Eastern Congo: Looks like heaven, feels like hell

The government official spun around in his chair, kicked an empty beer bottle with his heel and stared out of the window. "North Kivu looks like heaven," he said.

I agreed. A sunbird sang and we sat for a moment in silence, lost in the sunset. In the distance, cormorants and cuckoo hawks circled high above the glassy waters of Lake Kivu.
As the sky blackened and a plume of red smoke spurted from Nyiragongo volcano, the official took a long drag on his cigarette. "It feels like hell, my girl," he said.
He could have been talking about any one of a number of conflict zones: the white sands of Baghdad Island, Herat in Afghanistan or Darfur's mountainous Jebel Marra region, with its orchards, hot springs and long-drop waterfalls.

But this was Goma, once the "tourist capital of Congo" and North Kivu's main town, perched on the northern shores of Lake Kivu, where jungle meets volcanic rock and gentle green hills.
The tourists don't come anymore. Information centres are boarded up and the minister for tourism has turned his attention to journalists.
"The future of our province is dark," said local resident Kennedy Ndayisenga, who once ran a successful tour company but now works as a fixer. "We don't know where we're going."

Goma used to be known for its sunrises, mountain climbing and gorilla trekking . Now the city that has endured endless loss, destruction and volcanic eruptions against a perennial backdrop of conflict is in the grip of a forgotten emergency.
Since August, more than 175,000 people have fled violence in North Kivu between government troops, insurgents loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda, Rwandan Hutu rebels and jungle Mai Mai militia.

Last week, the Congolese army used helicopter gunships, artillery and rocket launchers to retake the dairy farming town of Mushake - around 40 km (25 miles) from Goma - from rebels loyal to Nkunda. At least 35 soldiers, from both sides, were killed. At least 30 were injured.
Mushake was quiet when I passed through two weeks ago. Houses were empty, restaurants and drinking holes boarded up. Most of the residents had fled and only the wives and families of Nkunda's soldiers remained. They stood around chatting in the square. One woman led me through the muddy streets to her home. We walked through a cloud of tiny baby-blue butterflies, past cattle grazing on the rolling plains, dotted with skinny eucalyptus trees and orange blossom. Now those streets are marked with blood, sweat and tears.
War zones aren't supposed to be beautiful. And if they are, reporters probably aren't supposed to admit it. But in Mushake, like the rest of North Kivu, it serves only to heighten the desperate situation.
The United Nations says tens of thousands of women and girls - some as young as a few months old - have been raped in the provinces of North and South Kivu in the past year alone. Deaths from hunger and preventable diseases are peaking. Villages empty as camps for internally displaced people swell.

At Mugunga IDP camp, I knelt in the black earth to conduct interviews with people who had lost everything. When I looked up, the mountains were embroidered with the gold rays of early morning sunlight.
In Goma, policemen carry rocket launchers almost as tall as them. In the countryside, children transport arms for rebels. Families shelter in schools and churches. Old men cry out for biscuits.

Yes, North Kivu is bloody beautiful. The mountains are bruised and the volcano is bleeding. Streams of blood-red lava spill over its lip. The smoky flames look like a flare, a cry for help.
This, as Joseph Conrad said, is one of the dark places of the world.

With neither tourism nor adequate news coverage, it will probably remain that way.

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