It’s easy to spot Raphael Okitafumba in the crowd outside of St. Finbar church on a sunny Sunday morning in southern California. Tall and lean, with a mega-watt smile that never dims, even when he struggles with the intricacies of the English language, the 25 year old native of the Congo radiates the excitement one might expect from a recent immigrant to the United States. Yet, as one speaks to him, it quickly becomes clear that his reasons for coming to the U.S. are anything but ordinary.
Okitafumba has come to California to complete his studies for the priesthood, thanks to a scholarship from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Although he first entered the seminary in the Congo in 1998 at the age of 17, he hadn’t even completed his first year before a civil war tore through the country, leading to one of the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.
1000 Die Each Day
Often called “Africa’s world war,” the current hostilities in the Congo were sparked by a complicated combination of factors, including ethnic conflicts related to those that lead to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and the involvement of troops from several other African nations for political and economic reasons. Western powers have faced harsh criticism over the effectiveness of the U.N. response to the crisis. Although an official truce was negotiated in 2002, and the Congo’s first democratic elections in over 40 years are scheduled to take place this summer, peace has yet to be reached. Nearly 4 million Congolese people have died as a result of the fighting and subsequent decimation of the country’s natural resources and infrastructure, and an estimated 1,000 more continue to die every day. An additional 1.7 million Congolese live as refugees.
Okitafumba witnessed the destruction of his country firsthand. “Soldiers became very ‘creative’ in finding ways of ending people’s lives,” he says. “Many were shot, hanged, carved up, drowned, and even buried alive. Families were tied up and locked in houses that were set on fire.” Women and girls were targeted for violent rape and sexual humiliation. Men and boys were pressed into service by the armies as soldiers or as slave labor, forced to carry heavy loads over 200 miles by foot.
Targeting the Church
For Okitafumba, continuing his studies at the seminary during this time not only meant long periods of separation and worry over his family, it also meant putting himself directly at odds with the political ambitions of the guerilla forces. As he explains, “In rural Congo, where government barely exists, the church often acts as sole provider of medicine and schools. Congolese church leaders are hoping and working for free and democratic elections nowadays.”
As a result, he says, the armies focused a particular wrath on the outward symbols of the Church, and on the seminaries that prepared the next generation of church leaders. Okitafumba praises his seminary’s staff for helping their students to escape unharmed every time that the school was raided, but eventually, he says, as years of instability took a toll on his studies, the war also took a toll on his spirit. “I was deep in a certain fruitless and wait-and-see lethargy of faith.”
His depression increased when he received news that his family’s livestock and crops had been destroyed during a raid on their village. With no way for his family to pay his tuition, and no way for the struggling seminary to shoulder the cost of his education, it seemed that Okitafumba’s road toward the priesthood was at an end.
Not an Easy Choice
Then the Archdiocese of Los Angeles stepped in, providing his diocese with two scholarships to St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo. Okitafumba was offered one of the spots. The second scholarship went to his classmate Albert Shuyaka, a member of Okitafumba’s tribe who was in similar straights. In order to cover the enormous cost of their visa applications and airfare to Los Angeles – roughly $8,000 total – their bishop turned to additional donors in Europe. “Fortunately, this worked,” Okitafumba grins. Even then, the two young men had to travel by foot for four days along the dangerous roads of the Congo in order to reach the airport.
Despite these hardships, Okitafumba’s decision to leave his homeland wasn’t an easy one, especially when he shared the news with his family. “On the one hand, my family members were happy because it was a good opportunity for me to get a good education before becoming a priest. Also, they thought, as many did and still do, that it has been a wonderful chance for me to go to a country of opportunities and hopefully I may be able to help them somehow. On the other hand, it was a time full of sadness and worries. Both my family members and I were really upset, for we were or are not still sure to see each other [again]. For them, it was like I was dying, and for me it was the same feeling.”
A Mouthful of Oxygen
Since reaching the United States, Okitafumba’s worry about his family has only increased. It has been three months since he last spoke to them. “They sometimes go into hiding, for people with weapons still make trouble. To be honest, there has not been peace yet in Congo.”
Yet, despite his homesickness, Okitafumba says, his first year in the United States has felt “like a mouthful of oxygen after exiting an asphyxiating labyrinth.” He has received a warm welcome at St. John’s seminary and at the parish of St. Finbar, where he goes during free weekends and holidays; however, his thoughts are never far from the country he has left behind. “Home is always home,” he says. Although he will not be able to return to the Congo until he graduates from the seminary five years from now, he says, “Undoubtedly, I will go back as soon as I finish my studies in order to be ordained and work for the salvation of my diocese’s people.”
His greatest hope is that his presence in the United States may raise awareness about the continued suffering of the Congolese people. “A proverb of my culture says that when one finger is injured, the other ones are stained with blood together with it. It means that as Christians, we ought to be involved in our brothers and sisters’ lives.”
He adds with an optimistic smile, “Someone said ‘the biggest, are those who know how to give hope to others.’ I am looking for new perspectives of giving back the life’s hope to those human beings in the throes of death.”
For more information on relief programs in the Congo, or to make donations, please visit the following websites: