Congo Kid - Life Stories

This is part 2 of a 5 part series, titled : The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Ubangi Academy.  Part 1 shared about the dilemma of serving in missions and family separation of a boarding school for their children’s education. It posed various questions and laid the path forward for this series. In this episode you will hear about the Ubangi Academy (UBAC), located at Karawa in D.R. Congo as a school and dorm environment. This boarding school housed 30-45 kids each year, grades 2 through 12. It was a complex and structured environment with children, ranging from ages 7 to 18. The schedule, rules, pressures, social constructs, expectations for behavior, chores, cultures, and sub-cultures will be explored in detail so the listener can understand the environment of the children that grew up there. This episode also shares about the benefits of being in an environment with numerous other children, games, play time, being in band and choir, school plays, sports and other activities. Also, many deep friendships were formed at UBAC that still remain strong even today. This episode will hopefully provide context and understanding of what it was like for someone living in this dormitory and school environment.

Future episodes will feature the parents’ perspective of sending their children away, followed by kids that attended UBAC and their experiences. The wrap up episode will be the take-aways and how to move forward using our dorm experiences for a fulfilling life. Enjoy listening to what was the Ubangi Academy.

If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at [email protected] or Jodi Revell at [email protected].

For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at [email protected].

All communications will be confidential.

**Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

Many people feel God’s call to serve in missions. With that is the responsibility of raising their children and ensuring they are educated. This can prove challenging, depending on the foreign country one goes to. In my case, I was sent to the Ubangi Academy (UBAC) in Congo as an 8 year old.  The school served grades 2 through 12, with a rigorous curriculum. Normally there were 40-50 in total attendance, with most living in the dormitory, adjacent to the school. How did parents rationalize sending their kids away, starting as young as 7 years old, for 8 to 10 weeks at a time? How did the children fare? Many struggled, and have residual trauma into adulthood. I sent surveys to parents and kids alike and determined that very few kids and parents have discussed the experience. Furthermore, many kids don’t want to revisit that part of their childhood. This is part 1 of a 5 part series, to introduce the topic and lay out the challenges for parents and kids alike. It will discuss the elephant in the room, which is: how come so few families have talked about this experience that was extremely impactful on the children. Then, the Ubangi Academy, as an institution will be discussed in more detail in part 2. The routine, expectations, schedule, culture and subcultures will be explained. Then in part 3, how parents handled the challenge of separating their families and trusting that their children were adjusting well and being well cared for will be the topic.  Part 4 will be interviewing kids and their experience of the dorm ecosystem, emotional damage incurred, and how they adapted to dorm culture. Most listeners will be surprised at how most children look back at the experience. The final episode will be a summary and discuss the takeaways learned from all the interviews and surveys. And recommendations on how the kids can move forward using the positives and negatives from the experience for a better life as adults. The dilemma of balancing mission and family is very complex and controversial. I hope you join for the journey for the 5 episodes to hear the broad spectrum of perspectives on this most important issue.  Special thanks to Roger and Sally Eales for sharing how they looked at the role of UBAC in their family’s life. Also Jeff Aiken provides his take on UBAC and its impact on his life as an attendee and then as an adult.

If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at [email protected] or Jodi Revell at [email protected].

For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at [email protected].

All communications will be confidential.

**Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

The Rwanda Genocide that occurred in 1994 was one of the most recent large-scale genocides in the past 50 years.  The Hutu vs. Tutsi tribal conflict that many of us recall was horrific on so many fronts. The sheer numbers of dead (between 800,000 to 1,000,000), the nature of the butchery and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure had a lasting impact on that small central African country. The killings started on April 6, 1994, triggered by the Hutu President’s plane being shot down and lasted for 100 days.  Unfortunately, the world stage watched from afar during the killings. The Tutsi’s fought back and resulted in 1 Million Hutu refugees crashing across the Zaire (now D.R. Congo) border. There were four (4) refugee camps, of approximately 250,000 each. Three were outside of Goma, on the North side of Lake Kivu, and one large camp near Bukavu on the South side of Lake Kivu. I went in September, 1994 to help a team of volunteers with the NGO called World Relief, Inc., working with 175 unaccompanied or orphan Rwandan children with medical help and providing food and water. It was a challenging and difficult time due to the incredible enormity of the need, the mass of humanity, the sorrow, hopelessness, sickness, diseases and death we saw every day during our time there. Stories to put the enormity of the experience into perspective are shared, including from a veteran Doctor and experienced Nurse that had seen lots of rough stuff in their decades of service in the medical field in Central Africa. Dr. Tom Cairns and Ms. Thelma Landrud share of their experiences doing tough duty in difficult circumstances, offering their unique perspectives. Yet, there were times of joy and happiness even in the midst of it all. Everyone that went to the Refugee camps left emotionally exhausted and forever changed. I know I was. This is my story and my perspective of my time there, and the impact it had on me and those I shared my experiences with. A special thanks to Dr. Cairns and Ms. Landrud for their interviews to compliment this episode. And a big Thank You to Rick Selin, retired radio host, for reading the poem I wrote, trying to capture the entire Rwanda Genocide and Refugee Camp experience. I trust this episode and the message in the poem I wrote puts things in perspective about the horror of genocide, our humanity and how easily we can slip from civility into savagery.

Beka’s Story of Escape from Rwanda

Newspaper Article – OC Register

**Rated in 2023 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

This episode contains four (4) Short Stories. The first one is telling the difference between “who you know” and “who knows you”. Which is better in life and in business? Well, Short Story # 1 will answer that question for you. The second Short Story is about how to check for the freshness of chicken eggs. How to confirm they were or weren’t fertilized or rotten or not. It was quite a process. The third Short Story is about going down a 65 foot well, to assess what was damaging the buckets that pulled up the water. I describe the harrowing trip down and all the amazing stuff I found down there. Yes, there was a surprise. And then the long trip being winched to the top, back to safety. The fourth and final Short Story is about how I got my original Congolese name in October, 1970, and then in the late 1970’s the name got a bit longer. The back story will be told of all three names that make up my current Congolese name. And I answer to it even now when called by my Congolese friends. I hope you enjoy these four (4) Short Stories about various aspects of Congo life. A big thank you to the various voice-over folks to add a fun dimension to the stories.

**Rated in 2023 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

This episode is about teaching in a Congolese High School. The physical conditions of the classrooms, and lack of supplies and textbooks made the job extremely difficult for both the teachers and students alike. I was a high school professor at Institute Kimia in Gemena, D.R. Congo in the 1982-1983 school year. Having finished my sophomore year of college, I returned to Zaire / Congo and one of my roles was teaching 9th grade Chemistry and English. Trying to convey concepts in French, and having minimal textbooks or other school supplies was challenging indeed, as most learning had to be by rote, as studying and retaining knowledge was difficult without textbooks. Trying to optimize the student’s learning in these conditions was a challenge for me as well as veteran school teachers. Brad Hill taught for many years in the High School and shares his journey of teaching and successes with some of his students. He explains the differences in teaching methodologies between the US school system and the Congolese system, which is mainly driven by the lack of resources for the students. He also recounts several unique stories of his experiences, one of which includes arson. Roger Eales, who taught 20 years there, also contributes with his experiences and those are woven into the episode. For any school teachers that listen to this episode, if you think you have it tough in the US, I trust you’ll be more appreciative of the incredible resources you have to help your students learn after listening to this episode. The Congolese need education to help them and the country prosper, and unfortunately the K-12 school system doesn’t get the funding and support it deserves. For me, looking back, that year of teaching was a significant growing experience for me and many things I learned by teaching that year in D.R. Congo, I carry with me to this day.

Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.

This episode is about a gopher. Not the little critters that tear up golf courses and your back yard, but a specific role that I played for 1 year as a Gopher; as in “go-for this” and “go for that”. I tackled this job to essentially provide logistics support to our mission in Gemena, Zaire/D.R. Congo by helping with transporting fuel, people, freight and driving all over the region. In addition, I handled shopping when supplies were in the stores, immigration issues, customs & duty negotiations, meeting both our mission plane and commercial planes when they landed to coordinate peoples’ arrival and departure. Though not acting in the normal role of missionary, my job was to ensure that the doctors, nurses, pastors, teachers and builders could focus on their ministries by having me do considerable behind-the-scenes functions to keep the mission effort running. I interviewed Jim Aiken who was a Gopher for 2 years in Bangui, Central African Republic, as his experiences mirrored mine. Thelma Landrud, a career missionary nurse weighs in as well in this episode to reflect on how Gophers were considered part of the mission effort and team and to explain the shift in us as kids growing up to becoming contemporaries with the mission effort. It was a tough and challenging job, fraught with long trips, physical challenges, delays, mud, dust and mechanical breakdowns. Stories include taking several days to move a truck and container of stuff less than mile across a sandbar in the middle of a river, and paddling barrels of fuel across a river in a dug-out canoe. Indeed being a Gopher was full of adventure, hard work, surprises, frustrations, physical endurance and much satisfaction. Thanks to Jim Aiken and Thelma Landrud for their contributions to this episode.

Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.

Death, funerals, grieving and the associated rituals vary from culture to culture. This episode explores the differences and similarities as to how Americans handle end of life and grieving vs. how Congolese do. Though death is much more prevalent in Congo, they don’t prepare for it for cultural reasons. Then, when someone does die, the question of “who” caused the death must be explored, even if we would explain it away due to an illness or tragic accident. Americans suppress their grief while Congolese express their grief with considerable intensity. My thesis for this episode was to explore the differences in rituals, and also to determine if Congolese move past the loss more quickly than Americans, and if so, “why”? Three Congolese are interviewed for this episode, along with a Funeral Director from Southern California. Add to that a fantastic story about a most unusual and adventurous funeral service. You will learn some interesting information about funerals in D.R. Congo, and learn how to move past your grief. Thanks to Segbewi Mobali, Motese Moyu, Talabisa Dawena, Becky Lomaka, and Roger Eales for their contributions to this episode.

Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.

This episode is the story of a special Lake in the NW corner of the D.R. Congo, Africa. It was called Lake Kwada. Kwada, in the Ngbandi tribal language means “Big Water”. The Mbanza tribe also has ties to this lake, as Kwada in their language means “Death Here”. More on that in the episode. Lake Kwada became a place of rest, relaxation, vacation, rejuvenation and restoration for numerous missionaries serving in that area from the early 1940’s till the mid-1990’s when the missionaries evacuated due to the civil war.

This episode will take you from the finding of the lake, to the long process of securing the property, to building the the first mud rest house, building the first 2 permanent houses, and then finishing off the last 2 houses in the late 1950’s.

A few recreational amenities were added including a raft, a diving tower, and a swing rope for the kids (and a few adults).

Several career missionaries will share their memories of Kwada as a place to re-charge, take a break, spend family time and restore their souls to the difficult work and environment they lived in.

Several kids who grew up there will share how Lake Kwada provided fun, swimming, family time, recreation and numerous memories during their growing up years.

Research in the EFCA archives provided considerable information for this storyline of the Lake and its journey. Comprehensive and thorough archived meeting minutes from the Mission Executive Committee provided a fairly clear path for me to follow of making Lake Kwada a place for rest and vacationing. Furthermore, numerous older career missionaries and MK’s gave dates and information to help create the chronology of the timeline.

Dr. Titus Johnson, founder of our Mission work in 1922 wrote in his journal in August 1947: “A most wonderful day. The water was wonderful. Surely this is a future heaven in Congo”.

Thanks to all who sent me info and memories and dates to create the timeline and add to the story of Lake Kwada.

Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.

Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.

Hunting was a part of everyday life for a kid growing up in Central Africa. It was a source of food, a sport, and a deterrent to the African’s garden destruction. From a hand-made slingshot to a BB gun to an air pump Sheridan pellet gun, then on to .22 rifles and .12 gauge shotguns, this episode recounts my journey with hunting in Congo. Hunting brought knowledge and survival techniques of the jungle and grasslands from my hunting guides. Many hunts were filled with adventure, grit, disappointment, and fatigue from walking all day. But mostly, they ended with some tasty meals. Guinea hen, antelope and monkey hunting were very challenging and various techniques to shoot monkeys are discussed by several renowned and elite monkey hunters that will share in this episode. Rounding out the episode you will hear about how to hunt with Basenji dogs, as they can’t bark, but are excellent hunting dogs. But it was the love of the forest, nature, the hunt itself, and time spent with my hunting guides and friends that truly was the impact on my life.

Thanks to John Lundquist, Bob Widman, Dan Noren and Peter Eales for sharing their stories for this episode.

Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.