It’s been a busy week here in North Kivu. On Monday, fighting broke out between the government forces and one of the principle rebel groups fairly close to our biggest project, Rutshuru. So we reduced the expatriate and relocated national staff by half, bringing 14 people south here to Goma. This makes it easier to perform a total evacuation if necessary, but allows to keep the project going – we treated about 20 wounded there (both military and civil) since the fighting broke out. Later in the week, the conflict zone enlarged and we had to evacuate all the expatriates and relocated staff in the other 2 projects to a more secure area up north. (FYI: Following our policy of total neutrality, one of those projects is in a government-controlled area and the other is in a rebel-controlled area.) That makes 30 more people evacuated.
The local population is moving to get out of the fighting zone as well. Apparently they have also fled north, but not as far as our staff. So today and tomorrow, we have sent out a small exploration team from the evacuated group to evaluate the situation of this displaced population. If they find a need for health care or water supply or distribution of basic non-food items, we will probably set up an emergency project, using the team that just evacuated. Our plans change hourly.
But today is calm – not much we can do until the explo team has evaluated the situation. We should know more tomorrow. I worked a hard yesterday so that I could take this Sunday off. For the first time since I arrived here, I took a discovery tour of the town by foot. Goma is a secure place, but still, our security rules only allow us to walk along the 2 biggest streets. I visited Kivu Market, a grocery store which caters to the white humanitarian organization clientele. I was amazed at the selection – you can find a lot of French and American products (Pillsbury cake mixes?) Tonight, Claudia (our medical coordinator) and I are making dinner for the 11 people in the house – beef barbeque, vegetables, rice and apple pie.
And tomorrow the work starts again. We will know more about the situation of the displaced people tomorrow evening. Then we can decide whether to put the evacuated team on standby in a really secure area (like Uganda) until things calm down or, if there is the need, to put them to work. I will be going to Rutshuru (where we did the team reduction last Monday) tomorrow for a week. I will be replacing the administrator who was evacuated and is now on break and working on some big human resources problems that we have there. Between that work, following the situation of the evacuated group and the situation of the displaced population, it risks to be a busy week again.
That’s what we do! And I am as happy as a pig in shit! Yes, it is a pretty intense situation, but right now, I have to start making my apple pie!
