I was having a beer with a few friends at a roadside bar in town on a Saturday night. As often happens, three friendly ‘peanut girls’ came round, girls probably no older than 14 years selling peanuts in the shells. They pour out cupfuls on your table for a meagre sum of 50c. For now, I won’t get into a debate on the morals of whether these girls should or shouldn’t be selling peanuts at on the streets of Kisangani at night time…however, I will share a particularly poignant incident.
I decided to buy peanuts for the table – even if I don’t think they should be out late at night like that, at least they are being entrepreneurial and not just seeking handouts. After sharing a giggle and pretending I’d be up to do some Congolese rhumba with them, I asked one of the girls to serve up enough peanuts for everyone around the table.
In the meantime, I finished negociating with her two peers the overall price and absentmindedly paid the two with whom I’d negociated assuming they’d share out the proceeds. By the time the first girl had finished dishing out the peanuts, the two girls I had paid had done a runner. The first girl, understandably, became very upset with me, feeling like I’d ripped her off, cheated her. In an act of defiance she refused to accept any of my money.
I knew I couldn’t just tell her to get over it and go away – it wasn’t fair by any stretch of the imagination. While it wasn’t me who had intended the injustice, I had indeed created the opportunity.
So I got up and went to look for the two other girls – they hadn’t made it far. I managed to rope them over with the first girl at my side.
“30 seconds ago, you three were best of friends. Your friend dished up the peanuts and I paid you to share it all together. Is this really fair that you run away? What sort of friends are you to her?”
I had roped them in just on the roadside and so several cyclists and motorcyclists had gathered around. I went on: “Is this the example you want to show the world of what it means to be Congolese? Are you proud to be Congolese when you behave like this? We’re right around the 50th anniversary of independence and this is how your weakest in society treat each other?”
I was taking a risk, essentially criticising in public, but I was soon reassured by the murmur of agreement from the cyclists and motorcyclists around me. To the two girls who had done a runner, I told them I would stand and wait until they ‘re-paid’ the first girl with the equivalent peanuts that she had given me. I didn’t need to stand and wait – there were enough people standing around waiting also. All eyes were on these two girls to set things straight.
I’m not an advocate of getting oneself mixed up in public incidents like this – there’s a risk that you’ll be misconstrued, misunderstood, and you can put yourself and others in danger. However, once I’d made that mistake of paying the other girls, I realised I had to set an example to the girl who had been hard done by and to those around me, to put things right. Once again, I had to show that as a mundélé, as a foreigner, as ‘the one who “has”‘, that even in the small detail, I still cared.
In a similar sense to the way the international community is called to challenge certain nations to operate with justice (albeit, without failing to notice the planks stuck in their own national ‘eye’…let’s be realistic, we’ve got all got a lot to learn from each other…), just maybe by my little interaction with these girls, in what was a humble form of public shaming, I sent a message to the girls and those around me that us ‘foreigners’ want to see justice for the Congolese as much as they may want it themselves. A reminder that, despite the Congo-fatigue, the world is still watching you, the world has not forgotten you.
Call me overblown, patronising, whatever you like – maybe I was all those things by reacting in such a fashion. However I guess it stems from a belief that we all really know what justice is in our hearts, we all inherently know what it feels like to be hard done by. I couldn’t let my negligence be the means by which another was so clearly ripped off by her so-called ‘friends’…even if it was just a matter of peanuts.
P.S. Thanks for the interesting comments after last week’s post…just want to say I’m totally in agreement with those of you who were against the idea of giving money outright. As I said in the post itself, that’s not my policy generally, however if that action can the provide a challenge to a group of people to step outside themselves (as I feel was the situation with Maria) then it has the potential to be so much more empowering than a handout.
