 |
|
Churches Offer Shelter in GomaDate: January 28, 2002 
Josephina Bampende lifts the lid of her cooking pot. She is cooking a meal consisting of beans - the only food she has - on a small fire outside the Birere Baptist church in Goma. This is where the 55-year old grandmother, her children and grandchildren, along with hundreds of others sought refuge in the wake of the devastating volcanic eruptions that destroyed her home on January 17. Nearly two weeks later, every available space inside the church is taken up by the families that have crowded into the building, moving the benches around to create separate small sections for each family.
Innocent Lyabuta, who is organizing food distribution with the help of his colleagues from the parish committee says, "Josephina is so poor now. She has lost everything." Her comment summarizes the fate of tens of thousands of people. Outside the church, hundreds of people line up in a narrow street, waiting for assistance. "There are so many people - the UN says about 100,000 - left without houses or even one meal a day," Innocent says. "Three days after the volcano erupted, we returned to Goma, because we did not want to live in camps again. There are enough beans to feed the families - more than 1,500 families could receive 10 kg each. But we need oil, flour, salt, sugar, milk and rice."
The city of Goma has long provided a safe haven to many of the internally displaced people (IDPs) of the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). An estimated 40,000 IDPs live in the city, says Kerstin Akerman, a Swedish nurse working for ACT member Bureau Oecumenique d'Appui au Development (BOAD) in Bukavu. She recounts the story of a mother of six who fled on the boat to Bukavu after the volcano eruption. Two days went by before she managed to find food for herself and her family. More than a year ago, she had fled the fighting in another part of the country for the relative safety of Goma. Now, she has lost her home here too. Her husband had also vanished recently, while traveling in the country. Akerman says that despite the hardships, people are not despondent and try to get along with what little they have. However, the longer the conflict continues in the country, the more poverty stricken people become, she says.
The lava flow that now divides the city into an eastern and western part is still smouldering. Children scrounge for anything that may still be useful, such as mangled kitchen utensils from the top of the black, hot, deadly mass. Goma is still in a state of chaos. Water and electricity are however provided free of charge. The UN has proposed that the displaced be relocated to two camps near Goma. All houses that are to be rebuilt in the town will be made of pre-fabricated materials, in case the town is to be rebuilt at another location - a plan that is being considered at the moment.
At a meeting of the ACT network in Goma on Saturday, it was agreed that BOAD and Eglise du Christi au Congo (ECC) would distribute food at three sites set up by the UN World Food Program (WFP). More than 5,000 families will receive maize flour, pulses, cooking oil, soya flour and salt. It was also agreed that non-food items such as kitchen sets from the ACT emergency pre-preparedness stock would be sent from Kigali in Rwanda to Goma.
"We were the only ones who could provide plastic sheeting in the first two days," Anne Masterson Director of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Rwanda and DRC program says. UMCOR designated its first Goma volcano emergency grant to LWF, which is managing two WFP warehouses in Rwanda. UNICEF has asked LWF to provide another warehouse in Goma for non-food items. But one of the most important items stocked by LWF, is now gone. Much needed medicine that arrived in Goma a day before the volcano erupted lies buried today, somewhere beneath the solidifying lava.
You can support the reconciliation efforts and UMCOR's ministry with the area's refugees and displaced persons in the Democratic Republic of Congo by giving to Advance #198400. Give through your local United Methodist church or send financial contributions to: UMCOR, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Call 1-800-554-8583 to make a credit card donation. The generous giving of United Methodists to the One Great Hour of Sharing supplements the cost of Advance gifts.
Source: Action by Churches Together, http://www.act-intl.org.
Photos: Top--Josephina Bampende lifts the lid of her cooking pot. She is cooking a meal consisting of beans. Credit: Rainer Lang, ACT International, Goma, D.R. Congo, January 2002. Bottom--Children in Goma salvaging what they can after the eruption. Credit: Credit: Rainer Lang, ACT International, Goma, D.R. Congo, January 2002..