As with so many of my journals, I hope you will read through despite the length.  There are valuable lessons to be learned from halfway across the world…

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The truth is, I don’t know what to write.  At least not yet.  I guess that’s why I’m sitting here staring at this empty page. 

It’s been well over a month since my last real journal entry. We’ve had a few friends asking for updates – what’s the deal man?  What are you guys even doing? 

There’s an interesting disconnect between marketing and reality.  This is the first time any of us have done something people (other than our immediate circle of friends) really cared about.  Always before, friends knew what was happening because we were living life together.  This time around we have friends in all corners of the globe asking – “Do you even care about Congo anymore?  It seems there is no progress.” 

So much has happened in such a short amount of time, the task of updating seems a daunting one. The story is an exciting one, full of sleepless nights, fights, intrigue and great, great love. But in the interest of time, let me take you back to the moment when everything changed. In sharing that moment, maybe you’ll gain a telling glimpse into all the others.

The majority of our time in the Democratic Republic of Congo was beautiful.  The land itself is breathtaking, as lush as anywhere I’ve seen.  We spent long days learning, questioning, digging and attempting to understand.  With so many shadows and disinformation, we asked the people living though it – why is this war happening? Who is driving such suffering?  What is true?

There were many hours spent laughing with old friends, playing instruments and dancing, telling jokes lost in translation and enjoying the company of young people not so different than our friends here in the U.S.

We spent hours crying for the many who have been lost.  The Congolese people have endured a kind of pain I am unable to understand. Attempting to balance their reality with mine in the US tends to leave me lopsided.  Such clashing realities come crashing together and I have trouble allowing them to coexist.  Most days I just block it out and keep it from my mind - better to live functionally than allow the daily slaughter to crush me. 

But there are those rare days when I sit back and allow the full breadth of the suffering to wash over me like tidal waves of pain and human horror.  Those days are paralyzing.  They make for an inefficient version of me.  But they are important.  Vital even.  Unless we remember with regularity, we choose a life lived in denial. 

Toward the end of our last trip to Congo we ran into some trouble. We had gone deep into a region rife with mystery, and brimming with the deaths of innocents. Walikale. Home to our world’s second largest rainforest, and among our deepest “red-zones.”  For many reasons, Walikale takes center stage in this conflict. 

It is midnight, black outside, fireflies the size of racquet balls are flying overhead, and we are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of miles of jungle.

One of the few places still awake in this tiny town is the pub shack. With a cracked lantern hanging overhead, walls of rope-wrapped sticks and President Kabilas face plastered across them, this backroom stinks of secrets. 

The regional heads of Intelligence, Police, and the Army surround a table littered with beer and brandy. In the shadows of this pub, this is a night among men.  And these are the men who know.  These guys have seen it.  Seen what you ask?  All of it.  Murder.  Rape.  Torture. Exploitation.  Colonialism.  Oppression.  War.  This is a list that goes on unending. And these are the men that know. 

At first glance they see nothing more than our white skin.  And to them, white always means oppressor. Arguments ensue. In a place where war has been constant for over a decade and commonplace for the greater part of a century, misunderstandings and confusion seem inevitable. And yet, there is a mutual plea from each of us sitting around this dark table to simply be understood. The head of intelligence turns to me and yells words I don’t think I’ll soon forget. 

“Do you not see?”  He asks. “You are the problem. Your people have created much of this.”  At that he lifts up his hands and points all around.  Of course he’s referring to the chaos of the Congo war. 

“My people?” I ask.  What does that mean?  My veins carry the blood of dozens of countries, tribes and religions.  My people have been both teachers and fools, oppressors and oppressed. 

“The West.”  He responds.  “Those are your people.”  There is a frustration in his voice that goes back many, many years.  “Why can your President kill another President? Another leader does such a thing and he is a war criminal. But yours does as he likes.”  He’s referring most recently to Sadaam, but obviously hinting at the first democratically elected leader of Congo – Patrice Lumumba, whose assassination is sometimes pinned on the CIA. 

“Why does our President take his orders from yours?” He is clearly disgusted. “Congo wants a president who answers to the people of Congo first.”

The chief of police is old and grey.  He says he remembers the days of the Belgians.  “You cannot know what it is to be ruled.  It is humiliating. It makes you angry.  My country still shakes.”

Beat.

We all breathe deep.

I try to imagine such a thing.  A country shaking. 

My memory goes back to my first university days.  I was a fresh arrival, green and volunteering to reach “troubled teens.”  I fell in love with a group of freshman guys at my old high school and was soon getting midnight phone calls – “Uh, I’m drunk and stuck.  Can you grab me?”

It began innocent enough, picking up vomiting 14 yr olds from the house parties of parents who left town and left the liquor cabinet open.  And then one night my phone rings and the voice on the other side isn’t shouting or begging. 

It’s shaking. 

Violently shaking. 

Oh shit.  “Where are you, I’m on my way.”  Jeep driving through 2am hills, twenty minutes later my headlights slowly pan across a backtown curb.  There sits a quivering creature huddled in the shadows about a mile from his home. 

“Get in homie.” Placing a jacket around his shoulders, we slowly walk toward the doorless passenger seat. 

A drive in the open air will be therapeutic and we’ve got a special place, he and I.  Off we go.  Another twenty winding minutes later and we arrive at a boat ramp, leading into the local lake.  Turning the car around, I back down the ramp.  A steep decline, jerk the parking break, and our eyes are now pointing toward the sky.  Water laps against the back tires. 

