touched the scar pulling her right eyelid upward. Robin had been trying not to be obvious in studying the other ­woman’s disfigurement, but she’d seen other such scars enough to recognize a machete slash and a deep one.

  “It was the day before I was scheduled to fly out when an emergency call came in on the ham radio we had back then. A rebel militia involving thousands of fighters had attacked the main mission hospital compound to the west of us, not far from Bunia. Hundreds of townspeople were dead, the hospital compound burned and looted, the patients massacred. The militia leaders had agreed to permit an evacuation flight for the expatriate missionaries.”

  Miriam must have seen some change of expression on Robin’s face because she added quickly, “I know that doesn’t seem fair. But there wasn’t much choice. The insurgents wouldn’t permit airlifting the Congolese staff and townsfolk. I think they were just happy to get rid of the foreigners because they didn’t want the international scrutiny killing missionaries would bring. But it still doesn’t seem right.”

  “And I have told you that you cannot blame yourself,” Ephraim interjected gently. “Or your people who were in the Ituri to serve the Congolese people and share with them the love of our heavenly Father. Those of the Ituri could at least hide in the jungle and among the villages. A mzungu would be quickly found and risk the lives of all.”

  “Maybe,” Miriam conceded. “In any case, the rebel army was rumored to be headed next toward Taraja. So as a precaution, our headquarters chartered a UN C-130 to evacuate as many as could be squeezed aboard. Except my parents and I were away from Taraja, so we missed the flight. And before the plane could make a second run, the rebels hit. Taraja had over a thousand residents then. By the end of the attack, less than a hundred had escaped into the jungle, most of them eventually finding their way into the Bunia refugee camps. My parents were among those killed. I would have died too if Ephraim hadn’t come looking for me.”

  Scooting her chair closer to Ephraim, Miriam rested a hand on her husband’s arm. “I’d known Ephraim all my life. He was a local Taraja boy, a year older than Michael. He was Michael’s friend, of course, not mine. I was just the little sister tagging through the rainforest at their heels. By the time I’d graduated from Rift Valley, Ephraim had graduated from Taraja’s nursing program and was at the hospital training school in Bunia, working on his medical degree. In between, he was helping pastor a small church there. He was back in Taraja for the school holidays.

  “Anyway, he found me after the attack. Tended to my injuries until a mission plane was able to fly in and evacuate the two of us along with a handful of other wounded still alive. Over the next months of my recovery, Ephraim and I came to recognize our love for each other. After we were married, we lived in Bunia while Ephraim finished his medical training. We came back here just six months ago to reopen Taraja.”

  The other woman’s recitation was matter-of-fact and without drama. But the images of those burned-out homes and abandoned fields lining the airstrip allowed Robin to fill in the missing details only too vividly. She shook her head bemusedly. “I must say I couldn’t imagine staying in the Congo after going through such an ordeal.” As Robin in all her freelance contracts in Africa had adamantly refused to accept any postings in Kenya. “Much less coming back here to Taraja where it all happened. Even if you could forgive, how could you ever forget enough to feel comfortable here?”

  Miriam responded with a smile. “You could ask the same of Ephraim. He too lost his family here. As to staying in the Congo, you don’t understand. I may be pale of skin, but I am Congolese at heart. Michael would say the same. Though he at least feels equally at home in North America. In fact, he’ll be heading back there within the next couple weeks for some more specialized training.”

  Her statement was a surprisingly unpleasant jolt. After all, Robin had hardly expected to see Michael again. Nor was she planning to be in Taraja any longer than necessary. So why did she care if Michael would be leaving here almost as soon as Robin herself arrived?

  Miriam set down her tea. “Bottom line, though Michael loves Taraja, he could never live here permanently. His gifts are too unique, the opportunities to use them in such a small population too few. He’s here now just to train our clinic personnel in basic battlefield trauma care such as he learned as a Navy medic. Broken bones. Machete cuts. Bullet wounds. Though we could wish otherwise, there’s far more need of that kind of training than the brain surgery that is Michael’s specialty.”

  Miriam smiled again at her husband. “But for me, the Ituri Rainforest is my home. Its people are my people. And my children are of course Congolese by blood as well as heart. For good or ill, I will never go back to my parents’ country, unless perhaps to visit Michael and other family.

