When the economy breaks down, society breaks down. It happened to the country of Zaire and since we were living there as missionaries, we were caught in the middle.
We lived in the interior and except for a little news on the radio, we had very little communication with the outside world. So I won't attempt to get every detail in historical order but will tell it as I remember it and as it affected us.
The soldiers are at Mission Garizim
There were several army mutinies. My understanding is that like most government workers, the army did not get paid. Somehow they must have felt that this meant they were justified in just taking what they felt "should" be theirs from just anybody. Mission Garizim, that we had started from scratch, was raided, but we were so fortunate. We only lost our typewriters (which we have never been able to replace) and several barrels of fuel. Most other missions were stripped to the bare cement. Even toilets were removed! although I can't imagine what the soldiers did with them.
Upon learning that the soldiers were coming, our people removed most of the mission valuables to the forest, and stayed there with them. Our big truck was out on evangelism. Our workers and students heard that the soldiers were at Garizim, so they turned off the ignition, since any noise can be heard for many miles around, and pushed!!! that 10 ton truck into the bush, covering it with branches and other debris until the soldiers were well out of the area.
Trouble in Kinshasa, and we are there
There was trouble, looting, rioting and random violence off and on for several years. Twice we were in the capital city, Kinshasa, obtaining supplies, when trouble broke out. The first time, we were ordered into protective custody by the US Embassy. All Americans were put together in one apartment building which was guarded by US soldiers. Our family and another were assigned to share one apartment. They were good friends, so it wasn't too bad. Just restrictive.
Facing death
The second time, we were staying at the home of another missionary family. They were out doing some ministry when the roads were blocked and they were not able to return. We had been listening to the radio to know which parts of town to avoid and what days not to go out at all. Certain parts of the city were being looted systematically, which rape and sometimes killing resulting. One day we heard that our neighborhood was been targeted for looting that night. There was no safe way out. We had to stay and face whatever came. I remember that I really felt we might die that night. We could hear gunshots all around us. We got together with the Zairean worker and guard who were there to pray together. We all knelt down on the veranda and committed our lives to the Lord. Tears streamed down my face freely, yet I felt a deep peace, and sense that it would be all right. Not because I thought we would not die but because I had faced that possibility and said, "Yes, Lord. It's OK even if we do die tonight".
I went to bed fully clothed, thinking that sleepwear would encourage soldiers to rape when they came to our friend's house that night. I slept fitfully, awakening once fighting soldiers who were tying me up, only to realize it was only a dream.
Angels guarded us
The next morning, the guard called to us. Trembling, he told us that during the night he had seen angels all across the top of the gate. When we later told our friend who lived there he said, "Well, I'm not much given to seeing angels, and normally I would doubt this. But I can tell you this: "If old Papa Makunza says he saw angels, they were definitely there."
The soldiers never did come to our neighborhood.
We were safe, but so much damage was done. Many lost everything they had. Many suffered the humiliation of rape, usually done in front of their families. Many were killed.
The destruction
Businesses were destroyed. There was an automotive factory in Kinshasa, one of very, very few mass employers. It was looted and utterly destroyed--another casualty in the war on the "rich". Hundreds of people lost their jobs from that one destruction alone, and the plant was never reopened. It sat as an ugly eyesore for years. Finally it was made into a communal market, but those who have booths there merely moved their goods from elsewhere. No new employment was created.
Not only was inventory destroyed and means of production destroyed, but great damage was done to the roads and bridges. Not that the roads were much to brag about to begin with, but during Zaire's upheavals, much further damage was done. This had two effects: 1. Those in the interior found it difficult and often impossible to get agricultural goods to market. As a result, they had food to eat but found it impossible to pay their children's school fees or medical care. And 2. Those in the cities found that food was hard to get, so of course prices skyrocketed. In the end, everyone was hurt.
I suppose that's why, when people here anticipate the breakdown of society following economic problems, I readily see that that is feasible and highly probable. Of course, we can also see it happening on the news in other countries and in places in the US on a lmited scale so far. I experienced it in Zaire, so to me it is far more than just theoretical. I know how easily it can happen.
