Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo...

November 2006 - Rebels, Volcanoes and other fun...

Well, Tony's in Goma for a month with Save the Children UK, a quick visit to do logistics & security during the election results period. So far things have been interesting...

It's 28th November today

Yesterday most of our international staff left for Kigale in Rwanda, at the border the white cars were positively pouring out as head offices of NGOs insisted that their staff evacuate as a response to the fighting which ahs been going on in the region. Interestingly the UN agencies haven't evacuated, althogh they have moved all the international staff down to the hotel I am staying in, so it's suddenly full of riot police and armoured vehicles...

Meanwhile, just to make things more interesting, last night one of the local volcanoes erupted - it was in the midle of a particularly heavy storm so I missed hearing it, but there was a bit of a shudder apparently, as a few cubic kilometres of molten rock broke out of the caldera of Nyamuragira and swept off down the hillside. The Cumulus clouds on the left of the main volcano in this photo are coming up from the hot lava:

The street in this photo is made of lava - this is where the lava flow in 2002, from Nyiragongo, the dramatic volcano smouldering in the background, poured through the town, cutting the runway in half at the airport and submerging many of the houses 2 metres deep in lava which has since solidified into the dark stone which is now the road surface. ?Here's a Google Earth link to Goma Airport - the lava flowing over the runway is clear in the view: Goma Airport Lava Flow

and here's the photo of what the laa's like on the ground. The dark wall in the background of the photo is the edge of the sheet of lava which has flowed over the runway cutting it in half. It's about 3 metres high across the runway, and every so often planes fly into it on landing, with messy results... It just makes it a bit more of a challenge to operate here!

And if that hasn't put you off, then how about buying a plane? Here's a Russian Let twin turbo-prop plane, one careful owner (and a dozen drunk ones!) for sale in the parking area at Goma airport;

The fighting in the region has meant that there is a lot of instability, looting and general crime, but don't worry - the police are here:

The quality isn't brilliant in the photo, but then as you can see, they aren't really the sort of people to get too close to! Unfortunately they haven't prevented one of our health centres from being looted two nights ago, and we are fully expecting a sub-office to go any time... The military are composed of demobilised fighters from the various rebel factions, there's not much else to do with men who only know how to fight. Save the Children UK are dealing with the child soldiers, getting them out of the various military factions, trying to return them to families and training them so they have a future, but the adults get to joing ht eDRC army, where they get new weapons, new uniforms, and then their new commanders who have probably not done very well as a result of th eelections, decide that the best thing to do is to turn rebel once more...