“We Sleep On Stones”

Mugunga camp, Democratic Republic of the Congo ( Lat: -1.608 / Long: 29.141 )
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Click here to see Mugunga from above in Google Earth.  Note the absence of any plastic sheeting.  November 2007, image courtesy Masako Yonekawa/UNHCR.

The sound of exploding shells mixes with afternoon thunder; only those who live or work here can tell the difference.  Yesterday government soldiers took back the town of Mushake [and will lose it again the following week] a few miles up the road, and are pounding Nkunda’s northern positions with attack helicopters and mortars. 

Today Jerry and I have come to Mugunga camp to see for ourselves how the people displaced by the conflict are surviving.  On top of a field of sharp volcanic rock is a small city of thousands of tiny huts made of banana leaves; they were made small so they would fit under the standard sized orange plastic tarp given to each family when they arrived sometime over the past year.

But last month (November) after a battle nearby, the displaced fled and the Congolese army (in which a soldier, when paid at all, receives $10 a month) looted the camp, stripping the residents of their food and every last piece of plastic sheeting.  To top it off, they haven’t received a food distribution in two months.  Jeanette, a 24 year old woman from Masisi district, is soaked every time it rains, along with her family and handful of possessions.  She is hungry and beyond furious.

Yesterday the camp residents held a UN worker hostage for the day, blaming them for the lack of supplies.  The humanitarian aid organizations are underfunded, not fully prepared for the latest round of fighting and wary of handing over new sheeting- they are worried, for good reason, that the tarps will just be looted again in a month or two.

But if later the afternoon thunder clouds bring rain, as they do nearly every night during the wet season, Jeanette and her family will lie awake with a puddle in place of their cardboard bed.  Across the camp thousands will suffer the night quietly, and wake together to a morning of uncertainty.