Through it all, I can only pray that God has mercy on us. As His child, I know He is with us through the hardest of times. It is in Him ultimately that I place my trust.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
This is TERRIBLE place to work...Can I get a job here?
I was exhausted. It had been another long day of arguing with the Zairean "work inspector." He was one of the endless parade of government officials that would visit Mission Garizim between September and January 1. It was not easy in those days to get their "bonne fete" (New Year's gift).
There has to be an infraction here someplace
We did our very best to pay all the mission workers as fairly and generously as we could. I had long ago recognized that no matter what the workers were paid, the work inspector would always come up with SOME reason to find us in an infraction. We doubted that the fines and taxes we paid ever made it to any government office or project. The annual pattern of visits made it quite clear what it was all about.
We had to pay a tax because we weren't giving our workers a housing allowance. "But they don't NEED a housing allowance!" I insisted. We provide complete housing for them for free. That did not make a difference. Even if their housing was provided, they still had to have a housing allowance. That's what the law said. He had a paper to "prove" it. So that was an infraction, and an infraction demands a tax.
We argued extra long. Our funds were getting very low. There had been too many others like this inspector before him, and we knew there would be more in the coming days. All day he had been haranguing us. I had listened to it for so long that I had begun to wonder if we were not some low-life slime buckets trying to rip off the Africans after all. We had done everything in the book wrong according to him.
Then as he walked back to the main road, his "bonne fete" (our tax) tucked tightly into his pocket, he turned to our staff member who was accompanying him. "Do you think I could get a job here?" he asked.
Thank you, sir! That question helped put it all in perspective for me.
The devolution
During our first term I did not even know about Zaire's "Code du Travail" (Work Laws). They must have existed, but they were not applied to missions. We lived and hired workers happily. However, as the country's economy deteriorated, officials became more and more desperate to try to get funds anywhere they could. Immediate cash was the goal regardless of the long-term consequences. I remember the first visit of the "Inspecteur du Travail" (Work Inspector) to Mission Garizim. I about fainted when he listed all the requirements for hiring workers. The long list was obviously intended for big corporations making big profits. For small groups like ours it was death three times over. It was really as if the worker became your child and your dependent. You were expected to provide virtually everything for him.
Impossible to Fire? Nearly!
The worst part was that the laws made it virtually impossible to fire anybody. We still have workers on our work roll in the interior that we have not needed for ten years. We keep them just because it is more expensive to fire them than it is to keep them working even if they did nothing. Their jobs are dead-end job for them. We will never promote them because we don't really need them. If, however, we are out of money and cannot continue, we could let them go then, according to the law. But of course we would pay even more dearly to do that, since other fines would apply then.
Some missions hired a special accounting agency and paid them a considerable monthly fee to do nothing but try to keep them in the good graces of the "code du travail". In the end they, too, were levied devastating fines and ended up leaving the country.
Consequences of Restrictive Work Laws
As a result of all the upheavals Zaire (now Congo) went through, the streets have filled with homeless street children. We have developed a wonderful ministry to street children in Kinshasa. But we cannot start a home for them, because we would have to hire workers. To hire workers, we'd have to follow the "Code du Travail", which is still in place. I hate it every time I have to tell our staff no, sorry, we simply cannot cope with the "Code du Travail." Even if it means that we cannot do some of the things we would dearly like to do. Even if it means that street kids still sleep on the street. It's just not feasible as long as that work code is still in place, or at least, as long as it is applied to mission agencies and other non-profit organizations.
Our experience struggling with the work code in Zaire is how I came to understand how damaging restrictive work laws can be. We are not trying to make a profit; we are just trying to support the ministries to which we commit. We cannot support them if we follow the present work laws, so we have to walk away from opportunities to help some of the most desperate. I feel overwhelmingly sad every time I think about it, and yet I know it is the right decision. Hopefully one day Congo will change the work laws it inherited from the Mobutu era and set up new, more flexible laws that protect workers while encouraging employers. Then we and others will be able to do much more to help the needy.
There has to be an infraction here someplace
We did our very best to pay all the mission workers as fairly and generously as we could. I had long ago recognized that no matter what the workers were paid, the work inspector would always come up with SOME reason to find us in an infraction. We doubted that the fines and taxes we paid ever made it to any government office or project. The annual pattern of visits made it quite clear what it was all about.
