Congo Kid - Life Stories

Congo Kid
  • 4.9 (9)
  • HISTORY

Jeff, aka Congo Kid, is a casual writer and podcaster. He enjoys studying and discussing sociology, culture, and human behavior. His formative years were spent in Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa, where he learned multiple languages (French and Lingala) and experienced different social constructs, food, and cultures. His life experiences helped shape his worldview, which he feels is distinct and worthy of contemplation. A commercial real estate executive by day, he spends his free time reading, writing, road cycling, mountain biking, and podcasting. Husband to one, father to two, grandfather to one, and Vessel to The One, Jeff is enjoying life and family more and more as he grows older.

  1. 05/31/2025

    Episode 38 – The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Conclusion: Moving Forward From Here – Part 5 of 5 – 5/31/25

    This is part 5 of 5 of the series titled: The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Conclusion: Moving Forward From Here. This series started with laying out the challenges and issues of reconciling mission and family when sending kids away to a boarding school was the only option and explored various dimensions in the subsequent episodes.  The Ubangi Academy (UBAC) institution was explained in Episode 2.  Also the Parent’s viewpoint – how they struggled with separating their families in Episode 3 and that was followed by the Kids viewpoint and shared a range of experiences at the dorm in Episode 4. This final episode shares the take-aways and conclusions from the previous episodes and all that’s been learned. In addition, recommendations for how kids and parents can start a dialogue to reach understanding of how each side experienced and approached this challenging dilemma. I’m joined by Heidi Tunberg, a licensed counselor and also a coordinator for Missionary Kids (MK’s) to help them with their cultural issues when they return to the United States after years in a foreign country.  She provides insight to all UBAC (and dorm) attendees on how to move forward from our experience and to build on who we are because of it. What character traits prevail amongst dorm attendees and MK’s, and how we can use those to maximize our life as adults are discussed.  A Testimonial is shared by Lynda Garber relating to how she learned to accept her rough childhood, and move forward. Then Anonymous shares about seeking counseling to learn how to accept his parent’s actions, as his dorm experience was difficult, and to forgive and move forward with his life. Thanks to Dan Carlson for his insight for this episode, as well as Rick Selin for his voice-over for the Anonymous testimonial. And to the numerous folks that sent in surveys, provided information via email, texts and phone calls, I thank you as well as this gave a broader spectrum of input and content for this entire series. And my final Thank you goes to my four(4) Advisors that have read every word of my five (5) scripts, listened to every word of this audio series to ensure that all is presented fairly, objectively,and with the proper message: Understanding, healing, and restoration for parents and kids that need to bridge any gaps. They invested countless hours and provided considerable input to all 5 episodes in this series. Doug Thorpe,PhD., Carolyn Stoker, Dan Hiegel, and Malcolm MacLeod – all provided invaluable input to help make these episodes what they are. Thank you.  May all who listen have learned greater understanding of what Parents and Kids went through from the boarding school experience and the dilemma of balancing Mission and Family. If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at Heidi.Tunburg@efca.org or Jodi Revell at Jodi.Revell@efca.org. For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at info@covchurch.org. All communications will be confidential. Boarding the Self – Mission Boarding School Experience – Doctoral Dissertation by Doug Thorpe – 1994 Recommended blog article by Michele Phoenix: ATTACHMENT STYLES & THE FAITH OF MKs **Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    1h 2m

  2. 05/10/2025

    Episode 37 – The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Kids’ Viewpoint – Part 4 of 5 – 5/10/25

