"Carry Loads"

We were in Bukavu last week for 2 days. The airport is 33 kilometres from town on a broken road.

Like everywhere in the Congo there are always many people walking next to the road. What makes Bukavu differant from other places is so many of the people walking are women hauling things. They range in age from pre-teens to old ladies, all dressed in colorful panje cloth skirts and wraps and bent over from the weight of what they are carrying. They use a headstrap looped around the burden on their backs and their hands are locked behind their heads to keep their heads from being pulled back by the weight.

They carry everything from sacks of beans and maize to firewood in bundles 5 feet across. These loads can weigh up to 100 kilos. That's 100 kilos! 220 pounds! These women are not big. Most look to be 50 to 70 kilos. They carry up to 3 or 4 times their body weight.

I see hundreds of them on the trips to and from the airport; and every single one I see fascinates and amazes me. They walk in the mud and the rain with rubber sandals up and down hills, always up and down hills. I will never forget the sight of a group of six or seven just starting up a hill, the first two already climbing, placing one foot in front of the other and the others waiting to start.

The expression on their faces is the thousand yard stare directed ten yards ahead. It is the expression of nothing but the next few feet, bent over and plodding.

I ask about these women and the explanation is about what you would expect. They are poor women, farm girls mostly. They dress in the panje cloth because it is cheap and they carry things because that is how a poor family gets things to and fro, the women carry them. Some of the women have no family for whatever reason and they have no other way to make a living, "some of our sisters must 'carry loads'".

I keep thinking about the life they lead. You get up, you carry something heavy all day long, then you sleep. The next day you do it again and you keep doing it until you die.

The photos were taken in Monkoto, not Bukavu. They only show how the headstraps are arranged though most of the women in Bukavu don't use a basket to carry things.