We had to pay a tax because we weren't giving our workers a housing allowance. "But they don't NEED a housing allowance!" I insisted. We provide complete housing for them for free. That did not make a difference. Even if their housing was provided, they still had to have a housing allowance. That's what the law said. He had a paper to "prove" it. So that was an infraction, and an infraction demands a tax.
We argued extra long. Our funds were getting very low. There had been too many others like this inspector before him, and we knew there would be more in the coming days. All day he had been haranguing us. I had listened to it for so long that I had begun to wonder if we were not some low-life slime buckets trying to rip off the Africans after all. We had done everything in the book wrong according to him.
Then as he walked back to the main road, his "bonne fete" (our tax) tucked tightly into his pocket, he turned to our staff member who was accompanying him. "Do you think I could get a job here?" he asked.
Thank you, sir! That question helped put it all in perspective for me.
The devolution
During our first term I did not even know about Zaire's "Code du Travail" (Work Laws). They must have existed, but they were not applied to missions. We lived and hired workers happily. However, as the country's economy deteriorated, officials became more and more desperate to try to get funds anywhere they could. Immediate cash was the goal regardless of the long-term consequences. I remember the first visit of the "Inspecteur du Travail" (Work Inspector) to Mission Garizim. I about fainted when he listed all the requirements for hiring workers. The long list was obviously intended for big corporations making big profits. For small groups like ours it was death three times over. It was really as if the worker became your child and your dependent. You were expected to provide virtually everything for him.
Impossible to Fire? Nearly!
The worst part was that the laws made it virtually impossible to fire anybody. We still have workers on our work roll in the interior that we have not needed for ten years. We keep them just because it is more expensive to fire them than it is to keep them working even if they did nothing. Their jobs are dead-end job for them. We will never promote them because we don't really need them. If, however, we are out of money and cannot continue, we could let them go then, according to the law. But of course we would pay even more dearly to do that, since other fines would apply then.
Some missions hired a special accounting agency and paid them a considerable monthly fee to do nothing but try to keep them in the good graces of the "code du travail". In the end they, too, were levied devastating fines and ended up leaving the country.
Consequences of Restrictive Work Laws
As a result of all the upheavals Zaire (now Congo) went through, the streets have filled with homeless street children. We have developed a wonderful ministry to street children in Kinshasa. But we cannot start a home for them, because we would have to hire workers. To hire workers, we'd have to follow the "Code du Travail", which is still in place. I hate it every time I have to tell our staff no, sorry, we simply cannot cope with the "Code du Travail." Even if it means that we cannot do some of the things we would dearly like to do. Even if it means that street kids still sleep on the street. It's just not feasible as long as that work code is still in place, or at least, as long as it is applied to mission agencies and other non-profit organizations.
Our experience struggling with the work code in Zaire is how I came to understand how damaging restrictive work laws can be. We are not trying to make a profit; we are just trying to support the ministries to which we commit. We cannot support them if we follow the present work laws, so we have to walk away from opportunities to help some of the most desperate. I feel overwhelmingly sad every time I think about it, and yet I know it is the right decision. Hopefully one day Congo will change the work laws it inherited from the Mobutu era and set up new, more flexible laws that protect workers while encouraging employers. Then we and others will be able to do much more to help the needy.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Two armloads of money to pay our bill
During our family's first term in Zaire (now Congo), we took a vacation at the beach at Moanda. The guest house charged us $165 for the week--not bad, for a family of six. What I remember is that when my husband John counted out the money, it amounted to two huge stacks of bills. We thought that was inflation. We hadn't seen anything yet.
The government owed more than it could pay, so it felt it could solve the problem by simply having more money printed. Of course, this caused the money itself to be worth less and less. When the Zaire note first came out, it was worth $2 US. In our latter days in Zaire, a One Million Zaire note was worth just cents. I can't tell you how many because that decreased almost hourly toward the end. Our calculators could not handle the number of zeroes, so we used a shortcut method. 3,500,000 Zaires became 3.5, etc.
The government felt the solution was to change the money. At least twice that I remember, they declared the old money valueless and issued new money with fewer zeroes on the end of each note.
