Personal Reflection
Pakisa Tshimika, Executive Director

I returned to my home country of Congo (Zaire then) in 1980 after several years of studies in California, where I was granted a bachelor’s degree in the natural sciences (Fresno Pacific University) and a Masters in Public Health (Loma Linda University). I discovered upon my arrival back home that I was only one of fewer than a half dozen Congolese in the whole country with a graduate degree in public health.  The mood among us, though, was that of a Renaissance. Many of the young Congolese who were studying in the cities and internationally were willing to return not only to urban Congo, but also rural Congo, to use the skills they had acquired.

A few years earlier, the Congolese government had signed the UN Chart of Health for all by 2000. Primary health care and the health zone system were chosen respectively as the main strategy and structure for reaching the goal of health for all by the year 2000. I had the privilege of managing one of the first 13 zones to be established in the country. Today the Congolese health zone system is recognized as one of the best designed and decentralized systems in Africa, thanks to the pioneering leadership of the national Ministry of Health and the Faith-Based network of hospitals. I learned a big lesson about being creative in spite of what seemed like an impossible situation, finding order within chaos.

In 1986 I returned to California to pursue doctoral studies at Loma Linda University, where I completed my Dr.PH in public health.  I then found my way back to Congo again in 1991. This time my involvement ranged from leadership training for health professionals to representing several international Non Governmental Organizations at the national level. I learned the skills of maneuvering the local, the national and the international. The different trips to Europe and North America for administrative meetings and conferences assisted me in connecting the missing link – the funding agencies, financial supporters, and lobbyists.

Since moving back to the U.S. in 1999, I have worked to link North American and Congo resources through a new non-profit organization called Mama Makeka House of Hope, which I serve as the founding director.   Actually, Mama Makeka House of Hope is, in a sense, another return home.

Our goals at Mama Makeka House of Hope (named after my mother) are to support efforts in education, health, and peacebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  High in priority is to return specifically to a Place Called Maluku near Kinshasa to re-envision Mama Makeka’s gifts of hospitality, compassion, and nurture through a center resourcing educators, health professionals and peacebuilders in Congo and a Place Called Kajiji to envision the Kajiji of Our Dream. This document is all about Kajiji!

I travel to Congo several times a year. These trips have taken me to both Western and Eastern Congo.  In the East I have held hands with what seemed like hundreds of women who have been raped and tortured by different armed groups in the region. They took me to rural hospitals where doctors and nurses are struggling to provide health services in spite of limited resources. In addition, traveling back to Congo put me in direct contact with young soldiers returning from war without knowing what the future held for them.

For me Congo will always be personal in the same way that an ancestral village in Poland is personal to some of my German-Polish friends. The same way a small town in Mexico is personal to my Latino neighbor. The same way that the memory of a Hmong village in the hills of Laos is personal to our Southeast Asian friends. In our global neighborhoods, we can no longer afford to say, you take care of yours and I’ll take care of mine.