Amazing morning.

Yesterday I had an amazing morning. At 10am I met up with JP and Herman; the first is a security guard whom I befriended last summer, the latter is his brother and a pastor. JP and I talked a lot last summer; about his difficulties to pay tuition fees for his children, the artisinal mining of gold and coltan he did in Ninja, him fleeing to South Africa several years ago, etc. Yesterday we finally met again and talked for over 4 hours; hereby just a few of many things we talked about.

Finances.

Among others we talked about money. JP earns 125$ a month and his wife earns a little bit as well by selling second-hand shoes. His expenses are as follows:

• Rent (per month): 25$.
• Food (per day): between 3 and 5$. A chunk of foufou costs around 1$ and they are with 6 people so need around three of them to dinner and leave a little bit for breakfast.
• Education (per year): 90$ for the first who goes to high school, $20 for the second you goes to primary school that is $20, and $10 each for the two youngest who go to the creche.
• And all this is not even talking about transport costs (JP walks over two hours to get to work and back each day), clothing, water (JP doesn’t have running water at home and no place nearby to get water so he has to buy this), etc.

Doing some adding and subtracting gives that this is not an easy life.

JP and Herman are originally from the village Mushugula in Sud Kivu’s territoire Walungu and they still own some land there. We talked about this as well.

Property rights.

Decades if not centuries ago the Mwami – the king often at the localite level (a level higher than the village) – allocated plots of land to families. These days people still give small gifts each year to the Mwami for this.

Although JP and Herman don’t cultivate their land, they are not afraid somebody will take their land. The reason is that the villagers there know that it is JP's and Herman's property. Social pressure would do the job, and if it doesn't there is the village's "council of wise men" who would rule.

Other people can use the land if they want, but they first have to ask JP or Herman. So, being Western, I said this was a good idea because the person that cultivates the land can pay JP and Herman some rent for using the land. JP and Herman told me that this was absolutely not done in the Congo, because it is the “energy that gives you food”.

We also talked about IDPs and whether they can easily obtain pieces of land. The answer often is yes; they can either help cultivate others' pieces of land, or they can obtain land that is not yet owned or cultivated.


Inheritance.

For the Bashi - the largest ethnic group in Sud Kivu and also the tribe of JP and Herman - an inheritance (the house, the fields, etc.) is not split equally among the (male) children, and it does also not go to the oldest (male) child. Interestingly it goes to the oldest and the youngest man. To be clear they illustrated this by making use of their table and 3 empty coca bottles. Was really nice.

Lots of kids. Good/bad.

The topic "children" is an interesting one in the Congo. We had a walk through Herman's neighborhood Nyalykemba and visited the Ruzizi river that separates Congo from Rwanda.

On our way we met another pastor who invited us in and started bragging up about the fact that he had 11 children. I asked him "why?" because children have to eat, one has to pay schoolfees, etc. We got into a heated argument as both JP and Herman stopped purposefully at 4 children because they can’t afford more. The pastor, on the other hand, argued that "Jezus will feed my children" and that what JP and Herman was doing was the work of the anti-Christ. It was fun!

Project.

Since a few months JP and Herman have a project running in Mushugula (their village that is located in the localite Mushinga). In brief, there are many old people that have land but do not have a husband or children and therefore can’t cultivate it. Consequently, although they have land they go hungry and often have to beg. Via Herman's church their project provides second-hand clothes to young people in Mushugula in exchange for their work on the fields of these old people, so that the full profits go to the latter.

Note: If this project was already in place some years ago, the parents of JP and Herman would not have left their village (they now live a difficult live in Bukavu).

It's a great project I think. Of course, I do have more questions. How big is the problem of old people without help? What is the incentive for these young people to do a good job on the fields? Also, why doesn't the old person just say "any person that cultivates my field can keep half, and I keep the other half"?

Anyhow, they got me interested, I would like to help them one way or the other and having some pictures and some video material would help to raise some money, and from a research perspective I am interested in all the above discussed points. So, I hope to hire a car for this Wednesday and together with JP and Herman we're going to visit their village.

Finally, Herman also gave me the book “Trois siecles chez les Bashis” ("three centures with the Bashis"); this seems to be a great book on the Bashi tribe. Also, shortly after I got back home I received an sms from Alain; the man who works in a buying/selling company for precious minerals. Today I will join him for a day to see how all this works. All in all, two days of absorbing information; awesome!