Some limited time was allowed for the people to cash in their old currency and receive new. However, the time allotted did not take into account that a lot of the population lived far away from banks, transportation was difficult to find and too expensive for most people, and the roads were in disrepair. Many people did not make it to the bank by the deadline and lost what currency they had.
In other cases they made it to the banks only to find that the banks were not adequately prepared for the changeover and had run out of currency.
In one changeover, they decided that coins, called Makutas, would no longer be accepted. What did people do with all their coins? They put them in the church offerings! Soon the churches found themselves with bags full of coins that they could do nothing with.
We bought the coins from the churches at a low price, which at least gave them something they could use, and we brought them home to sell as souvenirs. That was about the only time I can remember anyone winning as far as the devalued, overprinted currency was concerned.
During our second term the inflation became much worse. The currency was losing value almost hourly. It was at best a three day trip to Kinshasa to exchange money. If we brought the currency we received back to the interior, it had lost a major part of its value in those days of travel. This was at the same time that every government agency was looking for new ways to tax the few expatriates and business people who remained in the country.
We made it through in those days, often by the skin of our teeth, by never letting much currency rest in our hands. As soon as we received some currency, we would immediately invest it in things we knew we could resell locally--school notebooks and pens, salt, salted dried fish called makayabu, etc. We never made any profit on those exchanges, but we minimized our loss, which would have quickly sunk the ship otherwise.
We used to wonder why the Zaireans never saved anything. After living through this kind of skyrocketing inflation, it was very easy to see.
Sometimes we see political jokes about currency being like Monopoly money. I can understand that more than most. My husband tells the joke he heard someplace that you know inflation is bad when paper is worth more for toilet paper than it is for money. It is spoken out of experience.
John paying for our family vacation in 1982. Total in his arms: $165
The government owed more than it could pay, so it felt it could solve the problem by simply having more money printed. Of course, this caused the money itself to be worth less and less. When the Zaire note first came out, it was worth $2 US. In our latter days in Zaire, a One Million Zaire note was worth just cents. I can't tell you how many because that decreased almost hourly toward the end. Our calculators could not handle the number of zeroes, so we used a shortcut method. 3,500,000 Zaires became 3.5, etc.
The government felt the solution was to change the money. At least twice that I remember, they declared the old money valueless and issued new money with fewer zeroes on the end of each note.
Some limited time was allowed for the people to cash in their old currency and receive new. However, the time allotted did not take into account that a lot of the population lived far away from banks, transportation was difficult to find and too expensive for most people, and the roads were in disrepair. Many people did not make it to the bank by the deadline and lost what currency they had.
In other cases they made it to the banks only to find that the banks were not adequately prepared for the changeover and had run out of currency.
In one changeover, they decided that coins, called Makutas, would no longer be accepted. What did people do with all their coins? They put them in the church offerings! Soon the churches found themselves with bags full of coins that they could do nothing with.
We bought the coins from the churches at a low price, which at least gave them something they could use, and we brought them home to sell as souvenirs. That was about the only time I can remember anyone winning as far as the devalued, overprinted currency was concerned.
During our second term the inflation became much worse. The currency was losing value almost hourly. It was at best a three day trip to Kinshasa to exchange money. If we brought the currency we received back to the interior, it had lost a major part of its value in those days of travel. This was at the same time that every government agency was looking for new ways to tax the few expatriates and business people who remained in the country.
We made it through in those days, often by the skin of our teeth, by never letting much currency rest in our hands. As soon as we received some currency, we would immediately invest it in things we knew we could resell locally--school notebooks and pens, salt, salted dried fish called makayabu, etc. We never made any profit on those exchanges, but we minimized our loss, which would have quickly sunk the ship otherwise.
We used to wonder why the Zaireans never saved anything. After living through this kind of skyrocketing inflation, it was very easy to see.
Sometimes we see political jokes about currency being like Monopoly money. I can understand that more than most. My husband tells the joke he heard someplace that you know inflation is bad when paper is worth more for toilet paper than it is for money. It is spoken out of experience.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
We lived through economic collapse once--please, not again!
