Resilience Across Worlds: What Moving from Congo to America Teaches Us About Strength, Competition, and Belonging

When I left the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the United States, I believed I understood resilience. I had lived through power cuts that stretched for days, political instability that reshaped daily life, and economic uncertainty that required constant adaptation. In Congo, endurance was not a concept, it was a condition of life. Resilience was embedded in routines, relationships, and faith.

What I did not anticipate was that resilience would need to be relearned.

Migration does not simply change geography; it redefines the rules of survival. Moving from Congo to America forced me to confront a deeper truth: resilience is not universal. It is cultural. It is contextual. And it is shaped as much by competition and indifference as it is by courage.

Resilience, I have come to understand, is not a single trait. It is a system.

The Congolese Model: Collective Endurance in High-Uncertainty Environments

In the Congolese context, resilience is fundamentally communal. Adversity is rarely absorbed individually; it is distributed across families, neighborhoods, and informal networks. When a household struggles, others intervene, not through formal mechanisms, but through proximity and obligation. Survival is collective, not aspirational.

I recall the markets of Kinshasa, animated by mamans maraîchères selling vegetables under relentless heat. Competition was present, voices overlapping, prices negotiated sharply, but it operated within an ethical boundary. At the end of the day, if one woman’s goods remained unsold, others would buy from her so she could return home with dignity. Success was not extracted at the expense of another’s collapse.

This is a critical distinction. In Congo, competition exists, but it is socially regulated. It does not override relational responsibility.

As Wangari Maathai observed in Unbowed, resilience flourishes where people are empowered collectively, not isolated. Congolese endurance reflects this principle: strength is reinforced through interdependence.

Yet this model also produces a specific form of indifference, one often misunderstood by outsiders. When systems fail repeatedly, emotional detachment becomes adaptive. People stop reacting to dysfunction not because they do not care, but because constant outrage is unsustainable. Silence becomes a coping mechanism. This indifference is not apathy; it is survival fatigue.

The American Model: Individual Reinvention in High-Competition Systems

In the United States, resilience is framed differently. It is personal, performance-based, and future-oriented. The dominant narrative emphasizes reinvention: the capacity to recover, rebrand, and advance independently.

From my earliest days in New York, this distinction was palpable. On the subway, faces were fixed forward, interactions minimal. No one asked if you were new. No one noticed if you were struggling. Resilience here demanded internal scaffolding, self-motivation in the absence of communal reinforcement.

In professional spaces, competition is explicit and constant. Metrics, promotions, visibility, and productivity determine value. Unlike the Congolese market, where competitors remain embedded in relationship, American competition often assumes scarcity: one person’s advancement implicitly diminishes another’s.

This dynamic aligns with what Brené Brown describes as a “culture of scarcity”,a system organized around the belief that there is never enough recognition, security, or opportunity. In such an environment, resilience becomes synonymous with self-protection and relentless self-assertion.

Indifference here has a different origin. It is not born of exhaustion, but of speed. People care, but life moves too fast to register unspoken struggle. Emotional distance is normalized. Connection becomes conditional.

Competition and Indifference: Two Worlds, Two Logics

What distinguishes these systems is not whether competition or indifference exists, but how they are structured.

In Congo:

• Competition is moderated by social proximity.

• Indifference is a response to systemic failure.

In America:

• Competition is institutionalized and individualistic.

• Indifference is a byproduct of acceleration.

Both environments require resilience, but they cultivate different internal architectures of strength.

Integration: Resilience as Cultural Fluency

Living between these worlds has revealed something essential: resilience is not resistance to change; it is fluency across systems.

From Congo, I carry an understanding that survival divorced from community is incomplete. From America, I have learned the necessity of self-advocacy, reinvention, and strategic visibility. Neither model is sufficient alone.

As Angela Duckworth writes in Grit, endurance is rare, not because people lack effort, but because sustaining purpose across adversity requires alignment between passion, context, and support structures.

For those who navigate multiple cultures, resilience becomes a continuous act of translation, of values, behaviors, and expectations. It requires learning when to compete and when to collaborate, when to speak and when to observe, when to push forward and when to pause.

Conclusion: Redefining Strength Across Borders

Resilience is often romanticized as toughness. In reality, it is adaptability without erasure. It is the ability to integrate rather than abandon parts of oneself.

Between Congo and America, I have learned that the most durable form of resilience is neither purely communal nor purely individual. It is relational and strategic. Grounded and forward-moving.

To live across worlds is to recognize that strength is not fixed; it is contextual. And true resilience lies not in choosing one model over another, but in learning how to carry both with clarity, discipline, and intention.

Selected References

• Unbowed – Wangari Maathai

• Rising Strong – Brené Brown

• Grit – Angela Duckworth