Whatever Happened to the Shipping Container? Biza Sompa shares his story of last summer
Interview by Jeff in March 2024
Jeff: how was your trip?
Biza: Let me first share how this happened, why I got interested and involved in this. My name is Biza Sompa, I was born and raised in Congo until when I was 15. I was in the National Dance Company and got the chance to go to Russia and that gave me a taste of travel, plus my brother went to France and then the United States when I was really young and lots of people in my neighborhood left for Paris all the time. And so that feeling was there, “One day I need to travel.” You know, you just grow up in that environment, you feel like you want to do the same one day, so that was my dream all the time. Anyway, finally I got a chance to move to Paris, I spent some years there, from there I came to the United States and I’ve been living here the past 40-some years.
In 2015, I was invited to the Congo with my dance company, Bichini Bia Congo. At the hotel where we stayed, the owner does some work with the orphanage in the area. He was planning to go give some stuff to the children, and he asked me, “Biza, would you and the company like to come with me, just to go see the kids I help take care of, they’d be so happy to see people coming from the United States come visit them, I think this is gonna inspire them.” He said, “Bring the drum, we can play, sing, have fun with the kids.” When we went over there they had written each of our names in the sand to welcome us—we were really touched by that. We walked to the place and saw what’s going on, they started singing and dancing, I grabbed my drum and started playing to accompany them, and we danced—everybody, all my dancers, everybody danced, we had fun.
The grandma who owned the place said to us, “We really appreciate you coming and enjoyed ourselves, but I don’t want you to be like the clouds that just pass by, we’re feeling the cloud never comes back, it just keeps going,” and that really got me on a deep level. I couldn’t promise her anything—because when you promise something, you have to do it; if you don’t do it, it’s not right—but I said we were going to see what we can do and aim to come back. The other thing that really got me—when I look at those kids’ age, I’m seeing my grandkids. These kids can be my grandchild, or my granddaughter, and I just said to myself, “I have to do something.”
It took me some years, because I didn’t have money to be making trips to the Congo, but on my first trip back I decided to do it. I called the guy who we had visited with last time; he told me the grandma died and after that they kind of separated everybody, so he doesn’t know what happened to that place, but he took me to another orphanage he was connected with and we brought some stuff for them and just went over there to say hello. From that day, I decided to say, “I got a chance to come here, not everybody has that opportunity to come here and do what I’m doing, survive, have kids, have grandkids. What can I do to help?” I’m not a millionaire, I don’t have that much money, but if I can give a little bit, whatever I can manage, I think they will appreciate. I don’t want to just tell people, “Oh, I live in America,” and show off, show my clothes, show off where I live.” So that’s when I decided to do this regular trip to the Congo—the ticket is around $2000 to go—and I’ve gone 3 or 4 times now. So that’s really how I got myself to this. My goal is to be able to have 2 or 3 orphanages where I can bring stuff to them every time I go, and work with people helping me do this like you, Bethanni, Tammy, Michael.
But this last year, I consider it like a mistake, but it’s not a mistake, it’s a learning process too. I took a big chance to ship a container, because I thought sending donations from home was cheaper than buying items in Congo, and I thought I would pay about $5,000 or $6,000 to get the container there. But I was naive. When I got over there, day and night I couldn’t sleep, because the money became an issue. The money I took with me was not enough to get the container out from where it was being held. I didn’t know about a lot of extra charges. Finally, I had to get a loan from the bank, and luckily I had some stuff I took for myself to sell, which helped me pay back the money to the bank in full. But the thing is, I didn’t know the market, because the market is not like here. Over there, people set their own price: “I only give you this, I only can give you that.” So I didn’t make as much money as I thought, but I scraped together enough to pay off the loan. I didn’t want the donations to not get where they were supposed to go, so I just needed to get the container out.
Jeff: That’s quite a learning experience. What was on the shipping container? Did the chunk of stuff get to the orphanage?