Our family lived in Zaire for nine years and were there through the declining days of the Mobutu rule. I never dreamed that missionary life would give me lessons in economics. Balancing our personal support was all that I had "signed up for". But I found that living in a nation in full-blown economic decline taught me much more. In the next three posts I'll talk about three areas of our experience:
1. What happens when government targets the "rich" (I'll put that first since our own US government is having an affair with that idea right now)
2. What it's like when government prints an endless supply of worthless money creating runaway inflation
3. What it's like when government tries to "protect" workers by treating employers as if they were ATM's or money machines.
TARGETING THE RICH? ONCE WE WERE THE "RICH" THEY TARGETED
The definition of "rich"
I first learned I was rich in a discussion with a Zairean friend. We lived mostly on the level of the people around us, especially during our second term. When we chose our new mission site, there were no buildings there, although it was near a village. We knew that eventually we would build a cement house, but we did not want the first thing we did to be to build a house for ourselves. As it worked out, we lived for six years in a mud hut with dirt floors and a thatch roof.
We had no electricity in our home and we used to joke that our running water was the water carriers running up the hill with a bucket. We bathed in nearby lake and kept a simple bucket of water by the back door for clean up in-between. Our clothes were permanently kept in the suitcases they came in, held up by rough sticks lashed together with vine. We used a pit latrine outhouse. In the beginning we cooked our meals over a campfire and for a long time baked bread in a hollowed out termite mound, a skill we learned from the Zaireans.
We bought greens and mushrooms from the local kids and dressed simply. So I was surprised, in light of all this, that my friend still considered us rich.
"You think we are rich?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, Madam. Very, very rich."
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"Because you have a truck," he answered matter of factly.
The truck did not belong to us personally, of course. It was a mission truck, but we had use of it, so we were rich.
When we first went to Zaire, being "rich" did not cause us any trouble, except that wherever we went the village chief & elders always wanted to talk with us. Always they wanted us to build them a hospital and a school. In every village.
The roadblocks
In the early days, we created friendship with the police at the few barriers before the towns we visited often. We used to prepare little bags of coffee and sugar. Before they could ask for a bribe, we began chatting with them in the local language and pulled out the baggies along with Bibles or booklets as goodwill gestures. We always left as "bampangi ya luzolo"--beloved relatives.
As the country's bankruptcy became more and more complete, things began to change, however. The government was out of money so it was not paying its workers. Insistence on bribes became greater and greater. We had to reduce the number of trips we could take because we could not afford the high price demanded at the roadblocks, and the number of them was multiplying. The police began sneering at the coffee, sugar and Bibles. They wanted $10. Then $25. Then $100. At that point we were effectively grounded.
The mail
We had always paid for a post office box, since there never was mail delivery in Zaire. The price on that quadrupled. Then they also began charging us for each piece of mail we received. We were livid at first, but then we realized that the postal workers were not being paid, and charging the few "rich" people who could afford the service was the only way they could make ends meet. We paid for each letter.
The "infractions" and the taxes
Staying home did not solve the problem, however, The government began coming to us. The big Zairean holiday was New Year's. Everyone hoped for a "bonne fete", a good celebration, which included eating plenty of meat and getting a new suit of clothes, and maybe drinking liquor for some. The government was rarely if ever paying its workers, but many continued in their positions, perhaps because of the authority they could wield. The only ones left in the country capable of making sure they got their "bonne fete" were the "rich". The parade of government wokers began in September and continued in an unmitigated parade through New Year's Day. Every conceivable department of government found a reason to visit the mission, each of them looking for some "infraction" for which they could levy a fine against us. Of course, we were also expected to provide hospitality for them for as long as they stayed.
The infractions were totally unreasonable. One, I remember, was a supposed tax on dangerous places. We had built a storage shed called a "depot". It was a dangerous establishment, they said. Our controller had already spent most of the day arguing with them when I got involved.
"What is dangerous about it?" I asked.
"Someone could get locked in there and suffocate," they responded.
"No, that cannot happen. We have designed it very carefully with more than adequate ventilation. Even if someone gets locked in, they cannot suffocate," I argued. "Come, I'll show you the ventilation system and you can see what you think."
