Doors at 6:30pm; event begins at 7:00pm
$15 – $40 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds); click here for tickets

Join us for a teach in, fundraiser, film screening, food from Leela and a traveling exhibition of 27 photos in visual installation taken by The Mamas – women from the east of the Congo in the Bulengo displacement camp.

In-person from the Basandja Coalition’s Free Congo Tour:
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Filmmaker, Activist and Educator; 
Samuel Yagase Bayombe, Indigenous Leader and Climate Justice Advocate

This event includes a special presentation of:

片丹卞丹己凵冊日工片丹
a film by Petna Ndaliko
37 min / ProRez / Color and Black & White
2023 / DRC-USA

KATASUMBIKA: The world was shocked to witness the people in eastern DR Congo demand the departure of the UN peacekeepers, even resorting to force. How can we understand this outrage toward a mission that is supposed to help the people?

Through a testimonial approach, the film reflects on what has been left out of the frame in the colonial project and its legacy. By following the thread of history, the chain of natural resource extraction, and the vein of violence, will the sounds of indigenous resistance be heard?

Join frontline leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Turtle Island, sharing inspiring work they are doing on the ground to address the climate crisis, conflict in the eastern region, sexual violence and resource exploitation.

Friends of the Congo in partnership with the Basandja Coalition is undertaking an eight-city awareness and fundraising tour in the United States from September 23rd to November 3rd. As a part of Friends of the Congo’s seventeenth annual presentation of Congo Week, we have invited our frontline partners from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to the United States. They will share their organizing and movement building experiences from the frontlines of the rainforest, mining communities, conflict zones and urban centers in the DRC. 

The delegation is made up of two members of the Basandja Coalition and their allies. The delegation will visit New York, Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Chicago. 

During the tour, the delegation will screen films concerning the Congo Basin Rainforest (exploring the role of Indigenous knowledge and wisdom in combating the climate crisis) and the challenges of mining communities (tying the accelerated quest for critical minerals that power the green and/or clean energy transition to cobalt diggers). 

The tour includes a photo exhibit of pictures taken by women (the Mamas) in refugee camps in Eastern Congo. The women have been displaced by what the United Nations describe as the deadliest conflict in the world since World War Two. Since 1996 at least six million Congolese have perished due to the conflict in the Congo. An estimated seven million Congolese have been displaced by the conflict in the Congo. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped as a war strategy to drive villages from mineral rich lands – minerals that are critical to the modern tech tools like smart phones, laptops, video games and a range of other tech and electronic devices.

The Mamas
The Mamas are fifty displaced women from the Bulengo displacement camp. They come from thirteen villages outside of the city of Goma in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a part of an empowerment initiative by Yole Africa, a local cultural organization, the mamas were trained in photography so they could ultimately document their own stories. Photos from twenty-seven of the fifty women were chosen to be a part of the display and companion book.

The Vision
The photo display and companion book are a gift of love from the Mamas to the greater human family. It is a call for a deeper listening—a way for us to enter into a shared space, to witness and feel the depth of intergenerational colonial trauma alongside the vital and tenacious force of renewal and regeneration that these mamas, children, and young artists of the Kivu region bring into their creative practices. Despite the ongoing violence, their stories are testimonies of strength and the potency of a hope infused with life. It invites us to reflect on the spaces we inhabit, both physical and emotional. It challenges us to transform sites of pain and trauma into sanctuaries of courage and love, in ways similar to how the earth herself metabolizes death and transforms it into fruit-bearing life.

Purpose
The aim of the display is to raise awareness about the conflict and displacement crisis in the Congo and raise funds to support frontline organizations providing relief and support to the displaced women and children.

Aspiration
Drawing from this power of place, of the living soil underfoot and the breathing forest and all within it, the people of Kivu seek to resist the system of violence normalized by the industry of mineral extraction. As we engage these photos, may we glimpse into a different future where the interweaving of our collective relations and actions join with our collective memory to overcome generations of bloodshed while retaining the knowledge of our past.

If you would like to donate to Friends of the Congo, click here. (More information about the coalition is available here.)