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Date: November 4, 1996 
When Wembo Alexis, M.D., left Goma, Zaire Oct. 25 to attend a conference in Guatemala, the United Methodist Children's Village at Goma was still secure.
In intervening days, however, the fighting between Zairian soldiers and the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi group, has intensified in the Eastern region of Zaire. During an Oct. 31 interview here at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries headquarters, Wembo did not know if the village remained open or if his wife, Annie, and three children had left the area.
Meanwhile, an Oct. 31 New York Times article reported that the Tutsi rebels had closed in on Goma, fighting the Zairian Army for control of its airport and threatening hundreds of thousands of refugees in the process.
Richard Williams, the board's coordinator of Volunteers for Africa, said he had received an Oct. 30 fax from United Methodist Bishop Forrest Stith reporting that most United Methodist property in the region seemed to be destroyed or confiscated.
Stith and his wife, Jo, are based in Nairobi, Kenya, through 1997 as project managers for the denomination's Bishops' Appeal and Campaign for Africa.
United Methodist mission work in Eastern Zaire began soon after the United Nations set up refugee camps there in 1994, when more than a million refugees flooded in from Rwanda. Later, they were joined by refugees from Burundi. Among the Hutu refugees to Zaire were Rwandans who played a role in genocidal attacks against the Tutsis there, along with guerilla groups from Burundi.
Ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis has continued in both Rwanda and Burundi. International opinion has been divided on whether the refugees should be forced to return to their own countries.
The Rev. John McCullough, the board's associate general secretary of mission personnel, noted that his agency's "posture has been simply to care for people during this period when they're exiled from their own country."
One objective of the Board of Global Ministries has been to help relieve the burden placed on the local population in Eastern Zaire. Already somewhat impoverished, according to McCullough, the region has suffered to a greater extent since the refugee explosion there.
In contrast, the United Methodist congregations -- that started as lay movements in Uvira, Bukavu and Goma -- have grown considerably. "It's the crisis itself,` I think, that has really propelled their progress," he said.
The Jerusalem United Methodist Church in Uvira -- that seats 1,000 and houses a school for refugee children -- was dedicated last January. A building for the Goma congregation has been under construction.
Wembo, a United Methodist from Central Zaire, settled in the region 10 years ago. He and his wife began work with the refugees in 1994. He is the site manager for the denomination's work in Goma, introducing volunteer teams to the refugee camps; and Mrs. Wembo is director of the Children's Village, a tent camp for orphaned and abandoned children also dedicated last January.
Another Zairian United Methodist, Muembo Omesombo, M.D., is administrator of the United Methodist clinic in Bukavu. He has been on a speaking tour in Illinois.
The Uvira clinic is run by a Ugandan United Methodist, Wanume Kale, M.D. Board officials have received no word from him since fighting between the Tutsi rebels and the Army began in Uvira, according to Williams.
To escape the fighting, both refugees and locals have followed a path from Uvira to Bukavu to Goma, according to Wembo. An estimated 700,000 refugees are now in the Goma area.