Issa Muhima Bach was a Congolese co-worker, the hardy 28-year-old manager of 30 chauffeurs. “According to my principles, one can come from a rich family and die poor, and one can come from a poor family and die rich,” he had told me in a recent interview. “It’s just a matter of courage and developing one’s capacities. People [in my culture] have traditionally thought ‘You have to wait [for what you want], because God will make it happen.’ No. God will not act in your place. You have to be brave. Work hard.”
I interviewed Issa for my blog, African Heroes. The mission of the blog, which I’ve since ended, was to profile Africans who seemed to make something from nothing and who could be role models.
Issa seemed a perfect candidate to advise Aimé. He had a good job, worked hard, and didn’t consider himself a pawn of fate. Most important, he was a Congolese man, not an American woman. I was coming up short on many of the answers Aimé reasonably sought from a mentor. “Emily,” he had recently implored, “I need connections. Connections are the way everyone makes it in Congo. But my parents don’t have any useful connections. That’s why they can’t find work. How will I ever be able to get a job to pay for university?” As he spoke, one of Goma’s motorcycle taxis rode by, honking to offer a ride. “Like, I want to be able to buy a motorcycle,” he added. The more immediate problem was his high-school tuition.
Getting a job didn’t seem to be an option. Outside of international aid agencies and the government, there are very few “jobs” in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nearly every business is family-run, and many civil-service salaries are under $60 a month and are not paid for months at a time, leading the workers to live on bribes or more benign requests for handouts. Aimé’s family didn’t own or run anything. Aimé spoke French, and he was something of an intellectual, but he had no evident skills, no work experience, and a sulky demeanor that I didn’t think would help him break through. His uncle had a successful painting business, but he also had 12 children and refused to help his nephew.
So I asked Issa to advise Aimé, starting with the question of how to make connections. They would talk in a recording studio, and I would use the interview to create a radio show about mentors and mentees. Issa and Aimé happily agreed, and I told Aimé to draw up a list of questions. (I ended up producing the pilot, but I wasn’t able to bring the program to fruition.)
Instead of a list of questions, Aimé wrote three speeches: one about his life, one about how hard it is to be a child in Congo, and one on his beliefs about justice. He hadn’t understood my request. There were often gaps in comprehension between me and Aimé; I blamed my sometimes bad French, his sometimes bad French, and the fact that we came from two different cultures. Anyway, we couldn’t use the speeches in the Q&A format, because they were too long, so he had to ad lib his questions.
“Issa, will you hire me?” was Aimé’s first question. Then he added: “In Congo, tribe determines everything. I’m not in the same tribe as all the people who work for NGOs. They will never hire me.” Issa told him that many tribes were represented in his 30 chauffeurs. He said the tribalist claim is how lazy people justify their lack of enterprise.
Aimé’s speeches and questions revealed much about how he was thinking. They showed that he held a fatalistic view that would get in the way of the practical things he professed to want—connections, a job. What follows is his short autobiography, translated from his neat, French cursive. He called it “History up to Date.”
Before 1994, my parents were in Rwanda, precisely in Kigali. They were happy. They lived together with other family members. They lived well. Life was agreeable. Then in 1994 there was small trouble in Rwanda, in the capital, where several political parties were created. The war started in Rwengeri and refugees took flight from the capital in the month of May when they killed President Habyarimana. The war started between the Hutus and the Tutsis. My parents were obliged to flee toward DRC. In those days, my mother was pregnant. Rwandan soldiers stopped her. She wanted to live to give birth to that child, and that child is me who is before you now. So the soldiers held her for a while, and then one soldier pitied my pregnant mother and let her go. She fled to Goma. The same day she brought me into the world. It was May 9, 1994.
During the days my parents searched for work, but they didn’t have luck finding any. In 1998, my mother brought her second child into the world, and that year I started school. I went to school up until third grade, when my parents were obliged to stop my studies as a result of lacking money for school fees. I then passed three years without going to school. By the grace of God, I found a girl on the street and she asked me if I went to school and I said no. She told me she loved me and then started to pay for my school. I started again and continued to go to school until my freshman year of high school when the girl died of an illness. Since then I started my sophomore year without paying tuition. Since then I have been worried about finding someone who can pay for my studies. I love school. I also want to find someone who can help my parents regardless of whether I study or not. Oh God, help me to get out of this dilemma. My parents are poorer than ever. In any case, I still go to school, but they chase me out. I won’t be able to really be part of the world if I don’t get an education.
Is there someone who pities me who can pay for my school? I love studying more than any other thing, because God has told me to study so that I can be a man of value.
Issa found Aimé lazy. “First of all, you have to stop saying that you suffer,” he said, wincing at Aimé’s sixth such declaration. “Erase that idea, it’s not productive. If you say something, it will happen. So say something you want to happen, not something that makes you a victim. If you want to, you can. If you want to, you can. Repeat it for me.” Aimé wouldn’t repeat it.
Issa’s idea for how Aimé could make connections was something I couldn’t have thought up myself. He told Aimé to set up a little shop and to run it with class and discipline. He could sell gum or gasoline—as long as he was reliable and was in the shop every day at the same hours, people in the neighborhood would come to respect him, because they would rely on him for their gum or gas. They would remember him, and he would end up with connections—people who would gladly refer him to their friends for opportunities. He could also make enough money to pay his high-school tuition. The only thing he needed was some start-up capital.
“Thank you, Issa,” Aimé said, formally. “I am finished now with my questions. I am going to start a small business as soon as possible.” I was glad we had found a solution, because I was leaving Congo when my assignment ended two days’ later.
After we left the recording studio, I told Aimé I would give him $50 in two installments and pay his school tuition so he could start with a clean slate. Issa would hold the second installment and go to his school to pay the fees. He could also help Aimé when he ran into business problems.
Aimé looked very worried as we discussed other things for the next half-hour. Finally, he said my name in the anxious way he always did before asking a serious question.
“Emily, can you give the money to one of your roommates?”
Because I was breaking the aid-worker code, I didn’t want to do this. My co-workers wouldn’t like it. Besides, I had just spent the better part of a week arranging for Issa to mentor Aimé. Why would he want to rely on an unwilling foreigner?
“I don’t care, it’s better than Issa,” he said.
“But why?” I asked. “Issa has just helped you by giving you excellent advice, and he agreed to continue advising you on your goals. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t trust him.”
“Because he’s Congolese,” said Aimé. “You can’t trust Congolese people.”
“You shouldn’t say that about your own countrymen,” I told him. “You should be proud to be Congolese.”
“I am proud to be Congolese,” he said. “But can you give the money to one of your co-workers?”
Deeply disappointed, I agreed.
“Will I do it?” said my angry co-worker when I asked her to pay Aimé’s school fees. “Yes. Do I agree with it? No. You pay for his school now, and he’s going to get used to it. But what about when you leave? What will he do then?”
I told her he would pay for it with money from the business he was starting. She frowned. But I believed in our plan.
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