Sake, DRC | Thursday
ABOUT 20 000 victims of the Nyiragongo volcano eruption have just received their first international food aid 15 days of rations handed out by the World Food Programme and a non-governmental organisation.
Thirty tonnes of food were brought in aboard trucks from Goma and were handed out to heads of households, whose women and children are shivering in this cold, wet season, many of them also afflicted by malaria.
”We have counted 15 650 displaced persons, but we believe the total is 20 000, said Zenabua Georgis, the head in Sake of the NGO World Vision.
”World Vision is permanently based here, usually providing food for children and families hit by the rebellion affecting eastern DRC,” he said.
Paradoxically, the food was handed out on the marketplace of this town 27 kilometres northwest of Goma where food potatoes, bananas, yams and dried fish is usually plentiful.
”We have great need of medicine, many of the old people are sick with diarrhoea and malaria,” said Felista Feza (60) lying sick with fever on a scruffy blanket in a darkened room.
Around her, five children are dozing, weakened by malaria and lack of food. ”We would like to go back to Goma, but where would we go after that?” said the exhausted woman, whose home was destroyed by the river of lava from the volcano.
Helene Sabina (60) told her story: ”We walked all night in the red light of the eruption. We feared the lava would catch us up. We were plagued by mosquitoes and the children were crying.”
With her, some 20 000 people fled along the banks of Lake Kivu after the lava flow cut Goma in two.
Felista said they fled with about 20 children nephews, cousins and grandchildren. ”We walked very slowly because of the children. The rain drenched us, we had to stop for a while to sleep,” she said.
The arrival of the volcano victims doubled Sake’s 28 000 inhabitants and the former were accommodated in schools, churches and mosques.
They received no food for six days and were helped out by the local people.
”Since we lived to the west of the lava flow, the radio said we should head for Sake. We left only with the clothes we were standing in and a little money,” said Paul Arkasase, clerk at the Goma appeal court, who took refuge at Sake’s Kamuronza school with his wife and seven children.
”The priests have given us a little food and allowed us to stay here,” he said, indicating the large classroom with its floor of beaten earth.
”We left everything behind, we have lost everything. Our women cannot even cook for us, so we ask the neighbours to do it for us. ”I once went back to Goma, the whole of my neighbourhood was destroyed. Virunga was burned out. I have nothing,” Arkasase said. – Sapa-AFP