    Kids and a few parents – Heading to UBAC Band Concert at UBAC Graduation Processional This is part 4 of a 5 part series, titled: The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Kids’ Viewpoint. So far in this series, you learned about the challenges of handling the dilemma of serving in missions while sending your children to a boarding school for 8-10 weeks at a time. That was followed with an episode describing the Ubangi Academy (UBAC) and how the school and dormitory ran and functioned. Then the parents viewpoint was Episode 3, and their struggles in justifying their ministries while separating their families. This episode will focus on the kids. I interview 3 kids that entered the UBAC experience at differing ages and from different background circumstances. In addition, I cite numerous comments from the surveys I’d circulated to dorm attendees, to get a broad spectrum of experiences and perspectives. What is clear, is that especially for the young children sent away, many experienced emotional and physical trauma. Others fared well and thrived in the environment and have no negative feelings as adults as to the experience. Many positives from the dorm tenure led to life traits, character building and shaped people as adults. Others struggled into adulthood from some negative aspects of the dorm experience and their stories are shared as well. Special thanks to my interviewees: Peter Eales, Peter Transburg, and Tom Peters. Also, thanks to Lynda Garber, Brad Cairns, Jeff Aiken, and Christine Thorpe for their audio clips. Thanks too for the kids that returned the surveys, and the numerous voice-over contributors to quote the survey responses from many others. If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at Heidi.Tunburg@efca.org or Jodi Revell at Jodi.Revell@efca.org. For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at info@covchurch.org. All communications will be confidential. **Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    1h 2m

  3. 04/26/2025

    Episode 36 – The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Parents’ Viewpoint – Part 3 of 5 – 4/26/25

    Parents watching band concert Kids loading into the plane for return to UBAC Truck loaded with kids heading back to UBAC This is part 3 of a 5 part series titled: The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Parents’ Viewpoint.  Part 1 laid out the dilemma of the issue and how few parents have discussed the experience with their children. This was followed by Part 2 that drilled down into the Ubangi Academy (UBAC), which was the school we attended, along with the dormitory facilities, routines, and culture. This episode focuses on the Parents. How did they handle and reconcile with sending their children away? I interview several parents: one who was a UBAC attendee, then as an adult, sent his children to the dorm, thus experiencing both sides of the equation. The second interviewee sent his kids away to UBAC then became the dorm parent for a period of time. And the third interviewee, Anonymous, also shares some viewpoints. Most parents grieved and struggled with sending their children away, and prayed for the best. Many made extra efforts for spending quality family time during vacations. Others tried to visit mid-term when they could. But all parents knew it was a sacrifice that would impact their family, to serve in Congo, while sending their children away to boarding school.  In Part 4, kids are interviewed and you will hear from them about the experience. And the final episode will be a wrap up and take-away of what we can learn about all of this and how to move forward. Special thanks to Kim Cone, Jim Snyder, and Anonymous for being interviewed for this episode. Thanks too to Ruth Hill for her comments and insights. Also, appreciation is extended to those who returned the surveys as numerous responses were used in this episode to round it out. If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at Heidi.Tunburg@efca.org or Jodi Revell at Jodi.Revell@efca.org. For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at info@covchurch.org. All communications will be confidential. **Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    53 min

  4. 04/12/2025

    Episode 35 – The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Ubangi Academy – Part 2 of 5 – 4/12/25

    Dorm Kids / Congolese soccer team UBAC Class of 1983 – With their parents Outhouse door with numerous inscriptions of love and couples Ubangi Academy – School building This is part 2 of a 5 part series, titled : The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – The Ubangi Academy.  Part 1 shared about the dilemma of serving in missions and family separation of a boarding school for their children’s education. It posed various questions and laid the path forward for this series. In this episode you will hear about the Ubangi Academy (UBAC), located at Karawa in D.R. Congo as a school and dorm environment. This boarding school housed 30-45 kids each year, grades 2 through 12. It was a complex and structured environment with children, ranging from ages 7 to 18. The schedule, rules, pressures, social constructs, expectations for behavior, chores, cultures, and sub-cultures will be explored in detail so the listener can understand the environment of the children that grew up there. This episode also shares about the benefits of being in an environment with numerous other children, games, play time, being in band and choir, school plays, sports and other activities. Also, many deep friendships were formed at UBAC that still remain strong even today. This episode will hopefully provide context and understanding of what it was like for someone living in this dormitory and school environment. Future episodes will feature the parents’ perspective of sending their children away, followed by kids that attended UBAC and their experiences. The wrap up episode will be the take-aways and how to move forward using our dorm experiences for a fulfilling life. Enjoy listening to what was the Ubangi Academy. If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at Heidi.Tunburg@efca.org or Jodi Revell at Jodi.Revell@efca.org. For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at info@covchurch.org. All communications will be confidential. **Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    41 min

