wfn.org | Rebuilding Schools and Homes a Priority in Devastated Goma

["Frank Imhoff" <FRANKI@elca.org>]

Rebuilding Schools and Homes a Priority in Devastated Goma
Local Communities Unwilling to Relocate

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo/GENEVA, 14 February 2002 (LWI)
- "I would like to go to school again," ten-year old Bibile says.
She is in a group of children standing on a section of the lava
that destroyed much of the town center of Goma, Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) in mid-January. The gushing lava damaged a
nearby Baptist church-run school as well as other schools.

Bibile lost her home as did many other families in the
neighborhood. Her family now lives in a temporary shelter in one
of the remaining school buildings managed by a Pentecostal church.
Churches and schools all across town have come to the aid of
people who were left homeless in the wake of the devastating
volcanic eruption. An estimated 300,000 people were displaced and
left homeless.

United Nations and local authorities in Goma say around 400
classrooms are required as teaching is expected to resume February
25. Any reconstruction will have to be temporary. Local
authorities are not allowing people to start building permanent
structures on the lava. Ms. Anne Masterson, the Lutheran World
Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS) representative
in Rwanda, also responsible for the DRC, explained that buildings
that suffered minor damage would be repaired with corrugated iron
sheets and canvas.

LWF-DWS - Rwanda and other members of Action by Churches Together
(ACT), a global network of churches and related agencies meeting
human need through coordinated emergency, will assist with
reconstruction of the destroyed or damaged school buildings.

For now, the schools continue to offer shelter to people like
22-year old Riziki Sherina and her family. Her two smaller
children aged one and three are staying with relatives because the
classroom where she, her husband and their four-year old have set
up home, is too cold for the little ones, she explains. Riziki
barely manages to eke out a living by selling tomato saplings and
fruits at the market. She is the breadwinner, providing for her
family while her husband studies nursing. "When I do not get
money, we don't have food," Riziki says.

On January 17, the day Mount Nyiragongo erupted, Riziki was in
Rwanda fetching tomatoes to sell at the market in Goma. She
narrates how she saw the lava, but that at the time nobody seemed
to be running away, so she returned home. Local authorities had
issued warnings on radio, telling people to stay indoors. But
around six o'clock that evening Riziki and her family saw the lava
streaming toward their house. They fled in panic, not even
stopping to take anything with them. They spent the next two days
in the open in Gisenyi across the border in Rwanda, "without any
food and hardly any water given to us," she recalls. She says that
the refugees left Gisenyi three days after the disaster because
soldiers were ordering them to go to nearby refugee camps. In
addition, the locals did not accept DRC currency, so the Congolese
preferred to return home.

Back in Goma, Riziki and some of the other people living with her
have somehow fallen through the cracks of the relief distribution
network. They have had to depend on help from their neighbors.
Riziki's aunt Mwambikwa Sherina, a widow who suffers from diabetes
and cannot afford medication to manage her illness recalls, "We
did not get any food, blankets or sheeting." ACT member Norwegian
Church Aid (NCA) immediately stepped in, providing the family with
plastic sheeting for shelter.

Since water and sanitation equipment worth USD 219,865 arrived on
January 26, the NCA five-person team has provided 20 temporary
storage tanks, supplying over 18,000 people in Goma daily. In
cooperation with the LWF, the NCA is operating two trucks to
transport water to the storage points. Another 3,000 internally
displaced persons (IDPs) and the local population outside Goma are
also supplied with water. In addition 150 public pit latrines have
been installed in parts of Goma where the number of people has
increased significantly. ACT members, the LWF, Bureau Oecumenique
d'Appui au Development (BOAD), Eglise du Christ au Congo (ECC),
Lutheran World Relief, SANRU - a health organization related to
the USA-based Church World Service, and British aid agency
Christian Aid are distributing food and non-food items. However,
general food distribution in Goma has ceased. Only those
identified as requiring such assistance are catered for.

Asked about their future the two women shrug their shoulders. But
on one issue, they are quite clear. They do not want to move from
Goma.

The question of voluntary relocation for those who lost their
homes, is among the top agenda items for meetings within the
humanitarian community.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has conducted a survey,
asking people whether they would be willing as IDPs to be
relocated to settlements. Some of the options discussed by local
and UN officials include encouraging people to move to the western
edge of Goma town, or former Mugunga camp, west of Goma, or to the
town of Sake, the major center closest to western Goma. Nearly
half of those who were displaced were not willing to relocate to
Mugunga. Another 14 percent indicated they would move, but only if
highly unlikely conditions, such as being given a pre-fabricated
home, were met. Eighty-six percent of them said they would not
move to Sake. A previous IRC survey showed that about 58 percent
of all households were sheltering displaced people and that 27
percent of the town's current population was homeless.

Masterson says the issue of relocation is very complex and needs
thorough assessment in co-operation with people themselves before
being implemented.

(By Rainer Lang, ACT Press Officer)

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the
Lutheran tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund (Sweden), the LWF now
has 133 member churches in 73 countries representing over 60.5
million of the 64.3 million Lutherans worldwide. The LWF acts on
behalf of its member churches in areas of common interest such as
ecumenical relations, theology, humanitarian assistance, human
rights, communication, and the various aspects of mission and
development work. Its secretariat is located in Geneva,
Switzerland.)

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