Goma-thology

September – I spent a couple of weeks in Goma, capital of Eastern DRC on the border with Rwanda and city that was ravaged by the eruption of Nyiragongo volcano in January 2002, driving thousands of people from their homes. The lava cut the city in two and flowed into Lake Kivu. Today, the armed forces of both MONUC and FARDC patrol the city. UN and international humanitarian organizations vehicles are everywhere, getting their way through the anarchic traffic and slaloming between the taxi-motos and the indolent pedestrians. Goma is covered with the black dust from the volcano. Its extremely poor population breaths the dirt of temporary settlements that became another lasting shanty-town. Government, institutions et al. are as corrupted as a failed state can be. Decades of Mobutu and Kabila(s) were marked by clientelism, despotism, military dictatorship, massacres, rapes which traumatised Congolese for generations. Providing assistance to health centres and community groups, in order to reduce child and maternal mortality and morbidity, is just a tiny contribution in comparison to the immensity of needs and desperation here. That’s my job. I’ll try my best.