#32 Goma (2008)

Even though I am a 100% Disabled, service connected, totally blind veteran from the Korean conflict, I have traveled to over 157 countries. God wanted me to see, or at least smell and hear his world and be a witness to his love for the world. (John 3:16) In these trips, as in my life, I have failed Him many times but He has never failed me. My guides and drivers were always amazed that I could sense more beauty as well as dangers than they could see with good eyes. There are 42 countries on the African continent and I have traveled through most of them. My first trip to the Congo was in 1984, landing at Leopold ville(named for the king of Belgium who until the mid 20th century controlled the Congo) I could not help but think of that 20 year old Englishman George Greenfield, who was called early in life to go to the Congo as a Christian missionary. Starting in 1850 he made his way up the 2,975 mile Congo River forbearing attacks from uncivilized natives in an uncivilized environment which almost totally destroyed his boatcraft several times, as well as a continual battle with diseases which led to him burying his 4 children and wife.  But through the blessed efforts of George Greenfield he reached the head of the Congo River at Goma and when he died 102 years ago in 1907, at his funeral a choir of 10,000 African natives sang 'All hail the power of Jesus' name'.

I was first in Goma in 1984, just after Contii, who died recently, had come into power. Even then, the country was ravaged. Then, as today, by an onslaught of the continued Tutsi-Hutu battle. The warfare in which 800,000 Tutsi have already been slain in Rwanda. In Rwanda, as in the Congo, every man of any age has already been chopped up by machetes shipped from Mexico marked garden implements and since Mobutu came to power following Patrice Lumumbu, Raoul Castro has attempted too establish a Cuban type government with the help of Karbila. I am told that today with the carnage of men, women, and children being slaughtered in their home on a daily basis, it is difficult to establish between the Karbila  followers and the present Congolese military. In 1984, just after Contii had taken over in this, Africa's 3rd largest country, the one hotel in Goma had 4 residents. Your writer, an American blind veteran, and his guide, and a Belgian diplomat and his driver.  It was my opportunity to get to know many of the local Congolese citizens, wonderful, intelligent people, whose only interest in life now is just survival. The demoralized hotel keeper was trying to make us comfortable and prepare some food from the electricity from one generator for one hour a day.

In my attempt to reach the city of Bukavu, we found that just as was the case with the terrorists in Yugoslavia, on my trip there, the bridges over the river had all been destroyed.  Of course, I have photographs of all these terrorist activities, and will never forget one river, a branch of the mighty Congo, where boulder type rocks had been shifted to the river and attempts had been made to drive much needed transit trucks across the river on the rocks.  Several large trucks were laying sideways in the river. My driver was emphatic that I was not to ride across on the jeep in which we were traveling. The natives had strung heavy ropes across the river on which they would walk, moving sideways, holding onto a rope above them as they moved. Can you imagine seeing a blind doctor moving across a river in such manner?. If I could see I probably would never had made this daring maneuver, trying even for a trapeze performer. And it must have been a great curiosity to the onlookers.

At another river, one real hero in my memory of heroes was a Catholic priest trying to cross with a pick-up truck, transporting in the rear of the truck four males almost lifeless with AIDS and a nanny goat which he was milking to give them nourishment. I did reach Bokuvu, a typical African 3rd world settlement reminding one of the architecture and technology which Abraham Lincoln would have seen during the Indian wars.

I have been asked the question, many times, do those who live under the slave masters of tyrants such as Butu, and Mugabe  (where now in Zimbabwe, a country that was once the breadbasket of Africa, 5 to 30 percent of the population are dying with chorea, and thousands are starving to death) Dos Santos (Angola) which endured a 27 year civil war and where a person from there told me not one building in the entire nation was undamaged. When we read Matthew 22:18-21 where Christ instructs us to 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's' Are we really suppose to support such debauchery and exploitation. Even in this country, or the world for that matter, do we have many leaders we can honor for God and country. In this country we have Lincoln, General MacArthur, General Patton, Helen Keller, Admiral George Dewey, and in England Winston Churchill, or William Tyndale.


We are much more afflicted by politicians who have compromised their every
measure of their character or television evangelist who demonstrate their pretension when it is so evident that, as Judas, the bottom line is of more interest than God's instructions to us (occupy until I come). And, I have been asked many times 'Why should disabled citizens, the largest minority (est. 38 million) be required under our system of slave taxation to support those institutions where we are in no way a part. Disabled citizens do not use your jails, parks, concert halls, libraries, and, most of the time, churches. As I have been told in several restaurants, ' we do not appreciate disabled customers because it makes the 'normal' customers feel uncomfortable.' Yet, these same politicians and bureaucrats that we make uncomfortable, will gladly accept our disabled dollars and taxes. Goma, in central Africa, when compared with Mogadishu, or Harare, are living, breathing examples of the cancer spreading through Africa. Pray to God that the disease does not reach, in the global transit of today's world, other places.