Sowing peace in Congo

"I see pictures at night", Justivel quietly murmurs.

Nobody knows how many of the country’s 2,6 million inhabitants were killed during the brief but vicious war, but as it drew to an end, 810.000 people were displaced, and thousands maimed for life. None more than the invisibly scarred children.

"They shot so many people", adds Justivel’s friend, 9-year old Cynthia Joel Landau. "Sometimes we had to step over them when we walked."

"The Walk" is a euphemism for the prelude to the greatest humanitarian disasters ever to strike this fertile land. As "Ninja" rebels from the southern districts launched a surprise attack on the capital Brazzaville in December 1998, the entire population of the city’s southern parts fled, fearing reprisals from government forces. In two days, 350.000 people streamed out of their homes and poured down the main road towards the south of the country.

Almost immediately, thousands of wild Ninjas followed in unruly retreat, hotly pursued by ruthless "Cobra" government soldiers – none of them showing any concern for the plight of the civilian victims of their strife. As the conflict spread south, each devastated city or village added its citizens to the number on the run, estimated at reaching close to a million displaced before the end of 1998.

Justivel was 9 years old, when he and his family set out for safety. "I carried a sack on my head with my clothes and some pots for cooking. My younger brother Mariot carried dishes and his clothes". In three days the children covered 150 kilometres trying to escape the militiamen and the pursuing soldiers.

"It hurt here", he says, rubbing his knees, "and here," pointing to his ankles, "but my aunt said we had to go on".

Justivel has no memory of any special reason why the Ninjas shot his uncle, but he does remember, "we had to leave him in the road and then we continued. I saw too many dead people." Three days later, when his family reached the southern town of Bele, it was still quiet. But "soon the war also arrived there," he says. "We had to sleep in the hospital because there were helicopters shooting and our house burned."

Hiding under a table
For months, the little boy woke up at night, screaming from ghastly images returning to haunt him in his sleep. "When I met him half a year later", sister Marie-Therese Nkuka, who is helping a number of traumatized children, recalls, "somebody turned on the ventilation fan in the ceiling, and the boy shot straight under the table. He thought it was the helicopters returning."

Justival and his family finally managed to slip across the border to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where they were housed in a refugee camp.

They were the lucky ones: The vast majority of the refugees only found shelter in the giant rain forest of Congo, where they survived on roots, berries and whatever game or fish they could bag. Accusing them of connivance with the rebels, government soldiers sealed off access to the forest, thus barring all emergency assistance from humanitarian organisations.

After a peace agreement was signed in September 1999 and the siege lifted, the remaining famished and sickly refugees finally stumbled out of the forest in a quest to regain a normal life.

Initially the task overwhelmed aid agencies. In Brazzaville, the returnees found their houses looted if not gutted. Outside the capital, most cities in the southern part of the country, which used to house the bulk of the country’s agricultural and industrial infrastructure, had been destroyed. Aid agencies have been battling to bring relief - food, medicines, tents, building materials - across downed bridges and ruined roads to burnt-out hospitals and looted villages.

By September 2000 they clocked their first real victory: "We are closing more emergency feeding centres than we are opening," noted the weekly meeting of UN and NGO relief agencies in Brazzaville.

Breathing life into the children
Consequently, some of the agencies are getting ready to leave. However, "the humanitarian crisis might be over, but the human problems are still here," quips a bitter sister Nkaku. Last year, she started hosting traumatized and orphaned children.

"We do everything possibly to breathe life into them – we sing, we dance, we give them lots of physical contact. We knew they were slowly responding, when some of them came with a demand for learning to read and write. So we started teaching them right from the ground."

"Thousands of children have had no schooling for three to four years," explains Mr. Seraphin Bhalat, general secretary for the ecumenical aid organisation ACTA, the local partner of Action by Churches Together (ACT).

"At least half of our schools are in ruins, and teachers have been killed or have fled to other parts of the country, he explains."

As a graphic illustration sister Nkaku adds, that since in 1999 she took in the first children, 7.000 more have arrived, most of them from families more or less intact, but all of them hungry for knowledge. Every day, her army of 292 volunteer teachers cater for their thirst for learning at 10 centres all over Brazzaville.

"That is why I get angry when the ‘humanitarians’ say that the crisis is over: When they have left, the children are still here with their scars of war, but without books or food for their teachers. We have nobody here to turn to for help," she says.

The civil war of December 1998 was the third since May 1997, each one being more brutal than the one before. And while everyone agree, that the ferocity of the latest war has resulted in a genuine desire for peace in all sections of the population, deeply rooted divisions between northern and southern ethnic groups are not yet solved. The fear for a renewed outbreak of violence is palpable in every encounter with the Congolese population.

"We need every bit of help, we can get," adds Mr. Bhalat, "We got to get the children back to school. We have a program ready to rebuild schools and to hire the teachers".

Getting ex-soldiers off the streets
Another special ACTA program is targeting the former militias. The older boys have all been fighting, and needs special attention: "80 percent of all young men have been fighting. Now they are jobless. We got to get them off the street and into schools or some sort of activity. That is the only way to build peace," says Mr. Bhalat.

Local ACTA church partner Action de Securite d’Urgence, ASU, has pointed the way forward in taking ex-militias off the streets with a gardening program.

"It serves a dual purpose, because all seeds for the next harvest have been either eaten or destroyed. Our program is preventing the recurrence of hunger at the same time as it gives the ex-militias meaningful work, says ASU director Thomas Ndandou.

As one of the largest relief agencies operating in The Republic of Congo, ASU desperately needs the assistance of ACTA.

"The scale of the problems are enormous," says Ndandou: "At least 810.000 are in need of assistance, but we are only capable of reaching 100.000. In the field of counseling traumatized victims, we have only just begun: In one year, ASU has provided counseling to 814 children. There are thousands more out there, who if stabilized could contribute to the rebuilding of our land. We have plenty of people who can help, if only they had the means – and as a church agency, ACTA will be using the very same country-wide network of experienced relief workers as we employ. The only bottleneck for assisting more people is lack of money."

Ask Justival or Cynthia what they fancy best about going to school, and their eyes light up: "The best?" quips Cynthia, "is reading!"

"No!" says Justival. "I like writing. I like all of it!"

ACT International issued an appeal for the Republic of Congo for US $ 700.000 in June this year. So far this appeal is only 7% (US $ 50.000) funded.

Peter Tygesen is a Danish free-lance journalist presently preparing a book on the crisis in the Great Lakes Region.

Photo: Peter Tygesen/ACT International