By Mara Ricoy Olariaga, Birth Educator, Activist and Writer 

Every now and again I switch off from social media. I find it pointless, despite my best intentions to use it as a tool for connection and activism, but every now and again something happens that restores my faith in the power of even the most hostile virtual places like Twitter. But it was precisely there where an account called Congo Actual, which promotes news about Congo in my native Spanish, follows me and tags me when the news are related to women or birth. So when I accepted the role of expert lead on obstetric violence for FiLiA, I decided that I wanted to find out more about the situation of women and birth in places I didn’t know, so I rejoined Twitter just to contact Congo Actual and ask them kindly to put me in touch with any women doing activism about women’s rights in Congo. And that’s how I ended up meeting the extraordinary Grâce Maroy, who like all activists was very busy but very quick to reply.

We chatted for well over an hour and, despite the differences in age, language, nationality, I think that we both share a common fire, a sense of urgency and duty, that somehow connected us very quickly in our discussion, and here are some of the important things from our conversation that Grâce wanted to share through our blog about the women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

 

You come from a city called Bukavu. What is it like? How is life there?

A city in South Kivu province, Bukavu is on Lake Kivu, about 3½ hours south of Goma (by boat and land), the capital of North Kivu province, and north of the city of Uvira. Bukavu has a mountainous terrain; it offers a tropical mountain climate in two seasons: a dry season (which lasts about four months, from May to August) and a rainy season during the other months of the year. The city has about 800,000 inhabitants, and more in the suburbs and surrounding villages. It borders the Rwandan town of Cyangugu, on the Ruzizi River.

Bukavu is a growing city and has a number of problems. Like other parts of the DRC, it knows problems related to the weak, or absence of, leadership at the head of our country, or the lack of political will locally, provincially, and nationally.

This leads to many negative impacts on the lives of Congolese people, especially women and children.

In addition to the problems of very limited health services and education, and poor physical infrastructure (for example, housing, water and electric delivery, public markets and buildings, and roads), there are problems of political and economic instability. This makes women doubly vulnerable in very high proportions in both urban and rural areas.

 

Why did you become an activist?

My motivation to become an activist comes from my sister Judith. She is an inspiration to me, active in a non-partisan and non-violent citizen movement. I was inspired by the sense of sacrifice and patriotism for our country when I was still 16 years old. I decided to join the non-violent struggle of the Struggle for Change, LUCHA, in 2016. LUCHA campaigns for social justice and human dignity. This movement has helped me to grow as a woman and especially as a citizen in my country, to understand my duties and my rights, and to claim them.

It should be noted that LUCHA was a pressure movement from civil society, with a low participation of girls and women. Having noticed the low participation and non-commitment of women, which I thought was essential for our country, it was then that I created in 2019 with some of my comrades MWANAMKE KESHO (MwaK) which means young girl woman of tomorrow. MwaK is a non-profit association whose mission is to make the women of tomorrow conscientious of their rights and responsibilities, mobilise them against all violence against women, and fight for environmental protection.

 

 What is the situation of girls and women in the DRC?

The situation of girls and women in the DRC remains very worrying.

- Dropping out of school makes it more difficult for girls to have high ambitions, to be trained for work and informed about their rights

- The lack of awareness of their rights means that many are not informed of the legal instruments for the promotion or protection of women that exist in the DRC, of the texts ratified at local, regional, national, and international levels by the Congolese authorities

- Beyond these problems mentioned, the DRC has weakly implemented legal texts that provide for gender equality, including article 14 of the Congolese Constitution, or the 2015 law on parity; more than 70% of those appointed to positions of responsibility remain men.

In short, because of cultural barriers, economic and political barriers, women who have the ambition to emerge or flourish sometimes suffer greater limitations than those of male actors.

 

And what about when women give birth, what are the main issues?

According to figures from the Congolese government and its partners, at least 4 women die every hour in the DRC from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. And 1 in 5 women under the age of 20 still give birth outside a health facility, a source of a significant risk of death for these newborn children.

In environments where girls start having children very early, and they give birth one after another, this makes their bodies very vulnerable and exposes them to mortality.

The causes of these deaths can be:

- Inaccessibility to quality and timely health care. Many health facilities are private rather than state-owned. So the cost is high compared to the economic power of a large majority of the Congolese or South Kievucian population.

The distance between certain areas and the reference hospitals, the state of the road infrastructure, (deliveries at 20 or 30 kilometers) they take motorcycles, bicycles. Others are transported on boards. The time that passes to reach the maternity [facility] endangers their health; even for the medicines to reach the villages it is also very complicated because of poor transportation infrastructure.

