Interview: Life and Growing "old" in Congo

A few weeks ago Mama Youyou celebrated her 50th birthday. It had been a rough 49th year for her, health-wise, so the occasion was an important one.

I sat down with her and Tchic (our friend/French tutor) as they reflected on their lives and getting "old." Here's a bit of our translated conversation:

Me: Tchic, did you know Mama Youyou just had her 50th birthday? Isn't that exciting!?

Tchic: Yes. But I'm already much older than 50.

Mama Youyou: (laughter) Yes, but it's harder for us women!

Me: Really, why do you think?

Mama Youyou: Well, for starters, we do most of the hard work. We work in the fields and a lot of times it's easier for us to get jobs than it is for men. Often, we're the ones bringing home the money. It's a hard life. We're very stressed.

Tchic: Okay, you're right. That's true. Women do work all day and night while we mostly relax.

Me: When you think of someone living to "old age" in Congo, what age is that? For example, I think when I hear of someone in the States living to their 80s or so, I think that's been a good, long life. What do you think?

Mama Youyou: Well, if you live in the village, you really should live until you're 70 or 75. But if you live in the city like us, we're dying around the age of 45.

Tchic: In the village, people eat food from their land. They eat their own chickens. They use the plants around them for medicine. You can live a very long life there.

Mama Youyou: It's true. My father-in-law is 92-years-old and he just moved from the village to live with us in the city.

Me: Do you think you can still find "the village" in Kinshasa? (Note: "Kinshasa" is a city-province which stretches nearly 10,000 square kilometers.)

Tchic: No.

Mama Youyou: Yes, but it's creeping away from us.

Me: So tell me what it was like when you were children. How was it different than today.

Mama Youyou: The first thing I think of is that our parents didn't have to worry about sending us to school. They could afford to pay the school fees.

Tchic: Today we worry about things like feeding our kids and sending them to school. It didn't used to be this way. The government used to help out with stuff like that. Today if we can afford to send our kids to school, we still have to worry about their teachers hassling them for money on the side. The system didn't used to be corrupt. Congo was a good place to live between the years of 1965 and 1973. Before the economy collapsed 1 Zaïre was worth $2! However, I remember my grandparents talking about being afraid to go out at night and to only travel in large groups for fear they would be stolen and sold into slavery.

Mama Youyou: It's true. I think we've already lived through Congo's best days when we were younger. 

Me: Right, so tell me about Zaïre. What were your names before the "Authenticity campaign?" (Note: Mobutu renamed Congo, Zaïre and ordered everyone to change their European names to more "authentic" ones. Men were disallowed from wearing Western suits and ties. The abacost was born.)

Mama Youyou: My name until I was 15-years-old was Monique. Then when Authenticité happened, my older sister who cared for me because we were orphaned, renamed me "Youyou." She liked that name for some reason and it was more "African." Tchic, what was your name?

Tchic: Oh, I've always been just Tchic.

Mama Youyou: That's not true. What was your name? C'mon.

Tchic: Okay fine, I was Maurice.

Then we all laugh in agreement that Maurice is a ridiculous name for our Tchic. 

Mama Youyou: Not long after I changed my name, I met my husband. He passed me on the street and asked for my address. I didn't want to give it to him, but he insisted.

Tchic: That's very strange. No one does that.

Mama Youyou: So I told my sister I had given this man our address and she was upset. Not long after, he showed up at our house and asked to marry me.

Tchic: That is very, very strange.

Mama Youyou: So we got married and we've been married for 32 years.

Me: See Tchic, it worked out!

Tchic: She never said she was happily married.

Everyone laughs.

Mama Youyou: Yes, we're very happy.

Me: Mama Youyou, when you were my age, how did you imagine yourself at 50?

Mama Youyou: Well, I wished for myself that I would be happy doing whatever it was that I was doing. I always wanted to sew. My sister taught me how and I'm still the happiest when I sew.

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The Picture That Did Me In

Remember this summer when Charlotte had her tonsils and adenoids removed? We had no idea she needed surgery, but trusted the doctors who told us it had to be done. We teared up a bit as they wheeled her away, but then enjoyed coffee while we watched her status in real-time on the screen in the hospital waiting room.

On the nervous scale, we were at about a 2. It was a routine surgery and we knew she would be fine. And even if there was a complication we rest assured in the fact that we were in the United States.

Well, this summer Mama Youyou also had a routine surgery and we were scared out of our minds. Mama Youyou waited to have her surgery until we left for the States so she wouldn't have to take off work. (Bless her.) When she told us she needed the surgery, we did everything we could to make sure she had access to good health care.

Mama Youyou in all her brilliance.

You see, Mama Youyou has already outlived her life expectancy as a Congolese woman. Complications during routine surgeries in DRC (or lack thereof) are the type of thing that keeps her life expectancy rate down.

In the weeks before we left, she started saying things like, "If it's my time, it's my time..." And she told me that helping her find the best doctor was pointless because her fate was "in God's hands." But we still did what we could. We asked around for the best doctor and searched for someone who could stay at the hospital and take care of her during her 2+ week recovery. Because in Congo you have to provide your own food and care in the hospital.

Logically, I tearfully begged Mama Vida to help. Thankfully her husband gave her permission to be absent from their house to help out a friend. Then Jill rounded up medical supplies and trained Mama Vida in proper wound care, while I practically sat in her lap making sure she was listening closely. I paid a Congolese friend, Joseph, who has internet access to check-in on Mama Youyou (read: bother her) and email me every Friday with an update.

Up until the day we left for the States, Mama Youyou had been her usual stoic self. She's always very Mary Poppins when she says goodbye. No tears. No fuss. But this time she hugged us tight and sobbed. She really believed it would be the last time she would see us.

Fast forward a week or so later and Joseph emailed to let us know Mama Youyou had her surgery and was recovering. Then he sent us photos of the surgery itself (!) with the operating table right next to an open window. And this picture of Mama Youyou and Mama Vida in the hospital.

The picture that did me in.

During that same week, here is an image of my daughter in her hospital:

I was gutted by the difference. Besides the balanced meal, all the ice cream she can eat, fancy bed with room for me to sleep beside her, and sterile IVs, there's really just one difference. Access.

These two people spend their lives together. They sing the same songs, read the same books, laugh at the same jokes. But when they are sick, one has a very good chance of dying and the other has every chance of living. Of course I know this is how it goes, but there's nothing like a photo to make me feel every adjective for the word sad.

When we got back to Congo, Mama Youyou was out of the hospital and on the mend. Who knows if anything we did made a difference. She said her hospital experience was miserable and I could use the picture above to tell about it. Because if I'm all kinds of sad she's all kinds of emotions. The difference is that she was born a woman in Congo. And her whole life she's known that life isn't a given.

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