Visit to Goma and Bukavu Day 5

Morning worship with North Kivu staff. Lovely songs and prayers. Two good female solos. Both Kuye and Bulambu were there; unusual for either to be there and almost unheard of for both at the same time. Probably because World Council of Churches delegation is coming soon. Mgr. Kuye talked about global warming crisis issues, and that Congo is an “oasis” seen by some as a place to re-settle people whose homes have been totally destroyed by environmental change or over-crowding (like people whose islands in the south Pacific have been flooded forever). Then he moved on to talk about what diaconal work means.

Dismas, Flory and I met with Kuye and Bulambu for a few minutes. Very nice. I explained Menno-Paix ideas and FDMR grant. They were relaxed, pleasant, seemed happy with our ideas. If they were disappointed at least they didn’t show it, in contrast to many others, especially Mennonites (and Gilbert), who begin at once to complain. K and B are eager to get SOS project underway asap. I said I would push it through the system as quickly as possible. So today we will work hard on the details. ***Send Menno-Paix general plan to K and B.

I love the sound of bottles being clinked in basins on drink sellers’ heads. They turn the bottles upside down in rows around the basin, and run the bottle opener over them as they walk. Sounds like wind chimes. I also admire the way girls here wear bunches of onions on their heads like scarves, the onions hanging artistically down around their faces.

We did work very hard and put together what I think is a good project. So far I have refused to eat that pink sandwich meat, but I was so hungry by early afternoon that I wolfed down a big pink meat-cheese sandwich for a “working lunch” with Dismas and Flory. It was very interesting and instructive to work with those two. They follow the standard norms and criteria used by all organizations. They gave me good background on political situation and general context which explains why IDP’s are moving into safer areas: Kimia II campaign is pushing into FDLR areas around Shabunda and Mwenga (especially where there are mines) so FDLR move deeper into the forest, pillaging as they go. People move to larger towns along main roads for greater safety and where there may be transport if they need to quickly flee to Bukavu. Many are coming directly to Bukavu, especially from Shabunda, Mwenga and Kalehe (north of Bukavu). Here they move in with people in the poorest parts of town, some of whom are IDP’s who have been here for some time. Food is getting harder to find and more expensive in Bukavu. Almost all food sold here comes from Rwanda. Previously, food for Bukavu was produced in Mwenga and Walungu areas, but now those areas are too destabilized by FDLR activity to produce much food, certainly not enough for Bukavu as well as local consumption . (This is in contrast to Goma, where they can grow food easily and everywhere.) So once again: more war = more benefit for Rwanda. So once again, Rwanda wins/gains. This is the dry season so little food is available and fields should be prepared for planting in Sept. We had hoped to have a seed/tools component to this project but it doesn’t make sense for the sites chosen because: 1. IDP’s in Mwenga area expect and want to go home asap; they are reluctant to plant in Mwenga area if they won’t be there long enough to harvest. 2. There is no place in Bukavu for IDP’s to grow anything. They have to buy.

Kimia II is not doing much except causing displacement and looting for two main reasons: 1. FARDC (national army) is not paid so also have to “forage” for food. 2. Many soldiers integrated into FARDC are Hutu Congolese who don’t really want to fight their brothers in FDLR.


Later in the afternoon D, F, Jean and I went to the Igoko section of the Panzi quartier of Bukavu, where many IDP’s from Mwenge and Shabunda have been taken in by (or are renting space from) host families. Bukavu is built on hills and ridges and what was once a tidy town clustered on the lake’s edge is now a sprawl of ramshackle, mostly wooden, shacks extending out over the rippling hills further inland. The ground everywhere is rocky and bumpy, with a fine brownish-red soil that doesn’t seem to know how to cope with so many stones, so it just blows (dry season) or runs away (rainy season). They tell me the mud is phenomenal. The air everywhere is full of fine reddish dust, and as we moved further out from the center of town it became thicker, streets became narrower, and the number of people on the streets exploded. It was hard for the car to get through the crowds and when we met anything coming from the other direction it required skillful maneuvering to find a way to pass. Small wood or mud houses are packed in on steep slopes, with step paths straight up among them. We went up and up and around and around into a desperately poor, extremely crowded area, making hairpin turns among the houses and shops teetering on the edge of the road. Rickety little wood slat bridges from the road to the hillsides, over dirty drains. Trees with most of their roots showing clinging to the slope. Women selling bits of this and that in a 2-ft-wide strip along the dusty, dirty, dangerous road, with sheer drops behind them.