  5. 03/29/2025

    Episode 34 – The Boarding School Dilemma – Balancing Mission and Family – Introduction – Part 1 of 5 – 3-29-25

    Dorm view of Tennis court – Ubangi Academy, D.R. Congo View of soccer fields – Ubangi Academy, D.R. Congo     Aerial View of the Dorm and School     Many people feel God’s call to serve in missions. With that is the responsibility of raising their children and ensuring they are educated. This can prove challenging, depending on the foreign country one goes to. In my case, I was sent to the Ubangi Academy (UBAC) in Congo as an 8 year old.  The school served grades 2 through 12, with a rigorous curriculum. Normally there were 40-50 in total attendance, with most living in the dormitory, adjacent to the school. How did parents rationalize sending their kids away, starting as young as 7 years old, for 8 to 10 weeks at a time? How did the children fare? Many struggled, and have residual trauma into adulthood. I sent surveys to parents and kids alike and determined that very few kids and parents have discussed the experience. Furthermore, many kids don’t want to revisit that part of their childhood. This is part 1 of a 5 part series, to introduce the topic and lay out the challenges for parents and kids alike. It will discuss the elephant in the room, which is: how come so few families have talked about this experience that was extremely impactful on the children. Then, the Ubangi Academy, as an institution will be discussed in more detail in part 2. The routine, expectations, schedule, culture and subcultures will be explained. Then in part 3, how parents handled the challenge of separating their families and trusting that their children were adjusting well and being well cared for will be the topic.  Part 4 will be interviewing kids and their experience of the dorm ecosystem, emotional damage incurred, and how they adapted to dorm culture. Most listeners will be surprised at how most children look back at the experience. The final episode will be a summary and discuss the takeaways learned from all the interviews and surveys. And recommendations on how the kids can move forward using the positives and negatives from the experience for a better life as adults. The dilemma of balancing mission and family is very complex and controversial. I hope you join for the journey for the 5 episodes to hear the broad spectrum of perspectives on this most important issue.  Special thanks to Roger and Sally Eales for sharing how they looked at the role of UBAC in their family’s life. Also Jeff Aiken provides his take on UBAC and its impact on his life as an attendee and then as an adult. If you feel you need professional counseling due to your experience at the Ubangi Academy, Free Church attendees can reach out to Heidi Tunburg at Heidi.Tunburg@efca.org or Jodi Revell at Jodi.Revell@efca.org. For Covenant Missions MK’s, please reach out to the Covenant Mission Headquarters at info@covchurch.org. All communications will be confidential. **Rated in 2024 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    34 min

  6. 04/06/2024

    Episode 33 – The Rwanda Genocide – A Refugee Camp Volunteer’s Perspective – 4-6-24

    The Rwanda Genocide that occurred in 1994 was one of the most recent large-scale genocides in the past 50 years.  The Hutu vs. Tutsi tribal conflict that many of us recall was horrific on so many fronts. The sheer numbers of dead (between 800,000 to 1,000,000), the nature of the butchery and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure had a lasting impact on that small central African country. The killings started on April 6, 1994, triggered by the Hutu President’s plane being shot down and lasted for 100 days.  Unfortunately, the world stage watched from afar during the killings. The Tutsi’s fought back and resulted in 1 Million Hutu refugees crashing across the Zaire (now D.R. Congo) border. There were four (4) refugee camps, of approximately 250,000 each. Three were outside of Goma, on the North side of Lake Kivu, and one large camp near Bukavu on the South side of Lake Kivu. I went in September, 1994 to help a team of volunteers with the NGO called World Relief, Inc., working with 175 unaccompanied or orphan Rwandan children with medical help and providing food and water. It was a challenging and difficult time due to the incredible enormity of the need, the mass of humanity, the sorrow, hopelessness, sickness, diseases and death we saw every day during our time there. Stories to put the enormity of the experience into perspective are shared, including from a veteran Doctor and experienced Nurse that had seen lots of rough stuff in their decades of service in the medical field in Central Africa. Dr. Tom Cairns and Ms. Thelma Landrud share of their experiences doing tough duty in difficult circumstances, offering their unique perspectives. Yet, there were times of joy and happiness even in the midst of it all. Everyone that went to the Refugee camps left emotionally exhausted and forever changed. I know I was. This is my story and my perspective of my time there, and the impact it had on me and those I shared my experiences with. A special thanks to Dr. Cairns and Ms. Landrud for their interviews to compliment this episode. And a big Thank You to Rick Selin, retired radio host, for reading the poem I wrote, trying to capture the entire Rwanda Genocide and Refugee Camp experience. I trust this episode and the message in the poem I wrote puts things in perspective about the horror of genocide, our humanity and how easily we can slip from civility into savagery. Beka’s Story of Escape from Rwanda Newspaper Article – OC Register **Rated in 2023 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts Worldwide – https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    1h 5m

