The two faces of death

Have you ever had a near-death experience? Ndugu has had two of them- and they look quite different from each other.

The M23 comes to town-

"I was still at university when the armed group M23 took the city of Goma. Back then I had created a theatre group called Le Tan Tan of the Great Lakes; I think it was a Thursday, and we we had organised a play and a little celebration with the group the Friday. I went to university to pick up the money the university provided us for the little gathering and also as little contribution for the actors. They gave me 100 dollars which I put in my little pocket right here. When I arrived to university I found estrange that the place was empty, there was no one there, and I wondered what was going on. But then, when I was leaving the campus I heard the shooting, seriously..... the shooting"

To which he bursts into laughter: "Brother, have you already seen this? "

"...So, I decided to avoid the big roads and instead I made my way to my cousins' house via the little roads and alleys of the city. As I turned a corner I saw a group of people rushing my way and they told me not to continue in that direction because there was soldiers at the end of the path. But there was not other way for me to get to my cousin's house... and if I turned back the way I came... there was the shootings.... so, I decided to keep on going. When I arrived at the end of the road, there was not soldiers there so I decide to continue. I was near my cousin's house when I suddenly heard the bursts of gunfire- RATATATA- they were coming from the direction I was going, and much closer this time. I had nearly arrived so I decided to play my luck and run until reaching the house. I knocked the door, but they were obviously not going to open for fear to who I may be. My cousin's house had a little garden surrounded by a very tall gate.... I am still not sure today how I did climb that wall, but somehow I managed and I felt down into my cousin's parcel. When they heard the noise that my body made when clashing with the ground they thought it was the end for them, the soldiers had arrived to their doorstep. But then, my cousin's son spotted me in the floor and shouted: is uncle Ndugu! Open the door, open the door!

There was shootings all night long, and in the morning we found all the affairs the militia had left behind.. that was the anecdote of that day...

And it is like this that I understood that death is never that far away"

Ndugu had his first near-death experience during his final years of university, but in fact, this was our protagonist's second encounter with death. The first time they crossed paths he was still a teenager, and death looked very different theyself.

Taking action-

"At the time, my little cousin, my brother, and I were all living with one of our paternal uncles in Kigali. Life was sweet there until my uncle got sick; we do not know what happened to him but we were having trouble to pay rent... at one point my uncle started acting crazy and he just left, he abandoned us...he went into the nature and never came back.

My uncle had taught us how to do electronic repairs....back then there was not mobile phones like today but we fixed radios, cd players, tv's and the like. My brother and I stayed in the house and kept on working doing little reparations here and there for six months, but there was not work everyday- we made enough money to get by, but paying the rent was very difficult as it costed us 40 dollars per month, 40 dollars... go and find them.

So, I took action. I went to a public phone and I called another of my uncles who I had already lived with for a while in Goma. I had his number, so I called him.... but I changed my voice and faked that it was other person speaking. I told him that, I, myself had died. I was not totally lying, for life had become almost like death. I did this, so they had to come to my funeral and we could get out of our situation.

I myself went to pick them up to the station. My uncle came with my auntie and my cousin, and when they arrived- it was obviously me who was there to receive them" Here, Ndugu had one of his characteristics bursts of laughter (to which I inevitably joined, I mean, faking your own death is quite something) and started impersonating his auntie in Swahili and with a very high pitch:

"But Ndugu, how could you do this to us, we thought you were dead, dead!... To which I answered with the truth, I explained the situation, I told them that we were abandoned and that:

This was not living... our situation... How are we not dead already?"

Ndugu's first encounter with death was not physical- his biological existence was not under imminent threat; in fact, against all odds the two teens were actually making enough to get by. Nevertheless, and in Ndugu's own words- 'this was not living'. Our protagonist's first encounter with death was existential. He found himself stuck in a situation to which anthropologist Henry Vigh refers to as the social moratorium: “The absence of the possibility of a dignified life” (Vigh, 2007) In this light, Ndugu's death symbolised the impossibility of attaining a meaningful life.

Ndugu's 'two deaths' reveal something that I deem rather important. More often than not, the analysis of those populations living under the social condition of war is limited to the most fundamental, that is to say: the focus always seem to be on how people cope with the conflict and its externalities, how they make a living. In the D.R. Congo this phenomenon of fending for oneself is referred to as se débrouiller (to get by), and is not only well studied within the field of conflict dynamics, but it is also an everyday expression used by warscape inhabitants themselves. Faking your own death to obtain help from some relatives is a good example of this- and it certainly does point up to the resilience of people under any condition of structural injustice; the weapons of the week if one likes.

Truth be told, I must confess that when I first arrived to Bukavu I was eager to learn more about the ways in which people used this economy of 'la Débrouillade'- for it is truly fascinating how people do without. But, to my surprise, the expression that I heard more often during my interviews was not se débrouiller, but ÉVOLUER (to evolve, to grow)- a term commonly used among the protagonists of my stories to refer to the fulfilling of personal and social projects of becoming, the achievement of life projects: to marry, to attain independence, autonomy, adulthood, form a household, be someone, gain social respect, leave a legacy, etc.

My point? Ndugu's reference to his impossibility of évoluer as a form of being dead points up to the fact that people under the social condition of war are not simply content to make a living. While the lack of possibilities to attain a live worth living are very real, people are nevertheless in search of a dignified life- and the impossibility of doing so can be as deadly as physical death itself. As such, a nuanced exploration of the social existence of warscape's inhabitants requires that our analysis moves beyond the fundamental into the existential.

The real question that warscape anthropologists should be asking is not how people in conflict zones make a living, but rather how do they go about making a life, and one worth living for that matter.