Biza: I took a car, plus the carbon machine..I got a refrigerator, freezer..a lot of clothes..there was a carpentry machine, a lot of tools..compressor, a lot of mattresses and bicycles..dishes..a lot of stuff. Yes, I managed to get the container out, plus I had to rent a 40-foot truck to bring that stuff back to Brazzaville, so all that was money, money, money, money, money. By the time I sold the stuff I had, I couldn’t make any profit, so I just have to learn from that experience, and I’m never going to do that again. I’m just going to collect as much as I can collect to bring over myself, and buy stuff for the kids there. That will be cheaper and I can do a lot more for them, because I spent about $20,000 to $30,000 on getting that container out.
Jeff: Wow, thank you for going through that. As far as going forward with Kindezi, do you feel like you’re building relationships with people at the orphanage? Or is it more like delivering materials and money to them to help support, and then they do their own thing? Or do you feel like there’s more that you want to do?
Biza: Right now I can’t really be part of it 100%, because I’m not there all the time. But my goal is that even when I’m not there, I would like to create a solid communication: I know what’s happening, and when I’m sending money, I know what they need and what the money is for. I took a frined of mine over to the orphanage that I’m part of and he said, “Man, this orphanage is clean,” compared to another one we went to see. Those kids are not comfortable over there, but I didn’t get a chance to go help there too, because of the container and selling—all this stuff I was doing. I kept trying to get over there but I just couldn’t. Even the farm, I only had time to get over there one day. That thing, it took all of my time, that container took all three months… I couldn’t sleep at night, especially when I was in Pointe-Noire, where the container was held, because when you get to there you have 8-10 days to get it out. If you don’t, it goes to storage and you have to start paying per day. Mine spent two days in storage, so on top of what I paid I had to pay the storage too. Sometimes if people can’t get their stuff out and it stays in storage too long—2, 3, 4, 5 days, a week—sometimes the people can’t get it out, because they spend too much time, and the government just takes it and sells the stuff. I didn’t want that to happen, so I have to just fight. Good thing I already had a bank account in Congo because years ago a friend of mine had told me it was a good idea to have one established there, even if I didn’t actively use it. So because I am from Congo and I have property there, it was easy for them to give me money, and plus I sold the merchandise. It was funny—the bank was across the street from where I was selling stuff, so when I finished for the day, I’d count the money, and then walk across the street and give it to them. So in even less than a month, I paid the money back. So yeah, to get back to what we were saying, my goal is to be part of it, where I can have maybe one or two, three different orphanages.
Jeff: What’s the name of the current one that you are part of?
Biza: They changed the name to the grandma who passed; I think it’s called Saint Marie Therese now.
Jeff: And are you able to contact the person in charge of that orphanage?
Biza: There’s a young guy who grew up in that place, he’s about 20 years old now, so he’s the one really in charge, plus the grandma’s daughter, she comes over there to supervise time to time. It’s not easy to communicate though because there we pay by the minute for the internet each day. If you use it up, it’s gone. They don’t have a contract like us. When I was there, when I would do my internet I would call you and then shut it off to save the time. $10 will go like nothing.
Jeff: Wow, so did you have any chance to learn about the kids, as far as if they end up in school or what their future is like?
Biza: What’s happening over there—I can’t remember if it’s 18, 19 or 20—is they’re supposed to leave the orphanage. Some of the kids, the little ones, are going to school. We’re in the French system, and at a certain age, you need to be in college or high school; if you don’t, and you repeat so many times, when you reach 18, you can’t continue to go to school—you have to go to professional school. So they have a few kids over there who are going to learn how to fix cars or do painting, and even when I was there, about three or four kids approached me and said “Tata Biza, I want to learn how to sew, I want to learn how to paint, I want to learn..” So, if today I had the money, I want to ask the kids, “What do you want to learn?” If they say, “I want to learn how to fix a car,” we go to the mechanic, he requests his fee, and the child can go over there, learn and become an apprentice for him. Then when you know how to do it, sometimes the mechanic keeps you working with him, but at home a lot of time they start doing their own thing in their neighborhood with people who need services there.
Jeff: Very cool. So just jumping back, you mentioned the farm—what’s your current plan with that?