  “As to forgiving, part of that comes with understanding. I cannot condone the rebels’ actions. But I can understand their rage, even their hate against a mzungu like me. Did you know that when my grandparents first came here, black Congolese could not even walk in the ‘white’ parts of Kinshasa and other cities without a special pass giving them permission? And then only to do their jobs as servants to the foreigners. Servants in their own country where they could not hold any but the lowest positions of civil service or own land or businesses.

  “I look back at my own childhood. We prided ourselves on living simply as missionaries. On sharing all we had with the Congolese. And yet our books and clothes and bikes, the special foods we flew in along with medical supplies, the generator for electricity and propane for cooking, houses of brick and cinder block instead of thatch, must have seemed unbelievable wealth to the villagers.

  “Meanwhile, millions of Congolese were going hungry. No employment. No funds available for schoolteachers or health workers. But plenty for soldiers, who just happen to be of the dominant tribe, to guard the mines and roam the countryside. It’s easy to understand why the rebels might feel they have a right to lash out, not just at their tribal rivals, but anyone with the same white skin as the foreigners who enslaved them for so long. My family—we happened to be the ones at hand when that anger exploded.”

  But Ephraim was now shaking his head. “No, my love, I have told you that you must not make excuses for our people. To understand, to forgive, is well. It is the way of Yesu. But no injustice past or present offers excuse for what happened here at Taraja. Not before God. Not before man.”

  The Congolese doctor looked at Robin. “My wife seeks always to think kindly of others. I too understand the rage that rises up in a people who feel oppressed. I have felt it myself. Even, may God forgive me, against mzungu I have met. Not such as the Stewarts. But others who did not treat a Congolese with such kindness and dignity as their own. Still, it has become too easy for us here in the Congo to point fingers at others for the blame of what has happened to our country. The mzungu who seized control of our land and its riches. Mobutu and his associates.”

  The toddler in Ephraim’s arms had fallen back asleep. Ephraim shifted her to a more comfortable position as he went on quietly. “Except that it was not the mzungu who made Congolese turn on each other when independence came, every man grabbing what he could for himself instead of working together to make the Congo a great country. It was not Mobutu or the new government ruling now in Kinshasa who made Congolese pick up machetes to murder, maim, rape, and consume human flesh. Who pitted village against village only because they were of different tribes. That day ten years ago here in Taraja, it was not foreigners, but Congolese killing Congolese.”

  Remembered grief etched deep lines down the Congolese doctor’s strong, handsome features. “What is most sad is that each of these tribes claims to be followers of Jesus Christ. You must understand that we here in the Congo have called ourselves a Christian nation for more than five hundred years since the Portuguese first brought Bibles as well as their slave whips to our land.

  “So ho
w is it that two peoples worshiping the same Creator, raising the same songs in worship, can even find within themselves such a desire to hate and hurt each other? We have a saying here in the Congo that is more true than I could wish to admit. It is that our Christianity is as wide as the Congo River at flood season, but also as shallow as a puddle under a hot sun in dry season. Perhaps you do not know such problems in your own country.”

  It had not been a question, but Robin answered wryly, “Shallow religion? Christians choosing to hate other Christians? I’m afraid my people can hardly plead innocent either.”

  “Yes, well, again, it is easy to point fingers. Under the mzungu colonialists, Congolese who adopted their faith, attended their schools and churches, and learned their ways had privileges pagan animists did not. So many became Christian, not of heart but self-interest. After independence this did not all change because once again it was Christian schools that offered the best education. Christian organizations that had the best job opportunities. Christian missionaries who brought aid and medical care. To work for such organizations is a prestigious career in a country where jobs are few outside the hard labor of the mines. To be pastor of a church built with foreign money and sustained by foreign donations has become too often a privileged livelihood passed down from father to son rather than a genuine calling from God.”

  Miriam had shifted even closer to her husband. Ephraim juggled his sleeping daughter so that he could fold his own fingers over the hand she’d laid on his arm as he went on quietly.

  “Which is why for all the evils now besetting my nation, I for one do not pray for an end to the fighting and hunger and death, but that God would use these evils to purify us as a people. To purify us as a church. And so we have already seen. If the violence of these recent years has been a terrible thing, it has also been a cleansing of the church. Those who are truly Christian have been forced to stand up to be counted. To show the reality of their faith when all else is stripped from them and there is no longer a benefit, but great danger, to proclaiming the name of Yesu Kristo, Jesus Christ, as their Savior.”