  7. 01/20/2024

    Short Stories (4) - Volume II

    This episode contains four (4) Short Stories. The first one is telling the difference between “who you know” and “who knows you”. Which is better in life and in business? Well, Short Story # 1 will answer that question for you. The second Short Story is about how to check for the freshness of chicken eggs. How to confirm they were or weren’t fertilized or rotten or not. It was quite a process. The third Short Story is about going down a 65 foot well, to assess what was damaging the buckets that pulled up the water. I describe the harrowing trip down and all the amazing stuff I found down there. Yes, there was a surprise. And then the long trip being winched to the top, back to safety. The fourth and final Short Story is about how I got my original Congolese name in October, 1970, and then in the late 1970’s the name got a bit longer. The back story will be told of all three names that make up my current Congolese name. And I answer to it even now when called by my Congolese friends. I hope you enjoy these four (4) Short Stories about various aspects of Congo life. A big thank you to the various voice-over folks to add a fun dimension to the stories. **Rated in 2023 to the TOP 25 Best “Life Stories” Themed Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/life_stories_podcasts/

    37 min

  8. 11/07/2023

    Episode 31 – Teaching in a Congolese High School – 11-7-23

    This episode is about teaching in a Congolese High School. The physical conditions of the classrooms, and lack of supplies and textbooks made the job extremely difficult for both the teachers and students alike. I was a high school professor at Institute Kimia in Gemena, D.R. Congo in the 1982-1983 school year. Having finished my sophomore year of college, I returned to Zaire / Congo and one of my roles was teaching 9th grade Chemistry and English. Trying to convey concepts in French, and having minimal textbooks or other school supplies was challenging indeed, as most learning had to be by rote, as studying and retaining knowledge was difficult without textbooks. Trying to optimize the student’s learning in these conditions was a challenge for me as well as veteran school teachers. Brad Hill taught for many years in the High School and shares his journey of teaching and successes with some of his students. He explains the differences in teaching methodologies between the US school system and the Congolese system, which is mainly driven by the lack of resources for the students. He also recounts several unique stories of his experiences, one of which includes arson. Roger Eales, who taught 20 years there, also contributes with his experiences and those are woven into the episode. For any school teachers that listen to this episode, if you think you have it tough in the US, I trust you’ll be more appreciative of the incredible resources you have to help your students learn after listening to this episode. The Congolese need education to help them and the country prosper, and unfortunately the K-12 school system doesn’t get the funding and support it deserves. For me, looking back, that year of teaching was a significant growing experience for me and many things I learned by teaching that year in D.R. Congo, I carry with me to this day. Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey W. Eales. All rights reserved. No portions may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without the prior written permission of the author.

    35 min
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4.9
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Jeff, aka Congo Kid, is a casual writer and podcaster. He enjoys studying and discussing sociology, culture, and human behavior. His formative years were spent in Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa, where he learned multiple languages (French and Lingala) and experienced different social constructs, food, and cultures. His life experiences helped shape his worldview, which he feels is distinct and worthy of contemplation. A commercial real estate executive by day, he spends his free time reading, writing, road cycling, mountain biking, and podcasting. Husband to one, father to two, grandfather to one, and Vessel to The One, Jeff is enjoying life and family more and more as he grows older.

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