There is a permanent whiff of sulphur in the air in Goma, as if the devil has just passed through, and might well be back at any moment. Even at the best of times, when Mount Nyiragongo is in repose, its volcanic authority is stamped on every part of life. The earth is black, with lava pebbles strewn everywhere, garden walls and houses built out of lava rock, streets tarred with dried lava.
Out of all of this, life springs up in dazzling profusion. The air is clear and sharp. Trees and flowers bloom without effort. The town is surrounded by rich farmland, making the area the breadbasket of the region. This is the paradox of Goma: in the midst of abundance and order, the constant threat of primeval catastrophe.
Why do people go on living there? Nyiragongo is known to be an active volcano. When it decides to blow, it gives little warning, catching the inhabitants of the surrounding area by surprise every time. Why take the risk?
And yet it is as if the people of Goma insist on playing this unwinnable game of cat and mouse with the moody mountain from one generation to the next. It’s just part of their way of life, unwilled and yet unchangeable — the African conundrum.
Fate, politics and geography all play a hand. It is Goma’s fate, and that of the villages that lie to the north on the slopes of the mountain, to be in the direct path of the lava that spills out on the rare occasions when the volcano erupts. Thus far settlements to the north and east have never been affected. That is why those who get a chance to flee with a few precious possessions always make for Gisenyi, Goma’s twin city in the east.
The pattern following last week’s eruption was no different. About 350 000 people (matching the entire official population figures for the town of Goma, although the real figure is much higher) streamed into Gisenyi over the weekend — and then streamed back again to reclaim their ruined properties once the lava flow seemed to have subsided.
Why did they not just stay in Gisenyi and rebuild their lives in an area that is not in the lava’s path? One reason is politics.
Gisenyi sits just over the Congolese border in Rwanda. The two towns are so close that they might as well be one. They have identical airports with parallel runways running almost side by side — mighty confusing for an inexperienced pilot. The commercial district of one virtually merges into the other, separated only by a few strands of wire, and the psychological weight of boundaries arbitrarily drawn up during colonial times.
Congo and Rwanda were both Belgian territories. The people on both sides of the border speak many of the same languages and share the same customs. But the people on the Goma side remain fiercely loyal to their Congolese identity, and hold their Rwandan neighbours in fear and distrust.
It is hard to say what loyalty to the political entity called Congo could possibly mean, considering that this vast country, sprawling from the Atlantic in the west to the Great Lakes in the east, has never had a coherent national government, nor a coherent national infrastructure. Since the civil war that ultimately drove out the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, it has been effectively divided into three huge regions with rival autonomous governments, none of which has been able to put a reliable and coherent civil infrastructure in place.
And yet, if the people of Goma have short memories when it comes to the destructive power of Nyiragongo, they have long memories when it comes to relations with their Rwandan neighbours.
The civil war — a war which has effectively never come to an end — was precipitated by the massacres of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994. In the wake of this slaughter, a genocide that claimed almost a million lives in the space of a few weeks, millions of Hutus fled into the eastern Congo, a flight precipitated by a sense of collective guilt, and a justifiable fear of revenge.
Several hundred thousand of these fugitives were settled in refugee camps on the outskirts of Goma. And sure enough, retribution followed them. Tutsi forces of the Rwandan army regrouped and finally crossed into Congo, where they slaughtered thousands of their Hutu compatriots in the camps.
The Congolese of Goma, onlookers in this horrific drama, have never forgotten this. For them, the idea of being housed, even temporarily, in Rwandan refugee camps conjures up images of mass slaughter. Which is why, within less than 24 hours of seeking sanctuary in Gisenyi, they opted to face the devil they knew, and streamed back towards their lava-stricken city. Steam and noxious gases were still rising from the streets as they began to tear away at the debris of cooling lava with their bare hands — the first step in trying to reconstruct their shattered world.
In the end, the people of Goma are also locked in by the natural geography of their region. On the one hand, the volcanic ash that can bring sudden death also brings the gift of life — the formation of an incredibly fertile soil. When the mountain is calm, it is a productive place to live.
On the other hand, they have nowhere else to go to, even if they wanted to. The area is densely populated. Escape is blocked off by the mountain to the north, and the impenetrable tropical forest to the west. Many thousands have fled south and taken refuge in Bukavu, the city at the southern tip of Lake Kivu. But Bukavu’s resources are already stretched to breaking point with an influx of war refugees that has continued unabated for the past eight years.
And so, inevitably, the refugees of Goma will gravitate back to their battered town at the northern tip of the lake. They will eye their great, brooding adversary with new awe and respect. And eventually, as the mountain’s fury subsides, their lives will slip back into the rhythms they have always known — until the next time Nyiragongo decides to roar.
Archive: Previous columns by John Matshikiza