On the opening night of the two-day Celebrating Congo Cultural Festival & Interdisciplinary Conference Program that took place on Oct. 4 and 5 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, internationally acclaimed film-maker Petna Ndaliko Katondolo shared a sneak peak with attendants of his new documentary film Mabele na Biso (Our Land).
It is business as usual. The day begins and man rides his bike across the village; another sweeps the dust off the yellow pathways; a few more work to saw wood, and many gather round their radios to hear the morning news. “Welcome to all the listeners of the Mabele Community Radio. We are broadcasting live from Tolaw at 99.0 FM.” From the studio, a calm, clear voice reminds listeners of the upcoming community fund meeting. Day to day, the Mabele Community Radio connects the inhabitants of Tolaw to neighboring villages, to the nation, and to the world, therefore freeing the community from the isolating chains of distance. By taking the spectator on a journey to meet Tolaw leaders and community organizers and to watch students singing and playing, artists performing, and men and women hard at work, Ndaliko tells a story of the remote village of Tolaw in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mabele na Biso focuses primarily on Tolaw’s development and on the role played by a local community organization named GOVA (Group of Village Organizations for Autonomous Development). Due to its remoteness, Tolaw faces the challenges of disconnectedness and achieving economic prosperity. GOVA brings autonomous development to the community by means of acquiring technology and by capitalizing on the area’s existing resources. The documentary recounts GOVA’s recent success at providing access to radios for the community. By bringing important news, radios provide a channel to relieve this community from its isolation. Additionally, these radios are partially powered by a palm oil-fueled generator that was donated by the Canadian organization Development and Peace to support GOVA’s efforts. Because palms are abundant in the region, they serve as a powerful, cheap resource for Tolaw to exploit. As a result of these programs, made possible by the cooperation among the nine clans that inhabit this area, Tolaw has been able to serve as its own agent of development. Mabele na Biso highlights GOVA’s successes in order to demonstrate the ability of Congolese organizations to improve conditions for their own people. In this documentary, GOVA leaders criticize foreign aid entities that build systems that can only be sustained by their funding and that fail to include the local population when making decisions as to how to provide aid. The result is an ineffective system that perpetuates local dependency on outside forces that may cease to be available at any point in time. In order to produce true, lasting development, a community must seek to build upon what it already has and to be as autonomous as possible. “Are there any American NGO’s doing good in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?” asked a concerned spectator after the watching the documentary segment. Petna Ndaliko had a striking response to offer. “No. At least not in Goma.” Ndaliko went on to explain that the main problem with foreign aid is that its constituents come with a preconceived notion of their superiority and intelligence and of the local people’s ignorance and incompetence. Consequently, the aid-givers fail to listen to the local’s true needs and instead seek to impose whatever systems they have already decided work best. Does this mean that the outside world has no role to play in helping Congo develop? Samuel Yagase, an internationally acclaimed community organizer and the founder of the GOVA initiative, claims that other nations can play a role if they are willing to truly work alongside the people they seek to help. “Do not go there with your own agenda,” he emphasized, “money and efforts are wasted when the benefactor decides that the recipient does not get a say.” In essence, through the lens of this story, Mabele na Biso teaches that effective aid requires a collaboration among givers and receivers. By providing the example of Tolaw and GOVA’s success, the film demonstrates that the Congolese do have the ability to creative effective systems for their own change. Ndaliko’s hope is that the story shared in his film “not only stands as an example of the possibilities that can come of resisting aid, but also serves as a model for a larger dialogue… My hope for this film is that it contributes to providing a different perspective on the relationship between aid donors and recipients, a perspective that challenges both groups to develop new policies and brings a larger population’s attention to the successful collaboration between international donors and one local community.” ––Nicole Sonderegger
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