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Congolese women dress differently when going to church. It is not the same as a party occasion. But it may be slightly more than an everyday dress.
Tomorrow is the first Sunday of this new year. It is not an ordinary Sunday. Therefore, I expect the dress maybe slightly different.
Everywhere, we hope for better year.
Congolese women like to dress for a party, too. But parties are not too frequent in the Congo. Even in the cities, parties are for something special. Birthdays and anniversaries are the most common. Annually, a business office may have a party for its employees.
I arrived in Kinshasa, the capital city, on the evening of New Year's Day. I heard that some people adjacent to my guest house celebrated the New Year until 6 in morning. It is wonderful to escape to another life!
Educating Congolese girls will have a profound effect on poverty and development. Girls and women are a marginalized class in Congo. They are the last to go to school and first to leave during a family crisis.
Girls make up half of the population. They impact their whole generation. These are the next generation of mothers. They will nurture their children during the early years of development. They will teach them to read and write, and solve problems.
But with education, they can be more. They can be the teachers, doctors, lawyers, and government leaders. They can be role models, too.
Education builds a new era. Education is a "life changer".
In Congo, a country where running water is non-existence for 99 percent of the population. The village water source is a common meeting place. Everyone goes there at least once or twice a day. A village water source is like the corporate water cooler.
But mostly girls and women congregate at the water source. They catch up the local happening and talk around the village. However, they probably were not discussing that homework problem or question.
If they did not have to spend hours everyday fetching water, Congolese girls would have more time for school. A drilled water well brings the water source closer to the village. Now, that's a "life changer".
Do you care if it rains? Are you concerned when it does not rain frequently? Do you know how many inches of water it rained? Are you concerned about where the water goes?
If you lived in rural Congo, rainwater would mean a lots to you. Rainwater can be captured in underground cisterns. Large cisterns hold thousands of gallons of fresh water. Water can be used for cooking, washing, and drinking.
The Bulape Hospital's water system includes about five large underground cisterns. Water runs off the metal roofs into the cisterns through a rain gutter.
The underground cistern are covered and padlocked. They are not covered and padlocked for safety reasons. They are covered and locked to prevent women and girls from taking water without authority. They would call it stealing!
A small single engine plane can land at the Bulape Village Airstrip. I forgot the airport identifier used by the Mission Aviation Fellowship's pilot. After flying over the airstrip twice for a visual inspection, the pilot landed on the slightly smooth patch of ground.
There are only the bare ground at this rural village airstrip. There are no maintenance hangers or other facilities. There are no fences to keep the villagers or their animals off the landing strip. There are no TSA screeners or security personnel. There is no flight arrival or departure gate, or baggage claim area.
After flying over the jungles of central Congo, you are glad to be back on the ground. You are glad to be greeted by almost every man and most of the children who are not attending school. You are not late or early, you are just thankful to be there.
If you are from a developed country like the United States, you may recognize this water faucet. But if you are a rural Congolese, you probably would not recognize this as a source of water.
In the coming years, I want to make the water faucet the new face of water.
