Pygmies in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hope their country’s future Constitution will lead to improved living standards and security in their region.
”Everyone in our community voted” in a constitutional referendum held on Sunday and Monday, said Seseti Wiongwa, a Bambuti pygmy.
Wearing a red anorak and dirty beige jeans, he looks a good 20 years older than his age. ”We voted ‘yes’ because we want peace, and that’s something we don’t have at the moment”, he told Agence France Presse.
The referendum was the first in a series of votes, the rest of which are planned for 2006, that should bring to an end a precarious transition that started in 2003 in the DRC after five years of war that drew in several of the vast central African
country’s neighbours.
The village of Mubambiro, about 20km west of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, is regularly targeted by armed groups. The most recent attack took place a week ago, when two villagers were kidnapped and stabbed to death with bayonets.
The inhabitants of the village blame Rwandan rebels based in the region.
As well as peace, the Bambuti pygmies, who are even poorer than Mubambiro’s other inhabitants, dream of an improvement in their living conditions.
Each family lives in a tiny hut made entirely of straw and dry leaves. Their few possessions lie pell-mell on the floor. The village has two communal taps, but neither works, and fetching water entails walking several kilometres.
Nights here at the foot of the Nyamuragira volcano are chilly, and many Bambuti have a cold for much of the year.
”The nearest health centre is in Sake [a town about 15km from Mubambiro], but even if there was one right here it wouldn’t be of much use to us because you have to be able to pay to use it and we don’t have any money,” said Kayese Mutahumuka, one of the two young men in this community of 160 people to have done a few years of secondary school.
The village lies on the edge of the Virunga National Park, home to the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas. Local people, Bambuti included, are not allowed to hunt in the park, a Unesco World Heritage site.
”It’s the park that could help people to get by. But nobody is allowed into it,” Mutahumuka complains.
This community would be happy to grow crops rather than hunt, but the soil is poor. Instead of the rich black earth that most of this region enjoys, the soil at Mubambiro is fine black gravel. On this soil, beanstalks that would grow to more than two metres elsewhere in the region struggle to reach 30cm here. Even manioc, which grows almost anywhere, has trouble here.
”We’re starving here. The ground won’t produce anything anymore”, complains Kibenge Kinubi, a tiny wizened old man.
When Nyamuragira erupts about once every two years, the lava flows down in this direction.
”Maybe after the referendum, after the elections, something will change, God willing,” Kinubi said. – Sapa-AFP