DRC: The Jungle Combatants

Goma, Nord-Kivu January 28^th

“Club des amités!”

“Les combatants de Jungle!”

“Club des amités!”

“Les combatants de Jungle!”

It is 6:30 AM with the sun beginning to light the dusty, dirty, urine smelling Stade des Volcans (Volcanos) football ground in a poor area of the city of Goma, Eastern Congo, and with this shouted chant, a declaration and a chorused reply of camaraderie and pugilistic spirit, our daily boxing class begins and ends.

At some point in ones life you will stop and wonder what events have brought you to where you are and on this morning in a war zone in the poorest country in the world, when my middle aged frame is straining, I am dripping with sweat and sparring with a slumlord boxer who killed his last opponent, I am definitely wondering how I have ended up where I am.

There are three other students in the class, all young men who are promising boxers, wiry and hard as boards, and learning, like myself, at the feet of our teacher, the great Kibomango, whose name, even, seems to underline his authority.

I have now got over the early morning existential question and answered it in my mind: there is no where I’d rather be than here and the people I am training with, regardless of how out-classed and under-performing I may feel in comparison, are comrades with whom I share a bond.

Kibomango himself is someone who commands your attention and respect. He is a beautiful man who floats so perfectly in his métier as a boxer, is so deeply respectful to it, that it is hard not to watch him with awed fascination as he glides around the floor with his easy footwork, delivering beautifully powerful, graceful jabs and upper-cuts to an invisible foe. He is a patient and effective teacher and the atmosphere is one of concentration and hard work; it is exhausting and demanding, the toughest workouts I’ve had in years, maybe ever. But there is also an atmosphere of respect and community, none of the bullying and competitiveness I’ve inevitably found among young men, coaches and students, in boxing gyms or rowing teams in England or Canada.

There is something to be said for African traits of community and Ubuntu—shared humanity—whatever else might be said about the harshness and brutality of this country, with its wars, corruption and dog-eat-dog ethos of survival. All of those hard conditions co-exist alongside of, perhaps even reinforce, bonds of community and mutual help. For all of Congo’s tragedies, most of it self-inflicted, sadly, the society itself is a good one.

Congo is not an easy place for a foreigner—though it is not an easy one for Congolese either—and arrival here demands some things of you: wariness and good judgment but also the ability to process the horrors of this zone of conflict. And even if most of the time knowledge of that exists on an abstract level, the more immediate, sharper points—the menace of officialdom and soldiers, the personal security issues that are not pre-occupying but should be kept in mind, the poverty that is apparent when walking the streets—are something the visitor must move past quickly to find a comfort zone. That process takes about a week, to bury the apprehension—the fear, even, that can stalk you in a very real way here—and find the familiar touch points of work, home and community. I now have it: Goma is mine.

As the boxing work-out draws to a close—all of it taking place in the covered entrance way between the two team changing rooms of the football stadium and with the other side open to the field of dark volcanic ash in which a crowd are watching our workout, and me, probably—we put our bandaged fists together in a circle and shout:

“The club of friendship!”

“The jungle combatants!”

Walking out of the stadium I feel perfectly content and, also, safe. I return the stares with a smile and stride confidently through the poorest part of the neighbourhood. Everyone here knows me—I am a student of the toughest dude in town and woe be to anyone who would offend him.