"Well, it doesn't matter whether anyone could suffocate or not or whether there is any danger or not. By definition, a depot is a dangerous establishmnet, and you have a depot, so therefore you have to pay a tax."
We ended up paying the tax just to get rid of the guy. Our funds were limited, so we had to decrease what we were doing in ministry.
The Environmental Protection Agency came out and declared that we had to pay an environmental tax because the generator that we used at the Bible school created vibrations that shook the ground. It disturbed the termites, it seems. So THAT'S why the termites were always so avidly attacking our house! My husband, Papa John, tried to argue with that guy about the reasonability of what he was demanding. "You just want your bonne fete," John said, hitting the nail on the head.
The guy began feigning offense. Papa John had insulted him, he said. Before he could levy another tax on us for that, one of the pastors took him by the arm. "Papa John must be getting hungry," he said. "You know, the sun beats down on his bald head and he can say crazy things. You must be getting hungry, too. Let's go get something to eat."
We can laugh about it now, but it was truly difficult at the time. The creativity for coming up with new infractions for which one could be taxed was truly amazing, dealing with the officials was both exhausting and discouraging, and the loss of funds cut very deeply into our accounts, making it difficult to help anyone else.
The situation got worse and worse as more and more people left the country, until toward the end even I longed to leave the country I loved so much, the place I had planned to live and minister for the rest of my life. We spent most of our time trying to figure out how to get by, and we swore they spent most of their time trying to find new ways to take from us the ministry funds we had brought to help the people of their country.
Reflections
I suppose my experiences in Zaire affect my thinking about our current situation in America. No one really got any long term help by government officials targeting the rich. A few elite got a bonne fete for a day. The government did not address any of the issues that had caused the deterioration of the economy until mass chaos erupted and the country crumbled. They have never really recovered from the damage that was done. I fear America may be headed in a very similar direction. We may have been rich by Zairean standards, but by American standards? We've certainly never made anything even approaching $250,000 a year, so I am not trying to protect myself or the majority of my friends. I just see the "taxing the rich" idea as a symptom of much deeper problems. Would to God we would begin to address those! I don't want to live through the collapse of a country for the second time.
Next time: Living with Wild Inflation in the Congo
1. What happens when government targets the "rich" (I'll put that first since our own US government is having an affair with that idea right now)
2. What it's like when government prints an endless supply of worthless money creating runaway inflation
3. What it's like when government tries to "protect" workers by treating employers as if they were ATM's or money machines.
TARGETING THE RICH? ONCE WE WERE THE "RICH" THEY TARGETED
The definition of "rich"
I first learned I was rich in a discussion with a Zairean friend. We lived mostly on the level of the people around us, especially during our second term. When we chose our new mission site, there were no buildings there, although it was near a village. We knew that eventually we would build a cement house, but we did not want the first thing we did to be to build a house for ourselves. As it worked out, we lived for six years in a mud hut with dirt floors and a thatch roof.
Our home in Congo from 1990 to 1996
We had no electricity in our home and we used to joke that our running water was the water carriers running up the hill with a bucket. We bathed in nearby lake and kept a simple bucket of water by the back door for clean up in-between. Our clothes were permanently kept in the suitcases they came in, held up by rough sticks lashed together with vine. We used a pit latrine outhouse. In the beginning we cooked our meals over a campfire and for a long time baked bread in a hollowed out termite mound, a skill we learned from the Zaireans.
Our bread going into a termite mound
Our "rich" kitchen
We bought greens and mushrooms from the local kids and dressed simply. So I was surprised, in light of all this, that my friend still considered us rich.
"You think we are rich?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, Madam. Very, very rich."
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"Because you have a truck," he answered matter of factly.
The truck did not belong to us personally, of course. It was a mission truck, but we had use of it, so we were rich.
Our mission truck stuck on Zairean superhighway
When we first went to Zaire, being "rich" did not cause us any trouble, except that wherever we went the village chief & elders always wanted to talk with us. Always they wanted us to build them a hospital and a school. In every village.
The roadblocks
In the early days, we created friendship with the police at the few barriers before the towns we visited often. We used to prepare little bags of coffee and sugar. Before they could ask for a bribe, we began chatting with them in the local language and pulled out the baggies along with Bibles or booklets as goodwill gestures. We always left as "bampangi ya luzolo"--beloved relatives.
