October 2011
If things happen for a purpose then the obstacles encountered getting the staff of my child soldiers NGO from war torn eastern Congo to Brazil were a test—obstacles in our path every step of the way, from one of our number being thrown in jail by the Congolese army—due to no fault of their own—to the official needed to sign and issue their passports being absent for weeks, all the while with the clock ticking down to departure when trying to get Brazilian visas issued in South Africa. But after much scrambling and making each deadline by the skin of our teeth, seeing my guys in the transit lounge of Johannesburg airport is like greeting old friends having come through the wars. The next week will be spent in the slums of Rio de Janeiro at the invitation of a local NGO learning how to use boxing to make a difference in the lives of troubled youth. As an organisation we have much to learn.
There is something improbable but also beautiful in this gathering. My guys have never had the experience of international travel, the child like wonder of first flight. Actually that is not strictly true, one of them has flown before—the last time Kibomango was in a plane was while being medevac’d from the front-line in the—second—Congolese war after the battle of Kitona with severe battlefield injuries. But no one else knows that here, on this commercial flight to São Paulo which seems to be full of business travellers and fashionable people, each with their own story.
I wonder of the thoughts of my group and what this experience holds for them. As an ex-child soldier, slum lord boxer and street mechanic of modest means from conflict ridden eastern Congo there is little to have prepared Kibomango for this and his sudden arrival in the city of Rio de Janeiro conjures up parallels to Crocodile Dundee and George of the Jungle.
I have to wonder on the arc of this man’s life and what has brought him to this point. It is a story of unspeakable hardships but is far more inspiring than sorrowful. Signs of trauma, entitlement or destructive behaviour are not apparent in his make up and outlook. A combination of the iron self-will of the professional athlete, an innate unsophisticated intelligence, and a certain modesty, even humbleness, are what is most apparent about this man’s character, together with a confident, not to be overwhelmed, regard for the new and unfamiliar, something which is the essential charm of any modern day bumpkin-comes-to-the-big-city story. The next week will be in an environment which I cannot imagine him prepared by any previous experience—a structured seminar with full day classes, group exercises, presentations, interviews, Q and A. But as someone with shades of a rock star—or at least sports star—personality, there is little reason for doubt. I will not be disappointed.
Ferdinand, older, wise and avuncular, is also someone with his own unique life trajectory, closely linked to the conflict in eastern Congo to which he is witness as a peace activist, former school headmaster and, more recently, a facilitator for international journalists, the avenue by which our lives have come together.
What this trip holds for these men and what they fully expect from it can be broadly anticipated. What they really see and perceive, their inner thoughts, and if they can really be in line with my own are, for me at least, unknown unknowns.