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Schools and Homes Top Priority in Devastated GomaDate: January 30, 2002 
"I would like to go to school again", says ten-year old Bibile. She is standing around with a group of other children on a section of the lava that nearly two weeks ago destroyed much of the town center of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The lava flow destroyed a school run by the Baptist church close to where they are standing, as well as other schools in the center of town.
Bibile lost her family home, as did many other families living in the same area. She, her parents and her siblings have found temporary shelter in one of the school buildings run by a Pentecostal church that remains standing. Churches and schools all across town have come to the aid of people who were left homeless in the wake of the devastating volcanic eruption.
UN and local authorities in Goma report that there is a need for about 400 classrooms, as classes will resume on February 25. ACT member Lutheran World Federation (LWF) is planning to assist the member churches of Eglise du Christi au Congo, also a member of ACT, with the reconstruction of the destroyed or damaged school buildings.
Any reconstruction will have to be temporary, as local authorities are not allowing people to start building permanent structures on top of the lava. Anne Masterson, LWF director of the Rwanda and DRC program explains that buildings that suffered minor damage will be fixed with sheets of corrugated iron and plastic sheeting.
For now, the schools continue to offer shelter to people like 22-year old Riziki Sherina and her family. Her two smaller children aged one and three are staying with relatives, as the classroom where she, her husband and their four-year old have set up home, is too cold for the little ones, she explains. Riziki barely manages to eke out a living by selling tomato seeds and the fruit on the market. She is the breadwinner, providing for her family while her husband studies nursing. "When I do not get money, we don't have food", Riziki says.
She was in Rwanda collecting tomatoes to sell in the market in Goma the day Mount Nyiragongo erupted. She tells how she saw the lava, but when she saw nobody running, she returned home. Local authorities had issued warnings on the radio, telling people to stay inside their houses. But when Riziki and her family saw the lava stream coming towards their house, they left in a panic, not even stopping to take anything with them. This was at six o'clock in the evening. They spent the next two days out in the open in Gisenyi across the border in Rwanda, "without any food and hardly any water given to us", she says. They returned to Goma. She says that the refugees left Gisenyi three days after the disaster, because soldiers were ordering them to go to nearby refugee camps. "Also, the people in Gisenyi did not accept Congolese money." The Congolese preferred to go home.
In Goma, Riziki and some of the other people living with her have somehow fallen through the cracks in the relief distribution network and have had to depend on help from their neighbors. "We did not get any food, blankets or sheeting", says Riziki's aunt, Mwambikwa Sherina. Mrs. Sherina is a widow who suffers from diabetes and who cannot afford the medicine. ACT member Norwegian Church Aid immediately stepped in, providing the family with plastic sheeting for shelter.
Asked about their future the two women shrug their shoulders. But on one issue, they are quite clear. They do not want to move from Goma.
This issue of voluntary relocation for those who lost their homes, is one of the top agenda points at meetings within the humanitarian community. Masterson says that the issue of relocation is very complex and needs a thorough assessment in co-operation with the population before being implemented.
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--Ten year old Bibile. Credit: Rainer Lang, ACT International, Goma, D.R. Congo, January 2002. Bottom--Riziki Sherina, resident of Goma. Credit: Credit: Rainer Lang, ACT International, Goma, D.R. Congo, January 2002..