to Bunia and back again

A short post today as I have limited time here today.

Last Friday, my teammate J and I flew to Butembo - a bustling trading town where small vendors on every street offer to buy gold from artisanal miners and then export it on to Dubai or Kampala for processing and further export. We ended up staying the night as the 10:00 bus we'd been told about never materialized (in fact it runs only once a day at 7:00 a.m.), we also tried to get into a car share but six passengers were needed and by early afternoon it was clear more passengers would not be forthcoming and we were not keen to be travelling at night. So Saturday morning we took the early bus and arrived in Bunia midafternoon - to the delight of R and C who had taken the bus all the way from Goma to Bunia (also with an overnight in Butembo) a few days ahead of us. In Bunia we had a meeting with the head of office Bunia province, for MONUC, the UN mission to Congo. We also met with a man working with a union of sorts of artisanal gold miners (of which we learned there are about 100,000 in Ituri district - a serious glut of miners who earn very little as the gold is very difficult to find and the labour is difficult to retrieve it). We also met with the local Anglican Bishop to learn about their programs on peace and reconcliaton, including their work to reintegrate former child soldiers and former militia members.

Bunia, and most of Ituri province, is post conflict with the last major fighting taking place in 2006 when multiple militia and rebel groups were active. Now, there are remnants of those groups and occasional fighting (as recent as 2 months ago) but the area is rebuilding, construction of new homes and reconstruction of destroyed buildings is evident. The market was full of people and activity and we really were in a different world from Goma. There is still a lot of need for trauma counselling and post conflict work, but the lethal violence appears to be mostly over.

A few pics from that trip will be forthcoming as I cannot upload today.

til next time,
a.