There is a lack of qualified medical staff, and a shortage of medication. Modern medicine has come a long way. But the more you go inside the provinces, the fewer devices you see. There are health centres where syringes are still boiled for reuse.

- The cultural and religious constraints of health providers mean that some people do not feel able to offer the services prescribed by law. Here unsafe abortions kill girls and women in almost all provinces of the DRC. You will even see, where services are available, women and girls fear stigma without realising the danger they face.

We have laws in the DRC that address the issues of early marriage, and early and unwanted pregnancy, but girls and women are not informed or [don’t] know about their existence. Women and communities must be made aware of the danger of giving birth one after the other.

How does it feel to live with the possibility of war all the time?

What it takes to live with an intermittent threat of war – on this subject, I do not know what I can say that can really express what I feel about what the war could have caused as collateral damage in our lives as a young woman and Congolese patriot.

I was born in the war. I grew up in this same context and unfortunately things seem to get worse from day to day. One of the causes for which I joined the non-violent struggle in 2016 and decided to found an association in 2019, [was] to get particularly close to women and talk to them about the need for us to build our own peace, by accepting our own men and women in respect of the freedoms and opinions of others.

The phenomenon of repeated wars, with economic and political instability, forges a little more every day the people that we are and that I represent. A little resilient, who do not lose hope.

 

What would you like other women to know about your country and women in your country?

I would like other women to know that in Congo there are heroines; many act in the shadows or may not be known but they are wonderful women who fight day by day to banish the retrograde morals and customs that stifle their dreams and their fulfilment. They are single mothers, married women or young single women who are real leaders in their little world with their small income-generating activity. They take care of their children, schoolchildren, pay their own rent and take care of them beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that weigh on them. The latter raise awareness among other women and are an inspiration for them; these women help me to celebrate them and their courage.

We plan to continue our work in Bukavu, and we have recently relaunched our project to collect waste from plastic bottles and try to reuse the materials, perhaps for a fence around the Chinjoma property. Pollution is a big problem in Bukavu and it is sad that many parts of beautiful Lake Kivu cannot be used because it is difficult to pass through the garbage.

Lack of sanitation also contributes to disease and difficult living conditions, and we are trying to educate the people of Bukavu so that they are more aware and city officials, Too. Here we bring the women to take the lead in the protection of the environment; being a citizen of the world they can also fulfil their duties and thus be demanding their rights.

For the specific case, in the context of sexual and reproductive rights, we carried out in 2020 a survey on the impact of Covid 19 on the resurgence of teenage pregnancies in the city of Bukavu, of which 300 cases of early pregnancy had been identified in a period of 3 months or 90 days.

We carried out a second survey on gender-based violence (causes, consequences and responsibility), early marriage, early and unwanted pregnancy in Kabare village.

After this survey, we held a conference to present the results on the International Day of the Girl Child. From these meetings emerged several resolutions, including the construction of a neutral space that can bring together men and women responsible for families and adolescents to discuss issues related to sexuality, law… of this kind.

With our means of the edges and some donations, we were able to get spaces and there we erected premises that serve as a framework. It's true there are still things to do.

One of our practices is to bring boys and girls together, because if boys and men do not accept and support that women have equal rights, it is much more difficult for women to improve their lives.

We have a football program, mainly for boys now, thanks to donations we have received from American friends, and we will use it as a space for exchanges and dialogues between young boys on sex-based violence and the right for all because, yes, we are convinced that it is important to involve them to hope for the changes we dream of.

We are working to add electricity in the building of Chinjoma. We need computers and educational materials for many for them to watch videos and chat with others to open up and learn

I work with friends in the United States to collect CDs and DVDs that we can show to younger people who can't go to school, to women who want more information education about rights and sexuality, and for everyone in the village.

 

We ended our meeting chatting about trivial things. I could hear a rooster over there, and where I live in Scotland I can hear sheep. I jokingly said with my broken French that I hope one day we can meet so I can see the rooster. Grâce tells me excitedly that it is a beautiful country and that I should come. Who knows, I say, I feel that the continent I have never visited and know little of, despite being so close to my country (8.9 miles), after our meeting is a little bit closer.

Thank you to Grâce Maroy who is an activist, freelance photojournalist and co-founder of the NGO Mwanamke Kesho

Thank you to Julián from @CongoActual for putting us in touch.