Goma, Yesterday
Goma, Monday 10th November 2008
Yesterday, I went to visit my friends at Don Bosco vocational training centre; out on the edge of Goma town on the Rutshuru road. Mount Niriyagongo towers over the large compound which provides a home to Goma’s orphan’s, Mai Bobos, and handicapped kids. The centre has also become Goma’s newest Internally displaced people camp in the last 72 hours: 1, 250 women and children are now calling the training centre home.
Fleeing violence between the Mai Mai militias and CNDP, these people have walked 60kms from Kiwanja in Rutshuru territory seeking the protection of Goma town. On the way to Goma, many of the people fell sick, with diaharroea, malaria and vommiting.
Yesterday moring, the centre became not only Goma’s newest IDP camp but possibly the fastest set up Cholera treatment unit ever. MSF- France worked swiftly with the Bosco team to set up an isolation unit, to treat thirty patients with Cholera, and to assist in the hosing down of all of the other newly arrived people. After that the Bosco team spent the rest of the day disenfecting the large warehouses which had been used as temporary shower rooms for the IDPs and distributing new (second hand) clothes.
I went to visist these people following an early morning SMS message from Chloé, BOSCO’s administrator, in her somewhat clipped english :
We have alot of needs cause we have more than 900 idp’s. We need NFI and food. What do you need, lists, lists of needs ?
The noise of 1250 people crammed into a courtyard is fantastic, people laughing, crying, eating, sleeping. Curious children run towards me, crying ‘Muzungu !’ eager to make friends : inspite of terrible hardship they maintain a smile. Cholé walks me to the back of the compound where beyond a gate controlled by a secuirty guard, well an ex-child soldier about 16 years old, beyond the gate there more people arriving : another 220 in the few hours that I was there. Journalists mingled with the crowd an in an iconic moment, I shed a tear as I watched a white female journalist photograph and abandoned raggedy toddler, the camera lens about double the size of the child.
Humanitairans watching the voyers who will fill the worlds websites and news reports with grotesque images of these beautiful people.
There are currently 1,250 women and children inside the centre, and 220 waiting outside. The ones inside will enjoy the protection of the high compound walls, the ones outside will be targeted by drunken soldiers and thieves. Amoung this group there are 798 children under the age of five, and 99 unaccompanied children.
Concern was able to immediately hand over 1,500 blankets for the IDPs and is working to find other means of providing food and non food assistance to this community.
Yesterday, I went to visit my friends at Don Bosco vocational training centre; out on the edge of Goma town on the Rutshuru road. Mount Niriyagongo towers over the large compound which provides a home to Goma’s orphan’s, Mai Bobos, and handicapped kids. The centre has also become Goma’s newest Internally displaced people camp in the last 72 hours: 1, 250 women and children are now calling the training centre home.
Fleeing violence between the Mai Mai militias and CNDP, these people have walked 60kms from Kiwanja in Rutshuru territory seeking the protection of Goma town. On the way to Goma, many of the people fell sick, with diaharroea, malaria and vommiting.
Yesterday moring, the centre became not only Goma’s newest IDP camp but possibly the fastest set up Cholera treatment unit ever. MSF- France worked swiftly with the Bosco team to set up an isolation unit, to treat thirty patients with Cholera, and to assist in the hosing down of all of the other newly arrived people. After that the Bosco team spent the rest of the day disenfecting the large warehouses which had been used as temporary shower rooms for the IDPs and distributing new (second hand) clothes.
I went to visist these people following an early morning SMS message from Chloé, BOSCO’s administrator, in her somewhat clipped english :
We have alot of needs cause we have more than 900 idp’s. We need NFI and food. What do you need, lists, lists of needs ?
The noise of 1250 people crammed into a courtyard is fantastic, people laughing, crying, eating, sleeping. Curious children run towards me, crying ‘Muzungu !’ eager to make friends : inspite of terrible hardship they maintain a smile. Cholé walks me to the back of the compound where beyond a gate controlled by a secuirty guard, well an ex-child soldier about 16 years old, beyond the gate there more people arriving : another 220 in the few hours that I was there. Journalists mingled with the crowd an in an iconic moment, I shed a tear as I watched a white female journalist photograph and abandoned raggedy toddler, the camera lens about double the size of the child.
Humanitairans watching the voyers who will fill the worlds websites and news reports with grotesque images of these beautiful people.
There are currently 1,250 women and children inside the centre, and 220 waiting outside. The ones inside will enjoy the protection of the high compound walls, the ones outside will be targeted by drunken soldiers and thieves. Amoung this group there are 798 children under the age of five, and 99 unaccompanied children.
Concern was able to immediately hand over 1,500 blankets for the IDPs and is working to find other means of providing food and non food assistance to this community.
posted by Gabriello Princip at 12:41 AM
1 Comments:
Glad to see the
bohemian frog hunter back....
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