In silence we sit, for how long I can’t estimate. 

And then it begins.  The shaking. 

His whole body, quivering at first and then violently wracking, tears start coming in an unending stream. 

The clouds pass overhead as he weeps, for how long I can’t estimate. 

And then he begins. The sharing. 

His father had beat him. 

He had beat him and beat him and beat him and beat him. The full force of his self-hatred pummeling into the boys back. 

And his shoulders.  And the back of his legs.  And the back of his head. 

Months later I will sit across a table from the father and he will return my gaze with head held high.  As though I am the wrongdoer for exposing his wrongs.  It is our lies that make us proud.  Only honesty can create humility. 

And the boy shakes.

I wonder what it was like for the old American slave masters?  Beating men, women and children in the backfields, then using silk scarves to wipe the sweat from their neck.  Was it easy for them to return to their beautiful plantation home?  Did their slaves shake?  Did they?

Power has often been gained off the backs of others.  I want to know how much has changed.

It is this desire to understand that snaps me back to the graying chief of police who says – “My country still shakes.”

Trauma.  He may not even know the word in English.  But he sees it in his people.  For decades and decades, beat and killed by the men of the west.

I never understood why people made such a big deal about colonialism. That was then, this is now, can we not move on?  I questioned the practicality of living in the past. I assumed people were attempting to displace blame, and failing to take responsibility. Until Congo. 

During his time, Mark Twain was a part of the first movement to end the war in Congo.  He said the horseless carriage had brought the world closer together.  Obviously he was referring to the car and how it changed everything for much of the world.  But what natural resources did the car require?  Therein lies the bulk of his point.  Because in our pursuit of rubber for tires, the Belgians killed 10,000,000 people in 20 years.  Ten million. People. Dead.

This done in the name of progress.  In the name of growth.  And it is the now the grandchildren of progress who look on with disdain and remark – why are there always problems over there? Won’t they simply get on with it and work things out? 

But aren’t beaten boys more likely to beat their own?  And then their own as well?

While we stand surprised, such questions are rarely asked. Violence is more than a moment. Violence tears us from one another. Tears us from ourselves. And the ripple effects of such trauma are felt for many years.

We stand in horror at the horrors of history, but can’t seem to react when it stares our present eyes in the eye. 

What is this fog? This thing that keeps us from seeing our own day with as much moral clarity as we see the past? 
How can we understand it
so as to describe it
so as to expose it
so as to destroy it? 

The fog centers on self.  Almost always. Looking too closely at ourselves, we often fail to see all this is behind and the possibility before us.  We fail to see much of anything. 

Knowing this, the Congolese leader looks at me with wrinkled eyes and asks, “Do you not see?  Your people are part of the problem.”

As my scales come peeling off, the fog begins to clear. 

The Falling Whistles journal was written with as much ignorance as urgency. I had heard there was a problem, but it took tortured children to shake me into paying attention.

What we’ve learned since that day has changed us forever. We all begin in ignorance.  It is where we go from there that determines our destiny.

The minerals mined from the war-region of Congo fund the constant rebellions. Then, through a wildly complicated process few fully understand, those minerals end up in our electronics and every person along the supply chain gains from the original low price. 

And Mark Twain’s observation, like history, repeats itself.  But this time it is not cars, but instead our cell phones and computers, that fund this holocaust. 

The most important element of this scandal is that all the groups profiting have a vested interest in continuing the violence.  Or at the very least, the chaos.  With chaos there are no taxes, no regulations, no rules decreasing profit ratios. Just an endless supply of human beings looking for work.  Bring them to the brink of death and then replace them.  Now repeat.

And so it was that sitting around this table littered by beer and brandy, we began to see the enormity of the job ahead of us.  We must shift the very trajectory of history. 

There is currently a generation in Congo that has known nothing but war.  The rehabilitation of these children is a global emergency and we are currently giving everything toward that end.  We have partnered with community leaders to rehabilitate 267 kids.  All from whistle sales. Your purchases working to save lives.  What began with 5 has continued. It’s an extraordinary step, given the chaos of the region.

And while it is their job to lead their children toward peace, it is our job to do the same here in the west. 

This is that task laid out for a whistleblower. To pursue freedom in the face of opposition. To speak up when others are silent and few will listen.  To protest. 

And even those acts of courage will be only the beginning.  A moment of outrage is very necessary - reacting is part of what makes us human.  But reaction only creates the potential for change.  It is what we do with every day after that paves our path.  We can judge our love only by an equation of follow-through. This is called advocacy.

The road out of ignorance is a long one. But one we must walk. Together.

And in a manner of speaking, this is what have we been doing these past few months.  Re-Learning everything. Wading through the miles of garbage covering 6 million deaths, thousands of rapes, tortured children and silenced outcries. What we’ve found will more than likely change you as it has changed us.  It will take time, but we will continue to share with you all we learn. 

We don’t have all the answers.  But we know that speaking up is first.  Wear your protest and be a whistleblower for peace.  Use the whistle as a tool to elevate common conversations in the West.  Because a problem this size will not be solved by big men on big stages - there is too much to be gained by too many who will allow it to continue for too long. A problem this size requires the “us’s.” The collective we.  Giving all we can with what we have. For peace. 

Only then will we begin to do what the Head of Intelligence asked of us.  See.  And with eyes wide open and heads held high, we might just maybe reverse the trends of history and push together toward a world more free than our fathers. 

Peace.
Sean.