“My life is the summit and the valley”: leaving your country because of your activism
This article is part of the Local Journalism Initiative (IJL)
A tall woman with a curious eye, Jalia* lets herself be carried away when she begins to tell the story of the journey that led her to Canada. She kept her hat on throughout our conversation but was wearing a dark blue T-shirt that showed her arms. Burn scars attract attention, but her story gives way to living images, thanks to its rich evocative power, that transport us with her to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
If she agreed to share her story, which she normally keeps for her personal diary, to The Converse, to make it clear that being an asylum seeker is not a choice, but a necessity. Especially when you leave everything behind, especially a promising career.
“Cleaning is not easy. I go home and I have cramps; I even wake up at night because of these cramps. I didn't have that before I started cleaning, Jalia tells me near the end of our interview. There are weeks where I work seven days.”
However, life for the 27-year-old has not always been this way.
A lawyer by training, she passed her law degree in the DRC. “I have worked a lot in the voluntary sector, for environmental causes, but also for the cause of women,” she explains. It was this activism that ended up costing her her safety in her country and that prompted her to apply for asylum in Canada last December, after the COP15 conference on biodiversity, organized in Montreal.
A difficult school career... but beneficial
Jalia wants to mention that her university career was a real Way of the Cross. At first she had to deal with several administrative problems — she was not officially enrolled in university, which almost cost her exams. Jalia also reports being bullied in university dorms. “If I left my clothes to dry on the clothesline, they disappeared and I saw my classmates wearing them the next day, but I couldn't say anything,” she said. Jalia thus learns that life is not easy and, above all, that it can be unfair.
She has long resented her father for inflicting this ordeal on her, during which she had to learn everything: wash her own clothes, cook and... experience hunger. Jalia believes that this experience prepared her for her new life in Canada. “It was a very difficult time, but I feel like my father wanted me to go through this to understand life,” says the woman who grew up in a wealthy Congolese family.
When social commitment forces you to flee
A graduate and junior lawyer in the DRC, Jalia could have been content with taking advantage of a position that would have allowed her to earn a very good living and enjoy the benefits of her salary. Instead, she decided to get involved in a civil society group that promoted environmental protection and women's rights.
Recall here that the DRC ranks in the 8E ranking of the most dangerous countries for climate activists, According to a Global Witness report. From 2012 to 2022, as many as 72 activists defending this cause were killed.
The demands to protect the environment in the DRC are multiple: they range from the protection of forests and animal and plant biodiversity to the protection of basements, where several precious minerals such as gold, coltan and cobalt come from. These minerals are particularly important in the manufacture of several electronic devices such as laptops and cell phones..
Moreover, Canadian mining companies operate in Congo-Kinshasa, including several who have found themselves in the sights of human rights organizations for abuse.. Mining activities in the DRC are also one of the main causes of deforestation in the region.
In the last months of 2023, there has been a resurgence of violence in the country, where presidential elections are scheduled for December 20.. Nearly 7 million people are displaced within DRC's borders as a result of massive human rights violations by armed groups..
It is in this context that Jalia volunteers.
“Often, we went to raise awareness about non-violence among young people and people in my province, especially against child soldiers,” she says. One day, we had an activity with young people, and after the activity, I went back to Goma, but the National Intelligence Agency summoned me.” That was the beginning of her ordeal.
Jalia will be detained for no reason for a night, after being locked up for a few minutes in a cell full of men. “I went back into the cell, and the men who were there ripped off all my clothes; I screamed for help to the police. Afterwards, I understood that it was a set-up, they just wanted to scare me. It was for me to stop what I was doing,” she whispers. These facts have not been verified by La Converse.
Her father ends up paying the bond to get her out of this detention, but he asks him to stay in a hotel.
Retaliation
“They came to my hotel at night and they set the fire. That's when I got burned.
I woke up in a room that was on fire and full of smoke,” says Jalia, showing her arms and neck. She still can't explain how these people were able to get into her room.
She continues: “People came to try to help me; they put me outside. They called the ambulance, which was supposed to take me to the hospital, but my father immediately took me back to the airport so that I could leave for Kinshasa, the capital.”
The scars are still there, a constant reminder of the violence linked to his activism.
“Then I received threats every day by phone” — an untenable situation.
Until her commitment to the environment became a way out: she participated in the Quebec metropolis at COP15, a summit on biodiversity in which she took part as an environmental activist from the DRC. It was once in Montreal that she applied for asylum.
