Abandoned and neglected

In the silent morning glow, a young woman is slowly filing past the rows of identical white wooden crosses stretching behind the general hospital of Congo’s largest jungle city. "Here rests the victims of the war of Kisangani, June 2000" reads a signpost in the graveyard, where the straight lines and austere symbolism of the white crosses are glowing like a replica of the silent graveyards marking Europe’s killing fields. Two more posts mark graves of the wars of "May 1999" and "August 1999."

Six months after the fighting in June pharmacies are still empty and only a handful of homes have been rebuilt, as aid is only trickling in. The wars did not really concern the inhabitants of Kisangani – had it not been for the fact, that the vast majority of victims were civilians. The warring soldiers, however, were invaders from neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda, fighting for control of the city’s strategic position and the lucrative diamond trade.

The hundreds of crosses might look alike, but down the fifth row, almost at the bottom of the cemetery, Jeanette Malamba, baby at her breast, is fighting to hold back her tears, as she stares at a grave. "This is where we buried him," she says. "How can I ever find rest, thinking of the lonely way he died?"

Ndumala Malamba had checked in to his stall at Kisangani central market on the morning of Monday, June 5. As he spread out his vegetables and merchandise, it looked like any other day. But soon after 9.30 am, a loud explosion reverberated through this city of 700,000 inhabitants. Shortly afterwards, the crackle of intense shooting emerged from the city’s residential area. For months tension had been growing between the Ugandan and Rwandan army contingents occupying each their zone of the city.

At the marketplace, Malamba was hit in the leg by two bullets, and brought to safety on a table in a nearby house. "His friends begged the soldiers to help them bring my husband to the hospital, but they refused," his wife recounts. For six days and six nights the two sides poured fire at each other’s positions in the residential area. At her home, Mrs. Malamba was crouching on the floor with her five children, as bullets pierced their clay walls and artillery grenades smashed and crumbled their neighbours houses, killing indiscriminately. "We didn’t eat at all. As I sell soft drinks, we finished all my stock, and then waited - hungry, thirsty, petrified with fear. Even at night, grenades rained down."

UN observers sheltering in the city’s catholic cathedral urged in vain for a cease-fire; not even a pause to evacuate civilians and wounded was granted. They counted explosions: 6,000 artillery rounds landed amongst the civilians – more than one every two minutes. "

Wednesday, the people staying with my wounded husband fled, leaving him alone," Mrs. Malamba was told. "Sunday, when the shooting finally stopped, I ran to see him. I only found his corpse."

Uganda and Rwanda were allies in ousting the infamous dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, but then in 1998 turned on the new president, Laurant Kabila. Still nominally allied, soldiers from the two countries have three times turned their guns on each other in Kisangani, each time more bitter and bloody. The Six-Day War of June 2000 killed more than a thousand civilians and wounded severely 7,000. Thousands of houses were destroyed.

Widowed and unemployed, Jeanette Malamba was unable to sustain her family and was consequently absorbed in the household of her husband’s elder brother. "Every day I fight to find food for my five children," she says, detailing how she is baking cakes or selling sweets in the street to eke out a living. "But people have no money for buying," she says.

Four years of rebellion and wars have killed what was left of an economy that was left fragile by years of neglect during the Mobutu presidency. "Earlier, people could always pay a little for the medicine they received at our health centres or contribute something to the salary of the teachers in our schools," says Robert Agidi of the local Eglise du Christ au Congo (ECC), a member of the ACT alliance."But after the war, very little money exists." Comprising 19 protestant denominations, ECC is DRC’s second largest church group and a main contributor to the well being of the population.

During the Mobutu era, state structures slowly broke down as he amassed the country’s wealth in his own vaults, leaving vital health and educational services to be provided by charities. As his departure has given way to rebellion and further neglect, people’s own resources have been stretched thinner and thinner. "The people of Congo are becoming exhausted, no longer able to cope with the violence and the impoverishment to which they are subjected on a daily basis," the UN stated in a recent report, which warned that "worst case scenarios are now unfolding".

In Kisangani alone, ECC is supporting 15 health centres, providing basic care for 920,000 people, who have no one else to turn to. But the pharmacies are barely stocked with simple items as painkillers or malaria cure.

To Agidi and the ECC, however, the most terrifying condition of life in Kisangani is the absence of international acknowledge of its fate. Even though the UN and a few other international aid agencies witnessed the destruction and have remained to detail the daily misery, hardly any aid is arriving. "The war made a terrible noise, but the quietness that followed is almost worse," says Agidi. "Your silence is frightening us."

In the aftermath of the two wars in 1999, ECC implemented an ACT-programme to help the victims to re-establish their lives. But this 6-months programme was just about to be finished, when the 6-days war in June 2000 crushed all efforts. "Our first programme was sparked by a war catastrophe but ended in a new war catastrophe, this time much worse," the ECC states in a recent assessment. But after the second catastrophe, the international community has ignored its pleas for help. "It is as if the international community has decided that we no longer deserve their attention," Agidi wonders. "But it was not us who provoked the fighting or even took part. We are victims of a foreign aggression, and we have no way of ending it."

Walking through the crushed streets of Tshopo and Mangopo residential areas, the sight of the destruction is overwhelming. Smashed houses are seen everywhere. In the abandoned Katetele army camp, almost 2,000 people are crammed into smelly rooms, waiting to return to their crumbled houses. Their lives are a miserable daily hunt for survival, as they receive neither food aid nor help to rebuild their houses. "Maybe we will just have to die here," says Saleh Lukina, whom the displaced have elected as their leader.

ACT is presently seeking to find US $100,000 for a rudimentary ECC-effort to cover medical supplies to 15 health centres, help to rebuild homes, replant fields and aid schools – like the one, Jeanette’s children are now attending. "My husband was a good man," Jeanette says. "If he was only still alive, we could have made it. Now, I live like a beggar. We only find hope in the church, and we are praying every day for the world to hear us."

Peter Tygesen is a Danish Journalist currently working on a book on the crisis in the D.R. Congo.