Whirlwind Week

Rilla - Eve - Stro at Patisserie Nouveau

A few glimpses into a whirlwind week:

Member of Parliament, Head of Party, Chair of Parliament's Socio-Cultuiral Commission - The Honorable Eve Bazaiba

Eve Bazaiba hails from Kisanangi Province, which is 1700 miles by boat or two hours by plane. She is the Executive Secretary of one of the opposition parties, and a force to be reckoned with in parliament and politics. She is a strong supporter of the December 31 agreement brokered by the Catholic Church between a coalition of opposition leaders and the Kabila government regarding elections. We had a lovely lunch after her English class at CALI but she was reluctant to practice her English much. She had a lot to tell Stro, a day ahead of the parliament's opening and did that in French. She made a gift of a pagne (see below) dress to me because she is so fond of Stro. Her own daughter is a physician in Kinshasa busy educating other physicians about new methods for testing cervical cancer.

A Touch of Pagne

Rilla with Ginette Martin, Canadian ambassador to DRC

Two local international groups collaborated on a major event called “A Touch of Pagne.” The International Women’s Club (mostly English-speaking) and Kinshasa Accueil (mostly French-speaking) raised cover $7000 to help two maternity centers in and around Kin. They put on quite a show, complete with door prizes (fabric from Woodin was a favorite) and a lovely continental breakfast donated by the brand-new hotel. In many ways, it felt very much like similar gatherings in Amsterdam and Yerevan. Get a group of women together who have more horsepower than they can use, and they raise money and otherwise organize for good.

Tablemates

Hundreds of women attended at $25 each. It looked like a veritable United Nations of Women. Half of my table wore head scarves, most attendees wore pagne (the local brightly colored fabric), either as a dress or an accessory. Friends of Stro greeted me at the door and got me seated next to a friendly English-speaker who turned out to be the Canadian Ambassador, Ginette Martin. She admired my pagne-accented clutch and told me she would like to have the person who made it come to a special event at her residence in April. Done. Stro sent her the info.

Madame Therese

Rilla and Vanessa

Madame Therese, robot engineer

After a delightful lunch with Vanessa Massamba (oldest granddaughter) following her English class at CALI, we both went to hear a woman introduced as Madame Therese. She is the Congolese engineer who invented the big traffic robot that governs (sort of) the largest intersections in the city. An animated speaker, Madame T told her story of becoming an engineer and how important the support of others, especially her father and husband, had been to her success. Ironically her own mother told her she could not be an engineer because she was a girl. CALI produced a huge audience for her talk and then invited all to stay for cake.

Rose Kuningu

Rose is a Wonder Woman. She is about 30, came to Kinshasa from her village about seven years ago and has done amazing things. First, with the support of her many siublings (her mom died when she was an infant), she completed  university in law. Now she works for the government highways department and is the only English speaker there. When business partners from RSA come to town she brokers all the conversations. But the amazing part about Rose is that after teaching herself a lot of English she finished quickly at CALI and then started the CALI Ladies Foundation for Excellence (CALFE). CALFE’s slogan is “Together, let’s promote girls and disabled children’s education.”

In their first year they helped 27 children by raising money for school fees, books, and uniforms, and by persuading their parents to let them go to school instead of producing income for the family. CALFE members visit the families once a month to be sure the child has remained in school, to see how things are going, and to answer any questions the parents have. All of this work is done by volunteers. Rose thinks volunteering is very important and she is committed to building civil society institutions here in Congo.

Little by little, they are putting in place the infrastructure needed to sustain the organization. Their website is www.calfe.org and they are hoping to set up a bank account that will accept donations made through the website. Rose collects used items from CALI students and they repair and/or resell or give to the children as needed. She visits CALI monthly to ask the students to donate. I am hoping to help her network with the IWC women and others who might be able to help her raise money and who might also like to volunteer. Her enthusiasm is contagious and her leadership skills are remarkable.

Wedding Pagne

Pepe - seamstress and designer

Making sketches

Most of Friday afternoon was taken up working with a seamstress/designer named Pepe on the dresses for Stro, me, and a friend, Rama, for the wedding on March 25. We (and many others) will be wearing dresses/shirts from the same fabric, or pagne (“pan-ya”). Pagne is a waxed cotton sold in 5 meter lengths, about one meter wide.

It is a tradition that for a wedding friends have the option of having clothes made with the same fabric. In large weddings, sometimes the bride’s family will have a pagne and the groom’s family will have a different one, and even the couple may have yet another all to themselves.

Working with the designer involves looking at a lot of pictures, thinking about how the chosen fabric will work with different designs, and then eventually coming up with combination of features—sleeves from this one, change this neckline thus, skirt from that one, bodice like this other one. Then with vocabulary and language gaps, it is essential to review the decisions carefully. Rama was indispensable in this part of the process. Words like hemline, gusset, darts, etc. do not come up in ordinary conversation. They form a specialized vocabulary that poses a challenge to the French-impaired like me and even to some French-fluent like Stro. The dresses are to be delivered for fitting on Wednesday afternoon.