Getting to know a refugee from the Congo at Johannesburg Friends Meeting

September, 27, 2009
I went to Quaker Meeting today in Johannesburg for the second time with Jennifer, my host. I met Sam (name changed), who said he was a refugee from DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Congo, for short). I had been hearing about and meeting a lot of immigrants, primarily from Zimbabwe. I knew how poor they were and how much they struggled to gain some semblance of economic security. Somehow I wasn't thinking of the difference between an immigrant and a refugee until we started talking further.

Sam's wife is a pharmacist and is studying for her exams so that she can be licensed in South Africa. But it is a problem paying fees for this when they don't even have enough money to eat because neither is employed and they just had a baby last week. Sam was a lawyer in Congo and he worked on organizing and developing youth programs, being paid from a U.N. Grant. He also worked as a Human Rights lawyer. So, it sounded like they had been pretty well settled in Congo. He said there was a lot of violence and corruption there and his problem was that the people in one of the parties wanted him to endorse and support their candidate actively in the upcoming election. Sam did not feel that he could do this in good conscience because this party had not done anything to support the programs and values that he cared about. Because he was a well-connected, visible person he started to get threats to his life and ultimately he and his wife left everything material that they owned, as well as their extended family and their stable economic position to go to South Africa. Sadly, Sam's legal training will be of little value in South Africa, whose legal system is based on the Dutch Reformed system while Sam's training is in the French system, which is totally different. And Sam's English, while much better than my French, could also be a problem for professional level writing. I felt really sad for the challenges facing his young family.

I asked Sam how he happened to be attending Quaker meeting. He said that he had done a lot of Human Rights work for Quakers in Congo and got to appreciate them there, so it was natural for him to seek out a Quaker group in South Africa even though he had been raised Catholic. He also received some modest financial support from the Quaker meeting and a huge amount of appreciation, care and attention which appeared to me to be at least as important to him as the financial support, which was also quite vital to him. The time we had available to talk was limited, but I felt the hunger in him to have his story heard and his deeply held values of integrity and freedom recognized and seen by others. When I thought of the magnitude of his struggle there was a part of me that wanted to know his story more fully and another part that was glad that we didn't have more time to talk further just then; I wasn't sure how much more I wanted to take in at that moment for fear of feeling overwhelmed. I was also aware of feeling pride in being a part of the Quaker network which so consistently supports and cares about marginalized people.