Scoffing at Superstition in Kinshasa

Jacques Tshibanda Kabadi does not see any connection between waking up late and a bad car accident.

By Andrew McChesney

Eleven-year-old Jacques Tshibanda Kabadi woke suddenly in his home in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He heard Mother’s voice.

“Jacques, where are you?” Mother called. “It’s already 10 a.m. You’re going to miss your exam.”

Jacques sprang out of bed. Usually, he got up on his own early in the morning, but for some reason he had overslept. He had a big geography test at school.

Pulling on his pants and shirt, Jacques rummaged around the room, looking for socks. He looked on the shelf. He got on his knees and looked under the bed. He couldn’t find a matching pair of socks anywhere.

“What are you doing?” Mother said, standing at the door.

“I can’t find any socks,” Jacques said.

Mother looked in the cupboard. She got on her knees and looked under the bed. She also couldn’t find a matching pair of socks. But she found a white sock and a blue sock.

“Put these on,” she said.

Jacques hastily pulled on the socks and stretched his toes. He didn’t care that the socks didn’t match. He wanted to be on time for the geography test.

He ran to school and arrived in time for the test. But he never learned whether he passed.

After school, as Jacques walked home, he came to the place where he needed to cross a busy main street. Cars were stopped in a traffic jam on one side of the street. The other side had no cars at all. Jacques stepped into the side of the street with no cars. At that moment, a bus hit him. The bus driver was driving on the wrong side of the road because he was trying to avoid the traffic jam.

Jacques doesn’t remember much of what happened next. He fell to the ground. A stranger took off his shirt and tried to stop the bleeding. Strangers picked him up and carried him in their arms to a nearby hospital.

Jacques’ older sister heard about the accident from friends and ran home to tell mother.

“Jacques has been hurt in an accident!” she called from outside the house.

Mother went inside the house and prayed. Then she rushed to the hospital to see her son.

Jacques was lying in the operating room when she arrived. His right leg was mangled. The doctor said he would try to save Jacques’ leg.

The operation was difficult and, when it was finished, one leg was shorter than the other. Jacques stayed in the hospital for three months. After that, the doctor sent him home and said he had to return in a month for a checkup.

During the checkup, the doctor decided to do another surgery on Jacques’ leg.

Another month passed. and Jacques went back for a third surgery.

Mother couldn’t imagine that Jacques would ever walk again. Jacques couldn’t imagine that he would ever walk again. But they both kept praying to God.

Amid the operations, Jacques prayed every day, “God, please heal me and help me to walk again with both legs.”

The operations corrected the length of Jacques’ right leg, so it was the same as his left leg. But Jacques lost his toes in the accident, and they could not be replaced. It was hard to stand up without any toes on one foot, but Jacques was determined to try.

After the third operation, he began to try to walk again. He took a few steps at home, but it hurt. So, he stopped for a while. Then he tried to walk again. When it hurt, he stopped again. But he didn’t give up. After a while, he learned how to balance with no toes. He relearned how to walk. Today, he can not only walk, but he can also run. Jacques is 17 and stands very tall. He is much taller than his mother.

Some superstitious people said Jacques shouldn’t have gone to school. They said he should have realized that he had to stay at home after waking up late and not being able to find his socks. Many Congolese people are superstitious and believe in omens. But Seventh-day Adventists are not superstitious, and they know that there is no connection between Jacques oversleeping, being forgetful about his socks, and his accident. The Bible says, “Time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11; NKJV). This means that good things and bad things happen by chance.

But Jacques knows that it isn’t only by chance that he can walk and run again.

“I can walk and run, and this is proof that God answered my prayers!” he said.