Last day in Goma

In the last two days, we’ve visited three schools, a nutrition clinic, and a safe child center. In all three, we’ve met some amazing staff and volunteers that are really working to try to improve living situations for children here.

First, we stopped at a school in Goma. This school works to provide primary education and vocational training for orphans and vulnerable children. The children here have suffered much, and all have stories to tell. Many have lost parents to either conflict or to AIDS. Others are former child soldiers, who had been kidnapped from their families, and forced to serve in the conflict in DRC. In these cases, the children escaped, but their families wouldn’t take them back, as they were afraid the child had become dangerous, and might kill the family. Others have parents who are now living with AIDS, and are no longer able to support them.

The school works to find foster families in the local community to take these children in at night so that they won’t have to live on the streets. “Foster family” here is not the same as in the US. These families are simply giving the kids a place to sleep, and maybe a meal, but not much else. Often the foster families are barely surviving, and have many children of their own.

The school is a happy place with multiple school rooms, a mechanic training school, a sewing center, and a clinic. There’s also a large building that is used as a community center, and events are put on each weekend so that the children have a place to come to simply be kids. The primary school is really for any child that has not had a chance to learn. Many of these kids have been on the move due to conflict, and have never had a chance to go to school. The primary classroom has kids ranging from probably 6 to about 14, all learning the basics. In the vocational centers, you find older children who need to learn a trade to get work. They also teach some reading, writing and math skills in the vocational center, as these children are too old to sit with the primary children.

This school received bad news this week. Their primary source of funding (a grant through one of the large world aid organizations) has been cut. They will need to find a new donor to continue paying their teachers and maintaining their school. The school administrator was showing us around between phone calls to people trying to secure new funding. We asked how much a teacher makes, and were told that each teacher makes $200 per month, and than includes salary, medical care, and transportation. We counted 6 teachers at the school, although their may be one or two more, as not all the vocational classrooms were operating that day. We figure at the high end, this school is probably operating on about $100K annually, and that is most likely extremely high. It’s probably closer to $60K. Amazing work and huge support to over 500 children for what is really a fairly small amount of money. We hope they find new funding to continue this work.

Yesterday, we were able to travel north of the city of Goma to several communities about 70 to 100km from town. The countryside here is beautiful! As noted in an earlier post, there are many National Parks near here, although today, they have been significantly damaged by the conflict that the country has seen for the last 10 to 20 years.

Just north of the city, things are growing, and people have planted, but this is a recent lava flow, so it’s a little harder to plant here. Eight years ago, the volcano erupted, and sent hot lava down through the city of Goma, and all the way to the shores of Lake Kivu. In fact, the school I talked about above, is actually built on what 8 years ago was a huge pool of hot lava.

After you move north of the volcano, the soil changes, and the landscape is covered with thick vegetation. The country here is very hilly, but people are doing terraced farming right up the side of the hill. You see maize, lentils, cabbage, and coffee beans growing everywhere, plus all the fruit trees – mostly bananas and plantains. The soil here is wonderful for growing. If people could just stay in one place long enough to both plant and harvest, the north-eastern part of DRC could probably feed the entire country, and possibly most of Africa. We’re told before the conflict, there was substantial farming and exporting of goods from here.

Today, conflict has forced people to move from their homes and seek refuge in other areas of the country. Then over time, they move back, only to find that someone else has laid claim to their property, most likely someone seeking refuge from another area marked by conflict. Children are uprooted as well. This is incredibly hard for them, as they are not afforded the opportunity to go to school or to receive medical care. Many of them are malnourished, and all suffer from mental trauma from the constant moving, the conflict, the looting, and other awful things that have happened to either them or their mothers.

We visited one area that is somewhat stable. The community has actually built two school, one from bricks and concrete, the other from old UN tarps that they’ve secured to a wooden frame. The children have made desks, and many have managed to find a composition book and a pen or pencil. There are no books, and the chalkboard looks like it was broken into pieces so that each classroom could have something to write on. We didn’t ask how many students in the two schools, but as a guess, I’d say there was 150 in each school. Their favorite subjects are French and Mathematics, although some of the children said they like English. I think that’s for our benefit, as they weren’t learning English.

From there we visited a nutrition center. Here mothers can bring children under the age of 5 to be seen and be helped with nutrition. Volunteers scour the community looking for children or mothers that are either acutely or severely malnourished. The acutely malnourished children are treated at the clinic with special food supplements that can be administered at home, and are re-checked every two weeks to ensure they are coming back to health. The severely malnourished children have to be sent to another clinic where they are treated as inpatients. At this clinic alone, they see 8 new cases of acute malnourishment per day, and 5 cases of severe malnourishment. This number should probably be higher, but it takes time for the volunteers to scour the countryside to find the children that need help. To be honest, this number is probably about all the clinic can handle at one time due to supply of antibiotics and therapeutic foods.

We then went to a place that has been set up to give children a place to go to simply be kids. The “child safe” location has about 500 kids coming each day, and was only established last week. Here they are running a small school for children who’s parents can’t afford the government run school fees (about $5 per child per semester). They also have a small vocational center with sewing, mechanics, hair cutting, and embroidery. The children come and in the morning, go to school to learn to read, write, and do basic figures. Then the older ones are able to do some work to learn a trade. In the afternoon, they simply play. The dance, sing songs, play soccer, and do other games.

While the learning is important, for these kids, the afternoon play time may actually be more important. These are kids who have seen terrible things. Some have been beaten, some are child soldiers, some have seen their families killed, many are living alone due to loss of parents, and all have been living in fear, sometimes for their entire lives. Learning to trust other kids and adults, and simply learning how to play and to relax and feel safe is as important for these kids as learning to read and write. The volunteers here are people in the community who want to see these kids thrive and grow and not repeat the terrible things that have been happening.

I could write and write about the things we’ve seen in the last two days. Instead, I’ll just share my biggest take-away. This is an area where people want to change. They want to support themselves. They want to make a life for themselves, and they have the courage to do it. Better yet, they have nearly everything they need to make this happen. They have good soil, access to water sources, wonderful people, and great ambition. They are only lacking two things. The first is infrastructure, but this could come with time and effort, and a little initi who have seen terrible things. Some have been beaten, some are child soldiers, some have seen their families killed, many are living alone due to loss of parents, and all have been living in fear, sometimes for their entire lives. Learning to trust other kids and adults, and simply learning how to play and to relax and feel safe is as important for these kids as learning to read and write. The volunteers here are people in the community who want to see these kids thrive and grow and not repeat the terrible things that have been happening.

I could write and write about the things we’ve seen in the last two days. Instead, I’ll just share my biggest take-away. This is an area where people want to change. They want to support themselves. They want to make a life for themselves, and they have the courage to do it. Better yet, they have nearly everything they need to make this happen. They have good soil, access to water sources, minerals, wonderful people, and great ambition. They are only lacking two things. The first is infrastructure, but this could come with time and effort, and a little initial assistance and training. The second is stability and peace. This one is obviously much harder. The people here will never succeed if conflict continually requires them to flee from their homes, and if fighting continues to have them live in fear. I hope that one day they will see peace in this area. The opportunity here is amazing!

We’ll be leaving here shortly for the long trip back. First, we will visit with our host in a park in Rwanda (just across the lake). Then we will go by taxi for 3 hours to the Kigali airport. Then off to Nairobi, Amsterdam, and finally home. This has been an amazing trip, and I thank you for letting me share it with you.