Wanting does not mean being able: the difficulty of finding work
Once her asylum application is filed in Montreal, and when she has to leave the hotel where she was staying during the COP15 conference, Jalia quickly realizes that her options are limited. She gets emergency temporary accommodation through the Regional Program for the Reception and Integration of Asylum Seekers (PRAIDA), an organization that helps asylum seekers upon arrival.
Resourceful, she calls on the services of the Reunification of Organisations in Ethnic Montreal for Housing (ROMEL), which helps newcomers find housing, even if they do not have many documents.
Jalia says: “When I got there, the manager told me that I was lucky: housing for $700 per month was available. I picked it up on the spot, without seeing it! ”
And without having the money! Even though she wanted to stop using her father, Jalia asked him for money to pay the first two months' rent. It will be the last time, and she is very proud of it. She's building her life here.
“The manager [at ROMEL] gave me the key and the address of the house; I signed without even knowing where I was going.” This makes her laugh in retrospect, but also reminds her of the urgent need to find a place to stay at all costs.
“When I went to my small place, I didn't have a bed, but it was already late. I put my clothes on the floor and went to sleep. The next day, I urgently went looking for a bed, and then someone told me about Marketplace, online.” A golden windfall, to find all sorts of objects at low prices for her new life.
No experience... Quebec
One thing led to another, Jalia found a job... in Tadoussac. It's a job in a campground in this city on the North Shore, more than six hours away from Montreal.
“It was a great adventure, I really enjoyed it,” she says with a big smile. For two and a half months, during the summer, it's simple life, far from the hustle and bustle of the metropolis. But she must return to Montreal, since it is a summer position. Another reality awaits her, which she dreads: the unsuccessful job hunt.
Because throughout her stay in Tadoussac, she was not unemployed: “I applied every day on LinkedIn, on Indeed; I even had interviews. Sometimes I did three interviews a day,” says Jalia. Unsuccessful. “Either I lacked English because I didn't have enough knowledge [in that language], or I didn't have enough experience in the field [where I was applying], which meant that I wasn't taken for granted.”
“It's really difficult to realize how much the Quebec experience means to a lot, even though we come with experience,” says Jalia outraged.
She then began to eat into her savings.
“I told myself that I was never going to ask my dad or anyone for help again.
I stayed home for a month with no salary. Two months.” Time flies slowly, but money flies faster. During our conversation, she relives this anxiety.
“I said to myself, “I can start cleaning people's homes.” On the one hand, I asked myself, “Would I be able to do it?” , but on the other hand, I said to myself, “Is this going to pay my bills?” ”, she says, laughing, but with a laugh that evokes fate.
This is how she is preparing an ad for Marketplace, where a few months earlier, she was buying everything she needed to fill her apartment.
But beyond the need to pay her bills and eat, Jalia is cleaning because she has another goal in mind: she wants to go back to school. “That's what motivated me the most to [clean up].”
“My first client was in Saint-Hyacinthe. I didn't know where it was, but I accepted because I needed the money,” she reports, before evoking her despair when she realized the distance to go.
“It was not easy, with the commute and all the work,” she says. I came back half dead, half alive.” “The next day, I wanted to delete the announcement, but I had a lot of requests,” says the woman who woke up at night from pain caused by rubbing.
“My life here in Quebec and my life in the country is like the summit and the valley.”
I ask him if the valley, or the bottom of the wave, is here. “Yes, it's here, because I was a lawyer there, I made a lot of money, and my dad also has a lot of money. As a result, I was swimming in abundance,” she replies. Outings with friends in expensive restaurants, shopping, new phones were commonplace. But money doesn't buy peace of mind.
When she received threats and had to give workshops on climate change in villages, she was forced to pay a bodyguard to accompany her. An untenable situation. “This peace of being able to sleep, while knowing that no one is stalking me, that I can come home whenever I want, I swear to you, it's worth it”, she says.
No renunciation
Despite everything, his time is devoted to others. Offering her services for several volunteer activities here in Montreal, including in a food bank, Jalia is still involved in her former activist association.
“Even being here, I continue my activism by campaigning against climate change and for the place of women in society, but by doing tasks that are done online,” which she says is obvious, as conviction is stronger than anything.
“I like to help others, despite my situation. Even when I clean up, when people want to throw things away, I take them and they give them to my church. When there are newcomers who need things, they can get satisfaction from it.”
She also worries about her family every day. “Having family or friends in Congo means always being worried,” she says, aware that the violence in the DRC, although less present in her region, could well spread.
“I'm keeping all that to myself. When I need to talk, I write it down. I don't have any friends here. Or I call my mom, which gives me a bit of courage to continue.”
*We changed its name for security reasons.