The United Nations describe the Congo as a country overwhelmed by terrorist attacks, where life is on the edge of survival and yet often, all the world sees it as, is a treasure of natural resources.
They lived in Ufamando Biriko, a small village near Goma. They heard shots. The father went into the village to find out what was happening, leaving his wife and four children at home.
When he returned he was met with a tragic scene: the house was in flames and his wife and two of the children had been brutally murdered with machetes and spears. The other two children who had miraculously survived had witnessed the massacre. The father took them with him and the only support he received was from the Don Bosco Ngangi mission in Goma.
There is a risk of a new humanitarian emergency in the Great Lakes region, north of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Food prices are constantly rising, people are finding it harder and harder to feed themselves and the city (which has approximately 1 million inhabitants) is still surrounded by refugee camps sheltering at least 300 thousand people.
The umpteenth guerrilla formation (M23) is said to have threatened to attack the urban centre in recent days, but this risk has at least been warded off for the time being. On 12 July, about a dozen countries in the region, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, decided to send a military force to combat rebel formations.
In a communiqué issued on 6 July, the bishops of the Congo’s Episcopal Conference denounced plans to balkanise the country: “On an economic level, through the presence of networks engaged in illegal exploitation of natural resources. On a political level, through an intensification of the unacceptable presence of militias and foreign armed groups that kill, rape and loot, leading the Congolese population to migrate and illegally occupy our territory.” Bishops therefore “express their compassion for disaster-stricken populations who have fallen victim to an unjust and unjustifiable war.”
Don Bosco Ngangi’s Salesian mission in Goma is indicative of the situation in this area. This is the only centre with a large school and a number of services for minors in difficulty: child mothers, malnourished children, victims of violence, former child soldiers. The parish priest, Don Pietro Gavioli, has denounced the worsening of the situation: “We were looking after sixty undernourished children; in the space of just a few days this number doubled. And seeing what the situation in the region is like, we are afraid this number will continue to increase.”
According to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) 2011 Human Development Report, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the last in the list of the 187 nations examined.
But even here, the help offered by humanitarian organisations is becoming increasingly insufficient. As of June, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was no longer able to guarantee food for the mission.
“We offer food and shelter to 400 people in difficulty. In September, when school starts again, the three thousand children that come here to eat their only mean for the day will return.”
Fr. Pietro has no idea how to fill the enormous pots which up until a month ago were producing 3500 lunches every day.