DR Congo: the “great anguish” of the first displaced people from Goma, back after the volcanic eruption

Published on : 06/09/2021 – 20:15Modified : 06/09/2021 – 20:27

More than two weeks after the eruption which killed at least 32 people and destroyed between 900 and 2,500 houses according to NGOs, the government authorized Monday, June 7, a gradual return of the populations to their homes. In Saké, a town located about thirty kilometers north of Goma, buses were made available by the provincial authorities of North Kivu to bring back free of charge the thousands of displaced people who had flocked there to flee the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano.

According to Patrick Muyaya, Minister of Communication and spokesperson for the central government, a timetable has been established to convey the populations from the different towns where they found refuge.

Pascal has already found his house after having abandoned it for more than a week. He lives in Mabanga Sud, a district of Goma which was not affected by the lava flows but which was evacuated due to the earthquakes and the risk of new eruptions. Of the eighteen neighborhoods in the city, ten had been severely affected by the eruption of the volcano.

“The city is not yet very noisy but the shops are gradually opening”

My house is intact. But there are still cracks in the walls from the earthquakes. I’m a little lucky because my things are still there. Other inhabitants were unfortunately robbed by bandits who took advantage of their absence to operate.

I returned home because the conditions were difficult in Sake. The NGOs are making a lot of efforts, but there is not enough food and drinking water. When the government announced it, I therefore wanted to go back to work.

Life is slowly resuming in Goma. The city is not yet very noisy but the shops are gradually opening. Of course, it is not excluded that there will be new eruptions but for the moment this fear is dispelled because the experts of the Volcanological Observatory of Goma (OVG) have reassured us.

According to Le Monde, nearly 400,000 people were affected by the volcanic eruption. But like Pascal, several thousand people whose homes were not damaged have started to return home.

“Help is not enough. No sooner do you enter the line than the food is already finished”

The future is much bleaker for the victims who lived in the northern part of the city, badly affected by the volcanic eruption.

Lucie, a trader, lived in Bouhéné, one of the main neighborhoods in the north of Goma. After the tragedy, she was welcomed with her six children by a parent in Rutshuru, a town nearly 70 kilometers from Goma and to which thousands of victims also converged. She claims to have lost everything.

The volcano burned down my whole house. I was selling fish. My goods, everything I had in my house went up in smoke. Only stones remain. It was with the little money I had on me that I came with my family to Rutshuru.

But here we are suffering a lot. We cannot be completely dependent on our guests. We have difficulty accessing the food sent to us by the NGOs. There are so many people to please that aid is not enough. No sooner do you enter the queue than the food is already finished.

The government said we could go back: I want to go back to Goma but where am I going to live? It’s very difficult to project yourself. I don’t even know where to start. The government must help us rebuild our houses, find us plots and above all help us financially so that we can revive our economic activities.

Transitional assistance is needed to help disaster victims

According to the schedule established by the authorities, the departures of the displaced from Rutshuru to Goma will be organized on 11 and 12 June. But according to Josué Kabanza, a volunteer for the “Active Goma” collective which brings together several civil society organizations, some victims have already left the city on their own initiative or with the support of NGOs such as the Virunga foundation.

Some people did not wait for the authorities’ announcement to return to Goma. They were in awkward situations. For some, there was no longer enough money to pay for their rooms in hotels, many others slept either under the stars in front of shops, on the lawn of the city’s stadium or even in their own cars. . So going back to Goma is a bit of a relief for them.

Those who do not have the means wait for the buses chartered by the authorities. But it is the great anguish. Because we do not yet know how it will turn out in Goma. Will the State build temporary shelters while it finds a definitive solution to those who have lost their homes?

It will also be necessary to support all those who have lost their economic activities, thanks to a transitional assistance to allow them to resume their life in hand. So far, no organization has made a commitment in this direction. It is the great leap into the unknown for thousands of people.

The government estimated at 16 billion Congolese francs (nearly 7 million euros) the cost of emergency aid (food, transport, health) to the displaced people who are going to return. And to avoid tragedies in the future, the Minister of Housing and Urban Planning has recommended according to RFI a relocation of the part of the city most exposed to the volcano on new sites.