Too Close for Comfort. Pt.IV

As many of you know (probably better than I do in fact because of the limited access I have to the internet, and the outside world), there has been an outbreak of violence in the eastern region of the Congo, near the borders of Rwanda and Uganda. There has been almost continual war and political instability in that region since the DRC gained it’s independence about fifty years ago. To put it into perspective, a BBC article I read stated that this continual war “has killed more people than any other conflict since World War II.” There have been improvement in recent years, however, and there had been hopes that it would continue in that progressive direction. The DRC is still home to the largest UN Peacekeeping force in the world, many of which are based in Goma, currently, one of the main areas of conflict.

As you might recall, I visited Rwanda just last month, where I stayed for two nights in Gisenyi, a town that borders the DRC border. From Gisenyi, you can easily see, and even walk to, Goma. Chris took this picture from the beach in Gisenyi, and while it was the birds in the foreground that he was focusing on, I’m posting this picture because of the buildings in the background, which are part of the town of Goma. On a side note, the strange looking rocks that the birds are perched upon are actually lava, from a volcanic explosion that just happened in Goma in the past decade or so I believe. So the name Goma may sound familiar because of that tragic event. Anyway, you can see that I was literally just a stone’s throw from Goma. In fact, one of the guys that I met while I was in Gisenyi (re: Oct 6 Blog) attended school in Goma because school fees were cheaper there and that was what his parents were able to afford. I hope that he has not been caught up in the most recent conflicts.

In another strange coincidence, on the bus leaving Gisenyi, I met a former RMC grad who is currently serving with MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force in Goma. According to the latest news that I have heard, rebel forces have been in combat with UN forces and are on the brink of overrunning the city. The New Vision, the daily Ugandan newspaper, has reported that over six thousand Congolese refugees have fled across the Congo-Uganda border towards the town of Kisoro. In response, Ugandan soldiers have been deployed into that area to help stabilize the increasingly chaotic situation, and to inhibit any fighting from entering the country. Tim, our in country director, called us on Saturday morning to ask about our whereabouts and to warn us not to travel to that region because of these recent events. The border where these thousands of refugees are entering Uganda is the same one that we crossed just a month ago on our way back from Rwanda; we even stopped for lunch in Kisoro on our journey home.

It is definitely sobering to realize how close these events are happening to me, both in reference to time and location. It’s also a strong reminder that regions here in East Africa can still be very much unstable, and have the potential to abruptly change for the worse. Unfortunately, reversing the damage is a much slower process.

On a completed unrelated tangent, I’ve probably eaten over a hundred crickets in the last couple of days. We’d heard that crickets and ants are common snacks here in Uganda but it wasn’t until Mike happened to spot them just outside the market on Monday that we had the chance to try them out. It was just the seven of us interns, and not knowing the proper way to prepare the crickets, we just fried them (some of which have still been alive) in a frying pan with a bit of oil and salt. It turns out that that’s exactly how Ugandans do it, as we brought some back with us (yes, we… mainly I, like them so much that we had to get them again) to Kasese and Peter, the guesthouse’s super pro cook, just fried them as we had done. They’re not a bad snack, and they’re really cheap; you can buy a bag with a couple hundred of them for about a buck!