BUNIA, DEM. REP. CONGO, April 2005.

A quiet Easter morning in Bunia, people in the streets head to religious functions looking relaxed, choirs can be heard when passing churches.

It is the first Easter without war, without militiamen in the streets imposing their own law. Mario is a pastor of CHRISTCO (Christ and his Company) church, a branch of the Pentecostal evangelic movement. He was born in Uganda, to Congolese parents who were killed by Amin's soldiers in 1979. He arrived in Bunia a few weeks before the war broke out in the spring of 1999.

Believers have been packed into the aluminium roofed church since early morning. Singing and dancing intermingled with witness accounts of grace received from God. Mario gives the sermon in Swahili, simultaneously translated in Lingala by another pastor beside him. They move left and right, screaming, sweating; natural born actors couldn't give the idea of Jesus as saviour of the world better than they do. A cacophonic stream of imperious words hammers the heads of the faithful like the drum that accompanies the singing and the dancing.

CHRISTCO church was founded in the US, a country competing with Africa for the largest number of evangelic congregations. Christ and his Company has churches in 15 African Countries, in the Ituri region alone there are 30 of them, the biggest community in the whole of the Dem. Rep. of Congo. This area bordering with Uganda, Sudan and Central African Republic has not only a military strategic importance, but also massive mineral riches, especially gold.

Foreign armies from Uganda and Rwanda have now withdrawn but local ethnic militias remain. Humanitarian agencies estimate the number of deaths to be around 50,000, (mostly due to starvation and diseases), and 600,000 displaced people, 100,000 of this number since December 2004 and March 2005.

Mario stayed in Bunia even at the worst time of the war, during the Spring 2003. “God didn't allow me to go because I needed to support so many people” he says. Behind his thick design glasses his gaze is tough and profound. “I had in my house 67 Hemas escaped from the fighting, they came because they knew I was a pastor and I could save them. The Lendus arrived at my place and wanted to kill me and all the people sheltered there… some other Lendu militiamen that by chance were passing by stopped the others from killing us. They knew me and convinced the first group I was a good man and so were the people with me”. In the end the militia transported them in trucks through the shooting and street fighting into the UN compound where finally they were safe.

These days, as Mario walks in the Lendu area of Bunia he points out some people and whispers: “You see these guys over there? They were the very ones who wanted to kill me, but now I can walk here, everybody knows I haven't taken any part in the conflict, I wasn't at all a hardliner, but the opposite”. His Church embraces many ethnic groups, Lendu, Hema, Alur, Pygmies. He also started a radio program a few months ago to help the reconciliation process but lack of money to run it recently forced him to stop the program. Mario has to take care of his wife and 2 kids, plus 3 other children orphaned by the war whom he has adopted. He used to trade salt but militias looted his 107 bags of precious salt, his motorbike and his house. Looting is not rare – nearly every building in Bunia has been raided at some point.

Now you don't hear gunfire in Bunia anymore. Almost every day from 2001 until 2004 there was shooting in the streets as fighting broke out or simply to scare people away so their shops and businesses could be looted. But now businessmen are back and the market full of goods, beer is cheaper than ever, demand increasing due to the massive arrival of UN peacekeepers and Western NGO workers. All other goods are more expensive than before because of the difficulties of transporting stock through no mans land in the countryside.

“I used to sell my stock in 2 weeks, now it takes up to 5 weeks” says Henry Uzele, a local trader. “Profits are very low, between 10% and 20%. We hire 2 trucks from Mombasa to the DRC-Uganda border. Then by boat across lake Albert. If the boat sinks (it happens regularly) or it is attacked by pirates we lose everything. When the goods arrive to the Congolese shores they have to pass through the roadblocks of the local militia on the way to Bunia”. If the goods come through the north, by road, from the Ugandan border town of Aru, the story is the same. Armed men stop every car or truck and extort taxes as they wish. Henry Uzele explained that a few weeks ago a convoy of trucks were stopped at one such “bribe post”. The exasperated drivers turned around and drove back to Uganda rather than paying again.

Unfortunately the current peaceful situation in Bunia town is an exception. Outside town fighting continues in villages and the countryside. Over the past few months approximately 70,000 people have arrived in the displaced people's camps of Che, Gina and Kafe. where an estimated 20 children die every day. Farmers are displaced so they can't harvest or plant the fields which will cause a shortage of food in the coming months.

The UN mission in Congo (MONUC) gave the militias in Uturi a deadline by which they were required to surrender and give up their weapons. “After the first of April everybody with a gun not belonging to the UN or the Congolese army will be considered a criminal and disarmed by force” assures Col. Hussein Mahmud, the deputy commander of the UN Ituri brigade. “We know where they are, where are their camps, we can go there and disarm them, we won't act only if we cross them on the road”. On the 2 nd April the UN proved they are serious -18 militiamen were killed by the blue helmets during a strike in a militia camp 30 km outside Bunia.

Before the 1 st of April deadline only 6,000 (out of an estimated 15,000) armed men turned up to surrender. Some of them will be integrated in the Congolese army, most of them demobilized. In the demobilization camp in Aru, where some 3,000 have joined the disarmement program so far, there are other problems. Every man or woman entering this program receives, before returning to civilian life, a certain amount of food and 50 Usd cash. The former fighters who are used to serving warlords and looting for money complain that 50 Usd is not enough for them to be able to start a business.

On Easter day, in the afternoon, a gospel meeting is held near the main market at the side of a large dusty road (like all in Bunia) in front of a destroyed church. A small generator provides the power for 4 electric guitars and the keyboard. Baptist groups from Bunia and Beni entertain several hundred of people gathered to listen, sing and dance. Even five years of war has not destroyed the Congolese people's joy, ability to survive and innate sense of rhythm for the music. Whilst singing and dancing they seem to rise above every day problems, happy to just live for the moment and glad to be alive. A UN armoured vehicle, blazes through the crowd patrolling the streets. Its presence momentarily disturbs the sensational vibrations created by the gospel singers, reminding everybody that, despite the show, peace is few steps away but still not quite there.

Under plastic orange and green sheets a couple of hundred people, mostly women, have been sitting since the morning to pay their respect to Anite, the wife of a Baptist pastor, who died the day before aged “somewhere between 55 and 60”. Many people, especially those who are “old” by Congolese standards, can only guess their age.

Everybody is wearing a shirt or a skirt with Bible verses, pictures of Jesus, messages of devotion to Mungu, God in Swahili, printed on them. Some ten trumpet musicians and choruses of singers make the long day more enjoyable. Around 5 in the afternoon a snaking, colourful procession starts to follow the coffin placed in the back of a pick up truck, all the way to the cemetery. Women sing and dance in the warm light of the sunset passing through the street of Bunia, children run all over taking the chance to join the happy throng of people, adding something different to their day.

In a small church on a hill top a couple of dozen people attend one of the daily CHRISTCO spiritual meetings. During the war the only things that practically never stopped working were religious services. Mario was only prevented from celebrating mass for 2 weeks. In a place where the government's existence was heard only on the radio, where any social activity was impossible, where people couldn't travel or do business, where there was no food, the only hope and sense of community was derived from religion. Baptists, Evangelists, Protestants, Catholics and several other lesser-known congregations are now short of space in their churches.

After five years of war and such a hard time, forgotten by the whole world, what else can one do but turn to the idea of being saved and hope the afterlife will be an improvement.

 

 

Text and photos by Riccardo Gangale.