FROM THE FIELD
By Francoise Mukuku, communication and information officer in Congo.Kibati is an overcrowded refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo to which more than 60,000 people have fled during the two last months, adding to a total of 25,000 who were already there. Oxfam is working there, running a public health promotion and sanitation programme.But the camp is too close to the frontlines, putting the inhabitants’ lives under serious threat. Armed men regularly enter the camp and steal people’s possessions.Once they attempted to rape a woman. She resisted them, so they killed her. Sometimes, they just come to drink at tap stands and the entire resident population of the camps have to wait, knowing from experience that it is wise to avoid confrontation.This is why the humanitarian community working in Goma is calling for a new camp to which those who want to can move, because people who are living already far from their homes should not be suffering such additional risk.Mugunga III, a site next to the four existing camps of Bulengo, Buhimba, Mugunga I & II has been chosen. After three weeks of preparation, it is ready to receive up to 10,000 people. Before it was opened, a delegation of people from Kibati were invited on a tour of the camp by the UN refugee agency and the provincial government. As the tour was to convince people of the good conditions in the camp, I went to talk to those who were not part of the trip. I was curious to know who had volunteered to move and what their expectations were.The day I visited them, I came across a group of people. All of them has volunteered to move, but for different reasons. They believe that they will get better food there because it is a new camp. I also met Kale, who is sleeping in the living room of a host family just outside the camp. He arrived very recently with his wife and three children. They have been waiting to be registered at this camp for a month now. He told me that the only thing that could make him volunteer to move to the new camp is the guarantee of being on the list for food distribution and to receive plastic sheeting as soon as possible.Vumiliya, a mother of two, really caught my attention. She was carrying a five-year-old boy who was sick to the point that he could no longer stand up without leaning on something. She said to me that she was waiting to go to Mugunga III so that her sick children could receive treatment. The little girl clinging onto her long skirt was also shivering.I wanted to know more about the link between going to the new camp and receiving treatment. I asked her some questions.Vumiliya came from Rutshuru and she spoke a dialect that I don’t know. But she struggled to explain to me, with the help of those around us, that she went to the camp hospital yesterday and queued for hours. But the nurses were calling those who had arrived after her and her two sick children. At the end of the day, she went back home thinking it was because she was not on the list. I went with her and the two kids to the hospital. I talked to a nurse and it happens that Vumiliya, who had only recently arrived, had not understood the procedures. All the new people who arrived at the hospital first went to a reception room, asked for a medical form and filled it out with the help of the nurses. The next step was to see the doctor. But she had already suffered so many frustrations in attempting to register that she hadn’t even asked why she and her two children were neglected again.Janine, a single mother of a teenager boy, is the one who talks about safety. She told me: “Two days ago, armed men entered the camp: they weere searching for young girls to have sex with. They looted our few possessions, and beat the young men. I’m afraid for my elder son. He and my small baby are the only ones I have in life. My husband and other children are still missing. I don’t know if they are still alive. I really want to go to a camp where it’s safer than here.”Hopefully in the new camp, they will be on the list, Kale will receive shelter for his family, Vumiliya will gain enough confidence to fight for her family’s health, and Janine will sleep safely with her children.[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
