Displaced people in a camp on the outskirts of Goma. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Real risks: Elizabeth Coleman on Quakers in the displaced persons camps of the DRC
‘We need to respond quickly.’
In the displaced persons camps around Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are about 460 Quakers – seventy-seven families; men, women and children. George Bani, a Quaker from Uvira in South Kivu, visited to report on the conditions, and what he found was very disturbing.
People in the camps are short of the most basic things: food, tarpaulins for shelter, clothes, blankets, and school supplies, and they live in fear of violence. The local Quakers do what they can, with some international help, but it is not enough. George says: ‘The Quakers of Goma strive to spiritually supervise the displaced Quakers through two churches: a church that brings together every Sunday at least twenty-five Quaker families displaced in the Sam Sam camp supervised by Kamanzi Mudogo, the pastor; and more than fifty-two families participate in Sunday services in the Emmaus Monthly Meeting in Mugunga, where Levi Munyemana is the pastor. In March 2024, the Quarterly Meeting of Goma had collected and distributed clothes and shoes to more than sixty Quaker families displaced from the villages of Nyamitaba, Sanke and Kibumba in Masisi territory.’
A fifty-one-year-old widow from Kichanga in Masisi territory, who has lived in the Shabindu Sam Sam camp in Goma since February 2023, told George, ‘I live with my five children and my three grandsons left by a deceased daughter. Since our arrival in the camp we have never received any assistance from humanitarian organisations. It is now a week since the World Food Programme came to register us to give us tokens that will allow us to start benefiting soon from food and other assistance. We have serious drinking water problems in this camp, the water we consume smells, medical care is poor, and if you fall ill at night you will not have nurses to help you – they close the health post at 4pm. Because we are consuming unclean water, in our camp many people suffer from waterborne diseases, such as diarrhoea, typhoid fever and worms. People here are traumatised by poor living conditions; that is why there are those who take the risk of returning to their villages to see if they can find food in their fields to harvest and bring it to the camp. To survive, I also take the risk of going to get firewood in the forest to come and sell it in the camp. Today, we learned that five men who were looking for work in the fields to cultivate were kidnapped by the M23 militia.’
The risks of visiting the forest are very real. A fourteen-year-old Quaker girl who lives in the camp was raped by a group of armed men in military uniform when she was returning from there. She says, ‘I was taken home to the camp by other displaced people who were returning from the forest to cut wood. I received treatment at the hospital and now I feel good. Apart from food, tarpaulins, shoes, clothes, money to pay for studies, soaps, hygiene kits for us girls, we also need chairs to sit on, for the moment, our clothes tear quickly because we sit on stones and they quickly tear the few clothes we have. We need to be trained in different trades, such as cutting and sewing, soap making and others.’
A forty-year-old woman said, ‘Following this difficult life that we lead, last October I went to Kibumba to see my fields and our house, but unfortunately, I found our house completely destroyed and my fields occupied and cultivated by the neighbouring population of Rwanda hostile to the M23. I was afraid and I quickly returned to the camp without bringing anything.’
‘Slavery, colonialism and economic exploitation are very closely linked, and we should help according to need.’
A forty-one-year-old man said, ‘Our village had been completely attacked by the M23 and we were forced to flee to this camp since December 7, 2023. On the one hand, we have the problem of insecurity in the camp, people are victims of targeted attacks by armed people, kidnappings and from time to time we experience shots from rifles from unidentified armed people. Since September 2024, we have recorded three cases of bodies found lifeless in this Bulengo camp. On the other hand, we have the problem of food, the World Food Program gives us either food or money to pay for food to consume for a month, but it is not enough to cover our survival for a month.’
People at the camp have to make money however they can. A sixty-seven-year-old man said, ‘Sometimes, I transport bricks or sand to construction sites outside the camp.’ A fifty-two-year-old woman said, ‘To find food, my husband and I work for people in the city, and I also look for firewood in the forest and I sell it, but often we are victims of intimidation and sometimes there are women and even men who are kidnapped, tortured or killed when they meet with the M23 in the forest, but to survive we always take risks, we have no other choice to make.’
The Quakers and others in the displaced persons camp urgently need our help. When we consider reparations for past wrongs, it seems to me that a history of slavery and colonialism, and current economic exploitation, are very closely linked, and we should help according to need. And help is urgently needed now: we need to respond quickly. The people of Democratic Republic of the Congo are victims of economic exploitation. The country is very rich in the minerals that are used in our electric vehicles, smartphones and computers, but the people are among the poorest in the world.
Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) has agreed to receive money for Quakers and others in the displaced persons camps around Goma, and, through the Great Lakes Africa Initiative, to arrange for the money to be distributed and to ensure that the spending is monitored and narrative and financial reports produced. We hope that Friends will be generous when the appeal is launched in the near future.
