Gold dealers buy flakes of the precious metal from small-time miners. Hunters peddle monkey meat to mothers with families to feed. And women hawk everything from soap, to vegetables, to pirated CDs.
Nestled in the corner of a muddy camp for thousands displaced by tribal fighting, this bustling market is an unlikely success story in a land devastated by decades of ruinous dictatorships and civil war.
Set up by residents fleeing fighting nearly a year ago, the camp of 10 000 people has become a magnet for the region’s entrepreneurial types and a small bright spot in the war-tattered economy of northeastern Congo.
”Business is thriving here because there is something for everyone,” said Rashidi Mahamudi, a gold dealer who opened shop in the camp after abandoning his store in Bunia’s nearby downtown.
Like millions around Africa who have lived under brutal dictatorships and through civil wars, the residents of Congo’s Ituri region have found ways to survive in an area where more than 50 000 people are thought to have been killed since 1999 in battles involving soldiers, rebels and tribal fighters.
Accurate economic statistics are hard to come by for Congo’s northeast — or for any part of the vast country of at least 50-million people. In many parts of the region, frequent clashes between tribal militias have brought business to standstill.
But each day at this camp on the edge of town, eager bargain hunters pack the muddy paths between the flyblown shacks of scrap wood and mud bricks that serve as shops in this refugee bazaar.
A skinned and ready-to-eat monkey, a delicacy in these parts, goes for as little as $3. Brightly printed dresses sell for a little $5. Business is conducted in both US dollars and Congolese francs.
”People searching for a bargain and those seeking the best price for what they sell come here,” Mahamudi said.
Along with thousands of others from Bunia, Ituri’s capital, Mahamudi fled last May as fighters from the rival Hema and Lendu tribes battled each other with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, killing at least 500 people.
The displaced didn’t go far to find safety: they ended up on this muddy patch of real estate in the shadow of a base for UN peacekeepers from Uruguay.
They couldn’t have found a better spot.
The proximity of the camp — and its market — to the UN base gives buyers and sellers a degree of security that is hard to find any where else in Ituri.
”People want to make money, to make a profit, and they found a safe place guarded by soldiers,” said Barry Sesnan, a UN official in Bunia.
With most parts of Bunia, the region’s one-time commercial centre, effectively controlled by tribal fighters, only a few businesses in town have reopened, making this camp market the area’s new commercial center.
Away from the market, tribal fighters use intimidation and abductions to keep the town divided into Hema and Lendu zones, even after shedding uniforms, hiding weapons and dismantling checkpoints under pressure from UN troops. Members of one ethnic group would not dare go to live in areas dominated by the rival community because of fears of militiamen living in family homes or in houses abandoned by members of rival tribes.
Traders make the trip to the market from as far afield as Butembo, 200 kilometres to the south, to unload cheap electronics shipped in from the United Arab Emirates. Farmers from villages deep in the bush filter in every morning to sell their crops.
Shoppers include Congolese working for the UN troops and non-governmental agencies, housewives and people displaced by the conflict in Ituri. Most of the money comes from crops sold by villagers, the sale of prized possessions by those in need, meager savings that were stashed away, or daily labourers’ salaries.
Even the UN troops shop at the market. Outside Mahamudi’s shop on a recent day, a handful of Uruguayan peacekeepers were casually browsing through stalls.
Mahamudi is one of the dozen gold dealers at the camp who buy gold flakes from miners and then sell the precious metal to traders from neighboring Uganda who in turn move it on to larger dealers in the Middle East and Europe.
He wouldn’t say how much he makes, but bragged that on some days ”there’s so much gold coming in I run out of money.” In a single hour on one afternoon, nine miners came in to Mahamudi’s shop looking to sell gold they had dug out of shallow mines along the banks of rivers deep in the bush.
”We often comb the camp, going from one gold dealer to another in search of the one offering the highest price for the day,” said Robert Kiiza, a 27-year-old miner, thrusting his hand into a pocket and digging out a bundle of gold flakes wrapped in foil.
He handed the gold to Mahamudi, who put it on a scale and explained: ”I pay $1 for gold weighing the same as these two matchsticks.”
On went the gold and matchsticks and soon enough Mahamudi was offering Kiiza $38 — a small fortune in eastern Congo and more than enough to satisfy Kiiza, who had spent three days mining the gold.
While Kiiza got what he wanted that day, it doesn’t always work out so well. So, like most Congolese who have had to live by their wits through a five-year civil war that ended last year, the miner knows he can’t depend on one way to feed his family.
”I go to work on my farm for two hours every day before leaving my wife there and heading for the mine,” he said ”The food we cultivate helps us in those days when I get nothing from mining.”
But on that afternoon, Kiiza was flush with cash and marched off into the market to buy his family dinner. — Sapa-AP