Congo is the backdrop for a new play that explores the highs and lows of expat life in war and disaster zones
LONDON (AlertNet) - For some it might be Sudan in the 1980s or Bosnia in the 1990s, for others maybe Afghanistan or Sri Lanka. There's always one crisis-riddled country you see as an aid worker or journalist that gets under your skin.
For the expat hacks, humanitarians and rights researchers interviewed by Irish playwright Stella Feehily, it was Democratic Republic of Congo.
There was something about the way they spoke of the country -- with its boy soldiers, Belgian missionaries, gold mines, its jaw-dropping beauty and inspiring individuals -- that convinced Feehily to set her new play there.
"So many people had fallen in love with the madness and chaos and other people were absolutely terrified and didn't want to go back," Feehily told AlertNet in an interview.
"There's something about the vibrancy, and the life, and the life force. They found it -- whether scary or not, whatever the security situation was -- very life-affirming."
While eastern Congo is the backdrop for “Bang Bang Bang”, the play is just as much about the price the characters pay to live life on the edge, lurching between the best and worst of times.
As anyone who has spent time in the field would recognise, work could get you killed or hurt, relationships are routinely sacrificed for a report or a food distribution, a story or photograph. Restlessness and angst are constant companions.
"When I'm here, I want to be there. When I'm there, I want to be here," Sadhbh, the main character, says about London and Congo.
'THIS IS NOT YOUR WAR'
Bang Bang Bang focuses on Sadhbh, an old Congo hand who decides to leave her lover in London -- its humdrum-ness made quite apparent -- for a stint in North Kivu.
She is trailed by French colleague Mathilde, a fresh-faced idealist (why are they always French?) who has never been in the bush before. Their mission is to investigate war crimes.
Visiting a camp for internally displaced people, Sadhbh (pronounced Sive -- she's Irish) comes across eight-year-old Amala, whose mother was killed by “thunder” (a grenade). Amala tells the researcher about being kidnapped and forced to serve as a wife for a rebel commander.
There follows a tense encounter between Sadhbh and Tutsi rebel leader Colonel Jerome Mburame -- “Why don't you wear a wedding ring?” he asks her -- in which she confronts him with allegations of brutality and rape.
Denying the charges, he says he is protecting his people from genocide, and asks why this “white angel from the West” cares so much. Has she come to drag him to the International Criminal Court?
"This is not your business," he tells her, and more powerfully: "This is not your war."
As the play reveals, Sadhbh and Mathilde pay a high price for carrying out their work.
Writer Feehily said she was intrigued by the expat humanitarian world and those who populate it.
"It's obviously going to be full of drama because you're dealing with life and death and survival," she said at London's Frontline Club, which hosted a reading of the play this week.
"What fascinated me was that there were very, very bright young people going into it ... sort of not knowing what they were getting themselves into."
As for their motives, Feehily said: "Some people have a kinship with victimhood, some people want to be bloodied, some people want adventure because they've got peripatetic lives.
"With the human rights defenders, the guilt thing was so big because obviously you're not bringing food, medicine, blankets. It's not a cure and you've often got to sit on the material and really believe in justice."
DISASTER BABES
For all its seriousness, the play is driven by some cracking dialogue between its cast of characters, ranging from Mathilde, the rookie; to Sadhbh's lover Stephen, a relief worker-turned-consultant who has lost faith in the aid system; Ronan, the hardened foreign correspondent trying to drink less; and Vin, a freelance photographer and archetype for one of the hordes of thrusting young men who turn up in Africa, hoping to make their names and careers.
There are lots of funny, well-observed gems, many of them fired off in a scene set at a house party in Goma where Sadhbh and Mathilde are spending their R&R. (If you want an idea of what expat aid worker parties are like, this blog paints a good picture)
When Vin tells Ronan he wants to go to Masisi, the journalist advises him that his best bet is to bed one of the aid workers -- because they have the security and the contacts.
Bumping into the pretty Mathilde, Ronan asks whether she's a mercenary, missionary or misfit. When she tells him her job, he mutters: "Just what the Congo needs, another mental female with a big heart.”
If any of you London-based aid workers or journalists are getting cabin fever and yearning for some “Bang Bang Bang”, you can catch the play at the Royal Court from Oct 11 to Nov 5.
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