Biza: I’m hoping to earn money there with the farm. Those kids can’t wait for me to go over there to eat. I need to generate income there. In Congo, we don’t have government funding for orphanages. Those kids rely on people who have a little money and give them whatever they can. Sometimes that day they don’t even know what they’re going to eat. I remember one time I walked over there with some food, and the grandma said, “God heard my prayer, because I was praying that I don’t know what the kids will eat today, and you came at just the right time.” That made me feel bad, because if I didn’t just happen to do that, would they have eaten that day? So this time I was happy just to be there. I didn’t get to do as much as past other years, because the other times I would get up each morning and buy bread and things for breakfast with them in the mornings, and I was able to go to the farm too. But this time I couldn’t do it, because every morning I have to be at the place to sell to avoid theft.
I’d love for us to offer sponsorship opportunities on our website. If somebody wants to sponsor a child for going to school, or learning a job, they can. The situation over there, the little ones go to school, but there’s no money and the government school doesn’t work like when I was growing up. Now they have private school, even the middle school and high school are private—that’s where you can get a good education. But just the public school is there, and who’s going to give them the money? Those kids go to public school, no chair in there, sometimes they sit on the floor, it’s very bad.
Jeff: What will it take to get the farm to a good space?
Biza: My first goal is to have a tractor. Right now what I’m doing is renting. I prepared one hectare to do my yucca, making fufu. But if you think about the transportation, I don’t have enough product to fill the capacity of the truck I would need to rent. So if I’m gonna do it, I need a tractor so I can prepare 10 hectares and really have enough filled bags to make renting a truck worth it. Also I want to be able to do it myself, because sometimes the equipment I rent doesn’t work well or gets broken by people I hire. Also sometimes people just take the money to do the job for me but they don’t take care of it and the money is gone. That’s why I want to have my own. Right now what I’m aiming for is 10 hectares of my yucca, which will give me somewhere close to $10,000 if I sell everything. So my goal is to try to figure out something where I’m making money in the Congo. And then with some of the percentage, I can take care of more orphanages, make sure I’m giving them food every month. Make sure they have bags of staples—beans, rice, you know, all those stuff they eat every day. Plus fufu, the cassava flour where they make fufu. If they have three or four bags, they can go for two, three months. All they need to do is get some meat at the market to go with it.
Jeff: So do you have, you’ve mentioned a couple of people that you know in the country. Do you have family and friends or partners? Are there any groups that we can partner with?
Biza: Yes. The government knows about my land and there are people who I can work with. But the problem is the money. Everything I did so far is not going the way I want it. You know why? Because I’m not there. I’m watching a lot of people in Zimbabwe, Uganda, all these South African people doing good with farming. Every time I watch this stuff, what I keep hearing from everybody is you have to be here. You can’t run your business from there and tell people what to do. It’s your dream, it’s your goal. You’re the only one who can be serious about it, because you know what you want. What’s happening for me, five years I’ve been doing this and I’m still fighting to make anything happen. I should just be back and forth. Go take care of my business. I’m there for two weeks, two or three months, I’m back here for one month, etc. The money is not allowing me to do that now, but it would allow me if I start something serious. I’m not going to survive on the two, three hectares. That’s nothing. When you consider all the expenses, you don’t have that much left. But 10, 12, 20, 50..then my yucca, cassava, is money. That is a staple food of Congo. Every house eats yucca or fufu, no question. Every day, day and night. Cassava is the best of everything they eat in Congo.
Jeff: One last question—What is the situation with the government there? Is everything stable?
Biza: I think it depends. As far as me going there to do business, that’s been okay so far. Politically we don’t have a problem like they have in DRC, across the river. We have problems but it’s not violent so far and they’re not killing people. Mostly it’s corruption. The government is just taking money to do whatever they want to do. They don’t care about the people. People suffer because there’s no jobs. I just cross my fingers that it doesn’t go back to a worse situation. But we’ve been there before. So we just come and go.
Jeff: Is there anything else you want to share?
Biza: The only thing I just want to say is I appreciate you, Bethanni, Jeff, Michael, and Tammy. Giving us a place.