As the country's bankruptcy became more and more complete, things began to change, however. The government was out of money so it was not paying its workers. Insistence on bribes became greater and greater. We had to reduce the number of trips we could take because we could not afford the high price demanded at the roadblocks, and the number of them was multiplying. The police began sneering at the coffee, sugar and Bibles. They wanted $10. Then $25. Then $100. At that point we were effectively grounded.
The mail
We had always paid for a post office box, since there never was mail delivery in Zaire. The price on that quadrupled. Then they also began charging us for each piece of mail we received. We were livid at first, but then we realized that the postal workers were not being paid, and charging the few "rich" people who could afford the service was the only way they could make ends meet. We paid for each letter.
The "infractions" and the taxes
Staying home did not solve the problem, however, The government began coming to us. The big Zairean holiday was New Year's. Everyone hoped for a "bonne fete", a good celebration, which included eating plenty of meat and getting a new suit of clothes, and maybe drinking liquor for some. The government was rarely if ever paying its workers, but many continued in their positions, perhaps because of the authority they could wield. The only ones left in the country capable of making sure they got their "bonne fete" were the "rich". The parade of government wokers began in September and continued in an unmitigated parade through New Year's Day. Every conceivable department of government found a reason to visit the mission, each of them looking for some "infraction" for which they could levy a fine against us. Of course, we were also expected to provide hospitality for them for as long as they stayed.
The infractions were totally unreasonable. One, I remember, was a supposed tax on dangerous places. We had built a storage shed called a "depot". It was a dangerous establishment, they said. Our controller had already spent most of the day arguing with them when I got involved.
"What is dangerous about it?" I asked.
"Someone could get locked in there and suffocate," they responded.
"No, that cannot happen. We have designed it very carefully with more than adequate ventilation. Even if someone gets locked in, they cannot suffocate," I argued. "Come, I'll show you the ventilation system and you can see what you think."
"Well, it doesn't matter whether anyone could suffocate or not or whether there is any danger or not. By definition, a depot is a dangerous establishmnet, and you have a depot, so therefore you have to pay a tax."
We ended up paying the tax just to get rid of the guy. Our funds were limited, so we had to decrease what we were doing in ministry.
The Environmental Protection Agency came out and declared that we had to pay an environmental tax because the generator that we used at the Bible school created vibrations that shook the ground. It disturbed the termites, it seems. So THAT'S why the termites were always so avidly attacking our house! My husband, Papa John, tried to argue with that guy about the reasonability of what he was demanding. "You just want your bonne fete," John said, hitting the nail on the head.
The guy began feigning offense. Papa John had insulted him, he said. Before he could levy another tax on us for that, one of the pastors took him by the arm. "Papa John must be getting hungry," he said. "You know, the sun beats down on his bald head and he can say crazy things. You must be getting hungry, too. Let's go get something to eat."
We can laugh about it now, but it was truly difficult at the time. The creativity for coming up with new infractions for which one could be taxed was truly amazing, dealing with the officials was both exhausting and discouraging, and the loss of funds cut very deeply into our accounts, making it difficult to help anyone else.
The situation got worse and worse as more and more people left the country, until toward the end even I longed to leave the country I loved so much, the place I had planned to live and minister for the rest of my life. We spent most of our time trying to figure out how to get by, and we swore they spent most of their time trying to find new ways to take from us the ministry funds we had brought to help the people of their country.
Reflections
I suppose my experiences in Zaire affect my thinking about our current situation in America. No one really got any long term help by government officials targeting the rich. A few elite got a bonne fete for a day. The government did not address any of the issues that had caused the deterioration of the economy until mass chaos erupted and the country crumbled. They have never really recovered from the damage that was done. I fear America may be headed in a very similar direction. We may have been rich by Zairean standards, but by American standards? We've certainly never made anything even approaching $250,000 a year, so I am not trying to protect myself or the majority of my friends. I just see the "taxing the rich" idea as a symptom of much deeper problems. Would to God we would begin to address those! I don't want to live through the collapse of a country for the second time.
Next time: Living with Wild Inflation in the Congo
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