"You are advised against all travel to this region…Armed militias remain active. Attacks on civilians are frequently reported.”

Sound tempting?

That was the warning I got from Foreign Affairs Canada when I first raised the idea of a trip that would take me from my current home in Rwanda and across the border into Goma, a city of 160,000 in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I had been hoping for better news. Something along the lines of, "All visitors warmly welcomed to this land of peace, sunshine and dancing ndombolo in the streets” would have suited me much better, but who was I kidding?
For almost two decades, residents of Goma have known no peace.

From the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the resultant First and Second Congo Wars, to the 2002 eruption of Mount Nyiragongo, a nearby volcano that killed 100 people and destroyed 40 per cent of the city, Goma has been at the forefront of much of Central Africa’s recent turmoil.

More recently, fighting has broken out between the Congolese army and an 8,000-strong militia in Masisi, a town just 40 kilometres away. That, however, was part of the appeal.

Was there anything left to Goma outside all of the lava and looting I was reading about? Just how badly was the fragile 2002 peace agreement failing to live up to its promise? And, was a third Congo war imminent?

I wasn’t sure my answers would come from a trip to Goma, but I knew they surely wouldn’t come from anywhere else.
With that, I grabbed two of my always-up-for-anything-friends, packed up our trusty pick-up, and hit the road.

Leaving Rwanda

To cross the border into Goma, you must take one of two routes out of Gisenyi, a pleasant resort town in Rwanda’s West Province that was home to the country’s provisional government during the Genocide.

The first is just down the road from the five-star Lake Kivu Serena Hotel, and rightly so since its use is almost completely restricted to tourists looking only for a new stamp in their passport proving they were there.

Enter Goma here and you’ll find yourself in a part of the city not all that different from the one you’ve just left; multi-million dollar homes line the lakefront, with menacing meters-high gates that keep any threats of danger out.

Enter Goma at the other crossing and you’ll find yourself quickly submersed in a colourful world of fast-talking street vendors, densely-packed mud houses, and the mixed smells of sewage and sweet mandazi.

Ironically, this is called ‘Le Petit Barrier’ (the small barrier) and although it may be a dirt road no more than a few hundred metres long, it is in fact the main commercial entrance used daily by hundreds of local merchants doing business on both sides of the border.

One of several plainclothes border guards on duty there told us that we were three of only a handful of foreigners that had come there in months. With that, we knew we were at the right point of entry.

Across the Border

"Your visas cost $30 (Frw16,200) each,” we were told by Guy, a well-dressed and seemingly well-meaning Goma border official.

"No, they’reS$35 (Frw19,000)!” his savvy female counterpart quickly interjected, giving Guy a harsh stare.

"Oh sorry, I didn’t know the fee had gone up,” said Guy.

"They’re $35 now.”

Welcome to the Congo

Local passersby were all paying $30 for their visas, the same fee that was outlined in the various reports I had checked the week before. Yet here we were being charged extra.

It wasn’t that much money – in fact, only the same amount we might spend on a cup of coffee back home. But, it was our first glimpse into the corruption that I’d heard had become so endemic throughout the country. At that moment, I flashed back to a conversation I’d had just the week before in Kigali with a Congolese friend.

The country is governed by Article 15, he told me, everyone for himself. Ask someone why they’re doing something and they’ll reply simply, "Article 15.” Within the first five minutes of being in the Congo, I had witnessed Article 15. Would the whole trip be more of the same?

We had no real plan so we left the immigration office and walked in the direction of what we hoped was the city centre.

Goma at first glance

As we walked, one thing became clear: the volcanic eruption had certainly done its damage. While Gisenyi was lucky to have escaped the lava flow, more than 4,500 houses were flattened in Goma.

Today, hardened lava still lines the streets. On the sides of roads, in the skeletal fronts of stores, and in the make-shift playgrounds of kids, dusty, black lava piles up.

Luckily, an early warning system saved the lives of most of Goma’s residents, but it wouldn’t save them from the rebuilding of homes and businesses that was so obviously still underway.

We quickly met a man named Victor, a Congolese native, who insisted on showing us around town. Victor makes his living selling Congolese crafts and masks to tourists, so his motives for making our acquaintance were not altruistic. Still, no one was paying him to speak to us of his country as he did.

In French, the first thing he tells us is, "We may not have much, but the people here are happy. See?”

In the rubble of the hardened lava, Victor points to a gathering of thirteen women, outfitted in identical traditional pink and white floral dresses. It’s a church choir, he tells us. They are rehearsing outdoors because they have nowhere else to go.

"But they’re still singing.”

We listened to the choir sing a few Swahili hymns, but when our stomachs became louder than the choir, we decided it was time to make our exit. We returned to the main road and realised our choices for lunch were abundant.

There was the woman selling mandazi to the left; or the man calling us over to his meat sandwiches on the right; or all of the fruit and vegetable vendors in between. Everywhere we looked, people were ready and willing to take our money.

They might not have had much – at times, only a single cloth loosely placed on the dirt road with seven or eight tomatoes for sale atop – but they tried to get our attention nevertheless.

Janet, a shop owner who sold us some desperately needed cold drinks (the lava makes the city surprisingly hot), brought me inside her store.

"You see, I don’t have much,” she tells me.

"I would like to do more business. Can you help me?”

The church choir singing in the rubble of this destroyed city was symbolic. The micro-entrepreneurs that lined the streets peddling their wares were a more tangible sign of hope. But it was around the next bend that we felt, for the first time, the possibility of changing tides.

Goma in chaos

In the two days following the end of the Rwandan Genocide, as many as 12,000 Hutu refugees per hour crossed the border into Goma. As a refugee crisis began to ensue, Hutu militias organized in the camps and continued attacking Tutsis in the region.

With the support of Rwanda and Uganda, a rebel movement led by Laurent Kabila was able to overthrow then President Joseph Mobutu. Soon, however, Kabila broke ties with Rwanda.

A fragile peace accord was signed between the various warring factions in 2002, but not before the two wars had caused an unprecedented number of civilian deaths in Africa.

Since then, fighting has been relatively constant. More than four million people have died in the fighting of the past ten years, and another estimated 1,200 continue to die each day as a direct or indirect result of the conflict.

Hutu militias still use the forests to the north and west of Goma as their base in carrying out attacks along the Rwandan border. Late last year, the situation worsened when an 8,000-strong militia – sympathetic to Tutsis on both sides of the border – began attacking the Congolese army not far from Goma.

The United Nations has since beefed up its presence in the country, with some 17,000 peacekeepers and a budget of $1,166.72m (Frw630B), the largest of any current UN peacekeeping operation.

Still, their impact has made but a dent, with many critics suggesting that a country of Congo’s size (almost 2.35 million square kilometres) and diversity (over 250 languages spoken and an almost equal number of ethnic groups) is by definition ungovernable. The region’s vast mineral reserves adds another dimension of complexity.

Signs of peace

We didn’t know what we had stumbled into when we turned the next street corner and found ourselves staring face to face with a larger-than-life size colour portrait of Christ. We poked our heads around the giant portrait only to find something of even bigger proportions.

By accident, we had walked our way into anti-war demonstration. Thousands of Congolese – mostly women – were marching down the street singing songs of peace, as our companion Victor explained it to us. They were tired of the fighting, he said.

We joined them. We didn’t know where they had started their march, or where they were headed, but it didn’t matter; we knew why they were there.

And while fighting might have been raging just a few kilometres away, on that particular day, we couldn’t hear the guns. All we could hear were their songs of peace.

Ends