When the iron gate closed behind him, Ian MacKay questioned whether he would go back through them alive.
Armed guards guided the 20-year-old Squamish resident toward the safe house of a Democratic Republic of Congo rebel group. Like all larger homes in the eastern Congo, a concrete wall surrounded the building. The compound was cluttered with tents, the homes of 150 soldiers. The house itself belonged to a Federal Republican Forces leader, a man MacKay had met by chance a couple of days earlier.
"I was nervous," MacKay recalls. "I did trust him, though. I knew deep down he wanted to tell his story."
Surrounded by men holding machine guns and grenade launchers, the leader - whose name MacKay didn't disclose out of fear for the man's safety - wore a Fedora hat and pinstriped suit. He welcomed MacKay and when he spoke, MacKay started to realize just how complex the issues are in the African country's 13-year-long series of disputes. The Second Congo War is the world's deadliest conflict since WWII, MacKay says, with a staggering toll of 5.4 million deaths. Villages are still being pillaged, women raped and yet the news barely hits North American airwaves, he adds.
"It was all still happening when I was there and you don't hear about it," MacKay said.
MacKay was in Congo to work with Action Kivu, an organization that sets up sewing workshops for women to help them gain economic independence and education assistance for children affected by the ongoing conflict.
While MacKay is still fundraising to help the organization build a school, his chance meeting with the rebels has given him an additional goal. MacKay is hoping to travel back to Congo with a documentary team to meet his newfound friend and tell the rebel's story. MacKay has been in contact with the production team that filmed Bang for a Buck - a documentary that focuses on small arms trade in the landlocked African country of Burundi.
Fighting in Congo goes far deeper than a simple good-vs.-evil equation, MacKay said, and that's something he hopes to expose. Next month he'll start classes at Douglas College for nursing, but he aims to be in Congo, with cameras, by May.
MacKay is no stranger to suffering. Last year, only weeks after Haiti was ravaged by an earthquake, he was volunteering at L'Hôpital de Fermathe on the outskirts of Port au Prince. He spent a month in the operating room alongside his uncle, Dr. John Potts. He then returned to the Caribbean country on three separate trips, working at cholera clinics. MacKay saw the nine-month-long outbreak through to the end.
MacKay admitted the trips have taken a toll on him. He has trouble sleeping some nights. Images of people clinging to life being wheeled into the cholera clinic in wheelbarrows haunt him. But he won't give up trying to make a difference in places that desperately need help, MacKay said.
"This is my idea of a vacation," he said. "There is nothing more rewarding than saving a life or helping to save lives."
