Fran Q on Woody Collins on Our Obligation to Congo

"Into Congo to repent"

By Fran Quigley
Indianapolis Star, May 18 2009

In the midst of the United States’ worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we can’t possibly afford charity for the suffering people of Congo, can we?

Fine, says Woody Collins. Don’t call it charity, then. Call it repentance.

“If people in Indiana and the U.S. are even aware about the bad things that are happening in Congo, they usually write it off as another tribal thing.” Collins says. “When in fact we Americans and westerners are the root cause of the conflicts.

“Either in ignorance or with full knowledge, we have participated in the rape of Congo.”

Americans tend to think we enjoy our historically unprecedented level of creature comforts—yes, even in a recession—solely by virtue of red-white-and-blue ingenuity and gumption.

Truth be told, we bought Cold War security (or tried to) by propping up brutal kleptocrats like Congo’s Mobuto, to devastating effect for his country’s people. We have long enjoyed access to affordable consumer goods--like the majority of cell phones that contain coltan stolen from Congo--thanks to the systematic exploitation of people like the Congolese.

So when we read that millions have died in Congo from hunger or untreated disease as byproducts of a devastating conflict that is sometimes referred to as the “African World War,” we should feel more than pity. We should feel responsibility.

Collins does. For 33 years, he worked as a civil servant in various financial roles with the U.S. Department of Defense. Then his local Presbyterian church became involved in Congo, and Collins saw first-hand the humanitarian nightmare caused by the struggle over who would control the flow of the region’s precious resources to places like Indiana.

Collins could not turn away. He took early retirement from his job at Fort Benjamin Harrison at age 54, and devoted his life to the Congolese people.

The more he worked to relieve their suffering, the more Collins discovered that the region’s occupiers have always found a willing market for stolen natural resources in the developed world, particularly the U.S. “Our country's economic hands are stained with innocent Congolese blood,” Collins says.

Collins says we should demand electronics manufacturers purchase coltan from legitimate sources, and we should impose a tax on ourselves to support one of the many organizations working to end extreme poverty in Congo.

When it comes to responding to the crisis in Congo, Collins’ actions speak even more eloquently than his words.

Alongside others in his own organization of Congo Helping Hands, plus Rotary International, the Presbyterian Church, and others, Collins has concentrated his efforts on the village of Balupe, providing hospital care for women and children, student scholarships, and renovation of schools. Collins still lives in Indiana, but he is in Congo now to oversee the final plans for a major safe water project.

From there he sends on this message back home: If you can’t help the people of Congo, at least don’t do any more damage. “Morally, we need to make decisions not to further harm the Congolese people,” he says.


Fran Quigley
Indiana-Kenya Partnership/USAID-AMPATH
1001 West 10th Street, OPW M200
Indianapolis, IN 46202
(317)630-6882
www.iukenya.org
www.ampathkenya.org