by Gerry Boyle '78

One day last fall, Didier Kamundu Batundi accompanied departing visitors from his Waterville apartment. Outside it was windy, cold and damp, but Kamundu set off in shirtsleeves. Unaccustomed to having to bundle up, he said, he was always leaving his jacket behind.

Was it commentary on weather in Maine, where Kamundu, a former human rights advocate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was in residence as the second Oak Human Rights Fellow? Or was it a symptom of the state of exile Kamundu has been in since fleeing Congo with only the clothes--if not the jacket--on his back?

Kamundu, 29, a soft-spoken man whose self-effacing manner belies his courage, fled his country after his life was threatened by both the Kabila government and forces from neighboring Rwanda. Resettled in Lyons, France, with his wife and three young children, Kamundu spent the fall semester at Colby working to educate Americans about the plight of his country and continent.

Teaching is not new to Kamundu. But in Maine it was a new audience and a new message.

He spent earlier years venturing from the city of Goma to rural villages in territories of Masisi and North Kivu. There he and a colleague taught Congolese peasants to grow more and better crops. Kamundu also taught peasants that they had civil and political rights, concepts alien to them, and told the peasants it was up to them to defend those rights.

In the Congo of recent years, this was a dangerous lesson.

The Goma-area population of 3 million swelled in 1994 when some 2 million refugees arrived from neighboring Rwanda, escapees from the horrific ethnic genocide there. In recent years Congo also has seen the ouster of long-time president Mobutu Sese Seko. That ouster has been accompanied by a multi-layered war that has pitted native Congolese against the Tutsi refugees from Rwanda, rebel forces against the Kabila government, Rwandan Hutus against the Congolese rebels.

Kamundu's countrymen have been mired in this quagmire, and his family, too. Asked how many family members died in the fighting, Kamundu said matter-of-factly, "Quarante-trois." Forty-three brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents. He quickly pointed out that the 14 brothers he has lost were from his father's four polygamous marriages, customary in Congo.

Kamundu did not want his personal losses exaggerated, though the killing of 43 family members would appear to most Americans to be beyond exaggeration. He also glossed over his reported heroics, including rescuing a bus-load of refugees surrounded by a violent mob, saying he didn't do "anything extraordinary."

But the labyrinthine challenge that faces his country? "It is almost too much for one nation to escape from," he said, speaking in French through interpreter Morgan McDevitt '00 "It is up to us, the people, to be strong."

Kamundu found his strength in law books rather than guns. The son of a farmer, he filed legal actions on behalf of people who were illegally imprisoned and tortured. He found that he not only had to challenge the government but also to convince war-weary Congolese that they had any rights at all.

He said the human rights organization he formed had many people working for it, many volunteers. And activists like him, working from the beginning? "Between three and five people," he said.

That group is now growing. And as the nucleus, Kamundu has attracted the attention of international human rights groups. He won the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998, Colby's Oak Human Rights Fellowship in 1999. In November, Kamundu received the 1999 Global Youth Peace and Tolerance Young Adult Award, accepting the award at the United Nations. That event was followed by another at the Plaza Hotel in New York, where other honorees included Mikhail Gorbachev, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Zubin Mehta.

After being feted in New York, Kamundu returned to Waterville, to his apartment on Elm Street, next to the Waterville Public Library, and to his mission.

It is daunting but in Kamundu's mind not Sisyphean. As an exile, he will continue to work to try to lift the Congolese people out of their "misery," he said. It is very difficult to rebuild from wars that do not end, Kamundu said, and now economic disaster exacerbates his country's plight.

But wars do end, he said. Between 1975 and 1993, there were no ethnic wars in Congo. Neighboring countries like Benin and Tanzania have avoided ethnic strife. And other long-standing divisions on the continent, including apartheid, have been erased, Kamundu noted. It is up to the Congolese to help themselves and for countries like the United States to help as well, he said. So does he have hope for his country?

A difficult question, Kamundu said.

"One cannot say I have no hope," he said, with McDevitt interpreting. "But one cannot say I have a lot of hope."

And then Kamundu turned and summed it up.

"Oui et non," he said, his smile both soft and sad. "Pas trop."

Not a lot.

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