When will the road get better? (1)

“This road used to be good. When we see it’s getting worse, why don’t we do anything about it?” It’s a rethorical question and coming from Christian. Christian is from the DRC and working for World Vision in his own country. We’ve hardly met and already are trying to tackle the major questions. Issues that are not just theoretical but are affecting him and his people in very deep and real ways.

While our car is almost flying over the road, with or without potholes depending on whether the Chinese have been there or not, Christian searches for answers. He goes back in history to Mobutu Seko Seko’s dictatorship and money disappearing to foreign bank accounts and in the pockets of officials instead of being invested in infrastructure. After that, war followed war and it quenched the last bit of hope from people’s souls. If you know that what you build today is very likely to be destroyed tomorrow, why bother building at all?

As we are passing through a furtile land, fields and hills, rain forest and small villages with lots of people, I wonder again why it is that this nation that is so rich in all imaginable ways, can’t pull itself together. For with its resources and minerals it could be one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

In the mean time we are passing churches – churches everywhere. While schools are thinly spread, almost every village seems to have a church. Mostly catholic. In this nation the message is in my face: Or the gospel is not true and is not good news at all. Or we as a church have done something very terribly wrong. And to be honest, I think it’s the latter.