For the most part, she goes unnoticed in her work. There is no cheering when she empties a trash can, and no pats on the back for dragging a mop across dirty floors. Even a word of thanks is no guarantee.
And yet, Irene Gshinguta is always smiling.
In her thin latex gloves and button-down shirt, she blends in, unacknowledged, as one of Carleton’s many cleaning staff.
But those who stop to speak to her will find Gshinguta is always eager to greet students with motherly warmth.
“Because I’m living alone at my place, I don’t have anyone,” she says, carefully pronouncing each word through her Tshiluba, Swahili and French accent.
“If I come [to Carleton], I’ll feel better if I saw the students passing. Sometimes I’ll remember of my children.”
Gshinguta, 54, has seen her four daughters and one son grow up. Two have even started families of their own, making her the grandmother of 12.
“I miss them,” she says of her kids with a sad smile. She phones them once a week, twice if she misses them “a lot.”
She says some of her children live in South Africa. Others returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country filled with bittersweet memories for Gshinguta.
Gshinguta fidgets in her seat, grasping for the right words before saying, “Congo is a nice country . . . if somebody’s working, have a good job.”
Lubumbashi is the second largest city in the Congo. Gshinguta says she grew up there, the sixth-born in a big family with her two brothers and 10 sisters. Her father worked on the railways while her mother sold lemons, bananas, mangoes and other fruits in the market.
Tragedy struck early. Gshinguta says she was only 11 when her father died, leaving her mother to care for her large family.
“While she was working,” Gshinguta says, “the money was little to feed us,” let alone afford the school tuition.
So at 15, Gshinguta says she “decided to get married,” hoping to lighten her mother’s workload and to take responsibility for her own life. Her firstborn, a girl named Mbelu Yolanda, arrived a year later.
Her husband insisted Gshinguta learn a trade to support herself she says, and sent her to a school where she learned to sew. She completed the course, bought a knitting machine, and was soon selling homemade clothing in the market.
Her specialty was selling sweaters for babies.
“I like babies,” she says, unable to hold back a giggle that lights up her whole face. “I like children.”
Such a simple delight almost seems out of place after the life she has left behind in the Congo. Life took a drastic turn for her and her family in 2001.
“My husband passed away,” she said softly after a long pause. “It was like a war. They wanted, what can I say,” Gshinguta searches for the right words. “They kill my husband.”
With all traces of laughter gone from her face, she seems almost another person altogether. Her words are halting, each one weighted with the grief of horrors still alive in her memory.
“When they kill my husband, I was trying to —” She punches the air, showing how she tried to fight off her husband’s attackers.
Congo has been rife with violence for decades, and most of the country’s civilians have been personally affected by the conflict. Gshinguta will not say why her husband was targeted.
“They start coming to my house all the time, those people,” she says.
Gshinguta says she took her children and fled to neighbouring Zambia, but returned soon after. “It’s not the same,” she says.
The priest and sisters at her Catholic church suggested she move to Canada and start a new life. So in August 2006, Gshinguta came to Ottawa where she lived in a shelter for three months, not knowing where to find a job or even how to speak English.
Eventually, with the help of her friends, Gshinguta joined the Unicco Service Company. She worked as a cleaning lady, first in Fallowfield and, as of April 2009, at Carleton.
It was no easy journey getting here, but through it all Gshinguta says she has emerged stronger than ever and filled with hope. For that, she thanks God. “Prayer is my best thing,” she says.
Despite her troubled past, Gshinguta insists God has been “very good,” and spends every day singing His praises.
Even while working, she listens to gospel songs on her music player.
“If I cry to Him, I saw something different,” she says, breaking into her contagious smile.