Introduction
This chapter draws upon a larger research project on young people's experiences and means of coping with violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (Seymour 2012, 2014). It is organized into three sections: The first section, after briefly critiquing the assumptions of trauma as a necessary consequence of war experience, presents an overview of the psychological literature on children's resilience to violence and adversity and outlines a three-part framework which can be used to support examination and analysis of how young people attempt to cope with the often extreme constraints and adversities presented by violence and war.
The second section focuses on one dominant expression of coping among young people in the DRC, namely, la debrouille or “finding one's way”; through the presentation of narratives of three young people, perspectives are shared on the often profound challenges and constraints for survival and advancement facing young people in the highly militarized and structurally violent context of the Kivus. The final section describes why effective coping should not be confused with resilience.The setting for the research is the provinces of North and South Kivu, DRC. Long affected by violence, the situation in the Kivus is often described as “the world's deadliest humanitarian crisis” (Coghlan et al. 2006, p. 44), where there are at least 1.5 million people displaced by violence at any given time (United Nations 2013), and considered “the rape capital of the world” (BBC 2010). The conflict dynamics in the Kivus are exacerbated by its dense natural resource wealth, its high population density, and its long and historically entrenched politics of contestation over identity and belonging (Mamdani 2001; Jackson 2006; Prunier 2009). The larger research project in which this chapter is embedded drew on doctoral fieldwork as well as earlier experiences living and working in the DRC between 2006 and 2011.
Over the course of 40 months, the author either worked as a child protection professional with the United Nations and various NGO organizations or was conducting doctoral fieldwork. The narratives which feature in this chapter were documented during doctoral fieldwork conducted in South Kivu between March and July 2010 and in North Kivu between July and September 2011. Data collection relied on ethnographically influenced methodologies and included extensive interviews, formal and informal group discussions, participant observation, and “deep hanging out” (Geertz 2000) with young people between the ages of 12 and 24 years - 44 of them in South Kivu and more than 200 young people in North Kivu. During this period, the main forces of militarized violence included the national army - the Forces Armees de la Republique Ddmocratique du Congo (FARDC); the Congres National pour la Defense du Peuple (CNDP), a breakaway faction of which would, in 2012, become the M23 movement; the Forces de mocratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR); and a wide range of Mayi-Mayi militia which ostensibly organize to protect local interests. Although the Kivus remained highly militarized at this time, actual battles and confrontations were relatively rare, with the main upsurges of violence being over control of land, mines, and trade routes.2