Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity

This is the second in a series of newsletters sent to friends and supporters of the Ota Benga Alliance. We hope they will be of interest to web site visitors.

February 12, 2008

Dear Friends,

Yes, it was bound to happen. After such a long time of not corresponding one tends to forget about some of the the most important things which have been accomplished thanks to your generous support. For example, about the financing of Mbongi women's projects aimed at generating incomes to pay school fees for their children. The good news is that it has helped them survive in the midst of harsh conditions which do not seem to soften with each passing week, month, year. It only seems to get worse. The bad news is that the women who borrowed money from the Mbongi for school fees have had great difficulty repaying it. We were not surprised to learn of the difficulties because of the horrendous conditions in the country, but have kept encouraging them to let us know how things were going, even if (especially if one might say) they feel bad about not having kept their promises. Remember that the original idea was to pay back so as to offer the possibility to others to access badly needed cash.

The Mbongi itself, based in Kinshasa, keeps thriving. As you may remember, the Mbongi is an assembly of people (coming from 11 of Kinshasa's burroughs. The entire city has 24 of them) who have agreed on common principles, and meet regularly to discuss how to change the situations in which they live, for the better for everyone. It is a dialoguing around issues which are crucial to everyone. One of the most important principles is that everyone must speak. From Ernest's reports, we hear that some of the women members who are usually quiet at these kinds of gatherings have become outspoken. Some of the Mbongi a Nsi pamphlets -most in French, so far--can be seen on our website (www.otabenga.org), and the rest will be posted soon.

Speaking of the website. You may (or may not) remember that it took us a while to really get visible on the web. At times we even disappeared, and at other times it looked like someone was messing with it. Then we were helped, graciously and generously, by Sara Tarano's father. Then, about a year ago, we were joined by Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System (published in Europe and the UK in 2007, just out in paperback in the US). Raj also works with Abalhali baseMjondolo in Durban (South Africa). Among many things (a web wizard, an inspiring and generous artist of the word and how to spread it), he has helped Ota Benga Alliance be aware of, and seek to reconnect with, those communities which are in the forefront of healing Mother Earth, in South Africa, Asia and Latin America.

As alluded to above, shame can be a powerful self-silencing tool, on both sides of one of the most lethal divides, between those who have and those who have not. Among those who have inherited what they think as the right to own Mother Earth, there are people who are aware of the fearful, shameful, murderous manner in which that right was seized; among these same people there are those who, out of that shame and fear, will do anything to make sure that the real story never comes out. Among some of the descendants of those who suffered the genocidal violence at the birth of the currently triumphant system, there are also feelings of shame and fear--the kind of shame and fear which grips any person who has been violated.

It is impossible to make an inventory of all those things humanity needs to heal from, but shame and fear stand out because, on both sides of the rich/poor divide, it has generated the kinds of mindsets which stand in the way of healing (to be continued with a discussion on how shame and fear around the assassination of Lumumba is standing as one of the biggest obstacles toward healing). However, before that, we shall revisit the women of Panzi, near Bukavu in Eastern DRCongo.

Jacques Depelchin
Executive Director