Babies. On nearly every back, lap, or bit of cloth. And children. It seemed there were millions, from bare toddlers to bored adolescents, hundreds and hundreds everywhere. Mostly very dirty, barely clothed. And hundreds of young adult men, standing, sitting, strolling aimlessly. We had to wait while a funeral crowd of young people surged around us. They were carrying a flag with Bob Morley on it, and many wore Rastafarian colors and dreds. There was just too much to see, to take in. I took a few pictures but only from the car. Finally I had to make myself stop seeing everything with a camera’s eye and let myself just experience it.

We visited four houses where people had taken in others who fled from areas where there is fighting. We walked through narrow streets, climbed up and down and over humps and bumps and steep steps and dusty, slippery slopes -- accompanied, of course, by a huge crowd of children. I took some pictures but it caused such a commotion that I put the camera away. In each home there were several families staying together. Each place was a tiny, dark, dusty room, with a rickety chair or wooden couch. More than ten people sleep in each of those tiny places every night and must be fed every day. One place had five adults and eight children, another had an old, confused lady for whom someone was “renting” space with a family she didn’t even know. At one place there were two men, a woman with toddler twins (both nursing almost the whole time we were there) and a young widow whose husband was killed in the fighting just a couple weeks ago, plus several children and other people.

We met an exhausted, depressed mother of three, recently arrived, living with three other families; her husband was out looking for work which he knows he probably won’t find. The last place was a more stable family home, a cement block house, with a main room about 15’x 10’. The owner is a man who had opened his home to 6 families = 23 people. Most of them were there and crowded into the room. They explained how they keep their things (very few) in order along one wall and at night some of them sleep in what is a rickety little hair cutting shop, and some turn this room into a dormitory.

Everyone we met had left their homes in a hurry, so have no blankets, few clothes, no cooking pots, no money. It was hard to figure out how they ever find anything to eat. Most of the people we met had great dignity, some seemed confused and very sad, but all were very gracious to us. They are all very hungry. The old lady said her skin hurts. They all suffer from the cold and the dust. As far as D and F know, no other aid agency is helping these IDP’s who have come into Bukavu. ECC is trying to find donor groups who will provide help to this rapidly growing community.

Pictures I wish I could have taken: Shoes for sale displayed on little “shelves” carved out of a steep hillside. Two tiny toddlers playing house with a bunch of bits of trash they had set up as a kitchen.

There were a lot of very young pregnant girls. Clusters of toddlers everywhere. Hundreds of boys and girls running around with little ones in their arms or on their backs.

We wound our way back down the dusty hill, the streets still full of incredible numbers of people, moving along, selling, sitting, talking, getting on huge trucks or stuffed into crowded taxi buses. But after our brief visits in the houses and yards and winding paths off the road, I am reminded again that the people we see on the streets and roads are mostly the strongest and healthiest ones. The less strong, the very young and old, are in those dark, cramped shacks, or sitting endlessly in dusty yards, or lying on mats in dark rooms or under trees.

Got home at last. Went immediately for a long, much-needed walk, exploring a few new streets. Came home just at dark with a full moon rising over the valley. Supper: Jempy sandwich cookies with vache qui rit cheese, banana, water. Mama Mayoto came by to bring medicine for her husband in Kinshasa, and shared some of this bounteous repast with me. Wonder what she thought . . . .