Last weekend, I went to a country that’s off the beaten track for low-risk Africa travellers like myself: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaïre). Notorious for its resource wealth and the corruption and pillaging that come with it, the Congo has been the setting for some of the world’s most violent conflicts ever since 1994, with estimates of 5 million deaths and also millions of rape cases. The two Kivu provinces that border Rwanda have seen quite some fighting even this year. With my friend Eric from Gitarama, I spent an afternoon in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, right across the border from Gisenyi.
Goma, despite the fact that it was besieged by Laurent Nkunda’s infamous rebels in October 2008, does not really show visible war damage (unlike Sarajevo, a city that I visited in 2006). This might have to do with the fact that half the city was destroyed by lava streams from a nearby volcano in 2002: everything looks chaotic anyway. Most of what I saw of the city is covered by lava debris mixed with garbage. In the poorer areas, wooden cabins have been erected as (temporary?) shelter, which gives the place a strangely Scandinavian feel (lava+wooden cabins = Iceland, right?). In the wealthy areas, lots of huge mansions are arising from the rubble. While that might seem a bit strange in the country with practically the poorest population in the world, it is easy to explain: the people who plunder the Congo’s vast resources (like gold, diamonds, coltan, …) get ridiculously rich, and Goma has the most important airport in the Eastern part of the country (with air travel being the only reasonable way to cover large distances), so it is a logical place to settle for anyone doing “business” there.
- A strangely northern feel
The history of the Congo is a sad one, that consists mainly of looting: in the time of the Transatlantic slave trade, the armies of Africa’s coastal kingdoms waged war there to capture slaves for the Americas; in the 19th century the Belgian King Léopold made it his personal possession; after independence, it was Mobutu Sese Seko who put billions in Swiss bank accounts and equipped his home village with a Concorde-airport; since his death in 1997, anyone who has the resources to finance a standing army or rebel group (which often just means buying AK-47s for a bunch of kids) can control part of the country, force the local population to mine resources, and sell them on the world market where they end up in jewellery and laptops.
Goma, while dirty and chaotic, is not that scary though (otherwise I wouldn’t have gone there of course); apart from a one-legged man who claimed to be a security agent and told me to pay him because I had taken an illegal picture of a sign by the road, we did not encounter any problems (Eric told the guy he would call the Rwandan police), and most people were just as friendly as Rwandans. Statistically, I did do one of the most dangerous things ever (?) in the Congo though: taking motorbike taxis is dangerous enough in Kigali, but in Goma there are no traffic rules or passenger helmets. On the ride we passed some guys on a truck who did have helmets on, blue ones. Their truck was white; a large contingent of Indian UN peacekeepers are stationed in Goma. Even if we do not take the actual military vehicles into account, Goma must have the highest density of UN jeeps in the world, something like 10%.
We preferred spending the night across the border in Rwanda, the country where I guess you could theoretically walk around at 3 a.m. waving around hundreds of euros clinched in both hands without encountering any difficulties. We had a nice Sunday in Gisenyi, swimming in Lake Kivu and exploring the area a little bit. No need to cross the border again.
UN peacekeeping; see the blue hat?
