Looking after our own people: Elizabeth Coleman talks to Levi Munyemana, a Quaker pastor in North Ki
‘It’s extremely hard to work for peace when people are hungry.’
Recently I asked George Bani, a Friend from South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), if he could put me in touch with a Quaker in North Kivu. I knew George through Quaker Congo Partnership. I wanted to make contact with North Kivu Friends as I had heard that the armed group M23 had taken many villages there, causing thousands of local people to flee to refugee camps or to Goma, the capital of North Kivu. M23 is supported by the Rwandan government, a fact acknowledged by the UN Group of Experts on Congo, which has evidence of the ‘presence of individuals wearing uniforms of the Rwanda Defence Force in M23 camps’. George put me in touch with Levi Munyemana, a pastor of the Friends Church (Quakers) in Goma, and we had a conversation on Zoom. Nigel Watt, a London Quaker, acted as an interpreter.
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