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Letter from Kinshasa ...
by Mona Lisa Wessel (Read biography)
posted on Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Letter from Kinshasa …
By Mona Lisa Wessel
Last Saturday morning, walking to work as I do every day, I suddenly found myself looking into the barrel of a gun pointed in my direction by a man claiming to be a police officer, and he was not alone. My “crime” apparently was that I was taking a picture of something I was not supposed to photograph – in this case, the stinking, burning garbage dump located in front of the run-down hotel I live in here in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Not only were none of these men in uniform, but I knew that this country has no real regulated police force. Though it was broad daylight, I was, not surprisingly, terrified. Luckily, I soon realized that this intimidation was nothing more than a masked attempt at extracting bribe money out of me, the perfect target – blonde, foreign, female, and alone – and so I managed to talk my way out of danger with the help of melodramatic gestures and some bad but very aggressively delivered French. Once I got away however, I was struck not only by the recognition of how bad this situation could have turned out, but also by the awareness that something like this would never, could never, happen to me at home in Waterloo, where I am from, especially just for trying to take a picture! This was a realization so sharp I almost cut myself on it.
To anyone thinking romantically about what it must be like to serve in a United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in some forgotten, war-ravaged corner of Africa, think again. I admit, up till now, my seven weeks here as the Public Information Officer for the United Nations Volunteers Support Unit with the UN Mission for the DRC (aka MONUC) in Kinshasa have been rather tame and uneventful, tightly cocooned as I have been within the comfort and protection offered by the UN compound, especially while at work. Quite frankly, I had not given much thought to life outside the compound before, because the UN does its best to help staff live in as much comfort as possible to ease the hardships of the mission. I knew when I arrived here that there had been a coup attempt in March and that 28 UN peacekeepers had already been killed (the total is now 39) while serving in the Mission, but those were abstract details completely disconnected from any reality I knew as far as I was concerned. I reasoned that all that dangerous stuff happened somewhere out in the “Sectors”, not around me here in Kinshasa, and so I ... well, I felt bad but just ignored it as having anything to do with me. I had also dismissed as “paranoid” all the warnings I had received that it was not safe to walk on my own anywhere in Kinshasa and for this reason, I should avail myself of calling for one of those white UN vehicles like you see on the news to drive me wherever I wanted or needed to go, aka to work and back. But as a Canadian, I simply could not imagine myself to be in any "real" danger just by walking around taking pictures to send home. I no longer have that luxury. I know now only too well that I am not in Waterloo anymore; that I am not in Canada anymore. I was very, very lucky this frightening experience turned out to be just a wake-up call, as my being led away from my hotel to a deserted building by men with guns who would not allow me to make a phone call to anyone at the UN for help, could have easily resulted in rape or robbery at the very least.
In hindsight, I am glad it happened, because through this terrifying ordeal, I finally understand – not only what the UN has to deal with here and what it must overcome in order to fulfill its mandate in DRC and other such places struggling to emerge from years and years of civil war – but more importantly, why a safe and tolerant country like Canada is the Holy Grail for so many of the world’s victims of such wars, of poverty, of ethnic cleansing, and of the brutal, ruthless dictatorships so common in many parts of the world. I also understand the terror and desperation of people who would risk life and limb and the severing of all family ties with the lands of their birth just to get the chance to emigrate or gain asylum to a country like Canada, the world’s beacon of freedom, safety, security, tolerance, peace, and hope, because I now have a small but vivid awareness of what so many millions of people outside our wonderful country are forced to live with every single day of their lives; something we in Waterloo never, ever have to even contemplate: FEAR.
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Mona Lisa Wessel
 Mona Lisa Wessel is a Waterloo native who recently joined the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Support Unit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as its Public Information Officer in Kinshasa.
Before serving as a UNV, Mona Lisa worked as a Research Assistant and Editor for eight years with the Joint Inspection Unit of the United Nations Office at Geneva before taking a year off to edit technical papers freelance for the World Health Organization and travel by overland vehicle throughout Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. UNV maintains a strong presence of close to 400 volunteers throughout the DRC with the United Nations Organization Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC).
She can be contacted at wessel@un.org.
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