Children outside Buvira parish church near Goma, an area already flooded with displaced people in August
(Photo: © Stephen Burgess/CMS)
Just before current fighting in DRC erupted, CMS’s Stephen Burgess visited Goma and found a church still in action despite an atmosphere of instability and fear. He talked to Laura Harvey about the visit
Fierce fighting between the Congolese army and Laurent Nkunda’s rebel forces resumed in August despite a peace agreement signed in Goma in January of last year.
The violence has led to the displacement of thousands of villagers and renewed accusations of Rwandan support for Nkunda. Congo has been lobbying MONUC (the UN peacekeeping force) to play a more active military role in putting down Nkunda's rebellion. Rwanda meanwhile accuses the Congolese government of backing Rwandan Hutu rebels.
In this atmosphere of instability and fear, the Church, suffering and short of resources itself, seeks to bring continued hope to people living in hard places.
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When Steve Burgess, CMS mid-Africa regional manager, visited Bukavu diocese in August just before the most recent conflict erupted, he heard fresh stories of communities living under constant threat and the fear of renewed fighting.
In their midst he found Christians, giving testimony that God is still God in the worst of times, and pointing people towards him from within the scarcity and hardship of their daily lives.
Between army, rebels and earthquakes
Provincial Development Coordinator, Fidele Mashamuka took Steve to the parish of
Cirunga
, just north of Bukavu. Here the health centre and church in the village of Kabare were structurally damaged in the earthquake of January 2008. As in Goma (see below), natural disaster compounds the havoc wreaked by man-made violence and increases the challenges facing local communities.
Financial assistance from the Congo Church Association has helped the Cirunga congregation to make limited repairs. There was a nutrition centre attached to the health centre, but the Congolese army stole the iron sheets that formed its walls to build their houses. With no other health centre in that area everyone suffers. The church here, as elsewhere in the country, is attempting to provide health care where the government is failing to, but without financial resources they find themselves responding from a hard place.
Map showing the ares affected by violence
(© CMS)
After Laurent Nkunda’s men invaded Bukavu in 2004 the Congolese army was brought in to create a buffer zone around the town. Tragically the troops that were meant to bring peace were alleged to have raped village women and stole crops, livestock and firewood to supply their camps. The Ven Ise-somo, the provincial evangelist, based in Bukavu, is now visiting all the army camps the area, slowly building bridges and holding regular services throughout Bukavu diocese.
“I travel and work in partnership with an army major,” he says. “We’re trying to reach out and preach the gospel and also help the men in the army camps live in closer harmony with the local population.”
It is a population that has endured hardship upon hardship, and which continues to suffer the long term effects of the war. In the 2004 invasion Nkunda’s men stole all the equipment that the Mothers’ Union had built up through a CMS supported micro-credit project.
Sometimes they ask the question, “How many times must we rebuild from scratch?”
“How long O Lord?”
It’s a sentiment that echoes again in Goma and further north in North Kivu diocese, where the continued presence of the rebels is causing huge insecurity. People can’t understand why MONUC (the UN peacekeeping force) won’t step out of the way and allow the Congolese army to drive Nkunda and his rebels out of eastern Congo so that peace can come. There are local protests against MONUC along with accusations that it covertly supports Nkunda and the Rwandese through arms sales and support for the mineral trade.
Goma is a town built on volcanic ash. In the 2002 eruption the lava from Mount Nyiragongo flowed into Lake Kivu and added a few hundred feet of land to the town. It is land that has already been built on, and for Steve on this visit, the fragile homes on the volcanic lava came to further exemplify the hard place people are living in.
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