Micah Albert | D.C. - California

Reportage: Democratic Republic of Congo

Democratic Republic of Congo's five-year war officially ended in 2003, but the country is still regularly listed as the site of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Despite having their first elected president in over 40 years and living in a country which should be rich from its gold, diamonds and minerals, millions of Congo's people still suffer from a lethal combination of disease and hunger caused by ongoing conflict and displacement.

The country formerly known as Zaire now has a democratic government - led by President Joseph Kabila, a former guerrilla - but insecurity continues in the remote, resource-rich provinces near the eastern border. The world's largest peacekeeping mission - a U.N. force of 17,000 soldiers and police - struggles to prevent violence and protect the population of almost 60 million.

Almost 4 million people in this vast country have died from war-related hunger and disease since 1998, according to aid agency International Rescue Committee, which calculated in 2006 that 1,200 people were dying every day.

"There are few places on earth where the gap between humanitarian needs and available resources is as large - or as lethal - as in Congo," said Jan Egeland, when he was U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

Goma, DR Congo – A city of 160,000 in Eastern DR Congo that has seen years of war and it sits at the bottom of the active Nyiragongo volcano and was one of the locations the Rwandan genocide refugees fled to.
   
Masisi, North Kivu. Mankafu Marceline, a 30-year-old widow and mother of two sets of twins, gave birth to triplets in May. She was being treated at a remote clinic 50 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Goma in North Kivu. Marceline fears she could be giving her newborns a death sentence through breast-feeding, a common form of transmitting HIV, the virus the causes AIDS. Marceline’s concerns reflect those of other women in this country ravaged by war. According to conservative estimates, there are 40,000 victims of rape and gender-related violence.
   
Bukavu, DRC October 2006 historic elections.
     
  
Group of women celebrating tramatic fistula surgery have been here up to 3 months. Rape in this region is so bad, the wait time for this surgery can be months. 'The Democratic Republic of Congo held its first free and fair elections last year. But despite this, there's still no peace in the far east of the vast country. Several armed groups operate there and, according to the Goma,North Kivu. UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, they use rape as a weapon of war on a shocking scale. The UN says that more than 4000 rapes have been documented in South Kivu province so far in 2007. BBC’s Sarah Grainger reports from Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu and Jenni talks to expert in African women’s rights Victoria Brittain and Human Rights Watch activist Juliane Kippenberg about the causes of sexual violence in Eastern Congo and the widespread climate of impunity which allows these abuses to go unpunished. '
   
Masisi, North Kivu. Conflict Cheese. Once a place known for its beauty, with Switzerland like hills and even the cheese to complete the look, Masisi has seen so much war that the beauty is difficult to see.
  
     
  
GOMA, DRC - Group of women awaiting tramatic fistula surgery have been here up to 3 months. Rape in this region is so bad, the wait time for this surgery takes as long as it does. 'The Democratic Republic of Congo held its first free and fair elections last year. But despite this, there's still no peace in the far east of the vast country. Several armed groups operate there and, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, they use rape as a weapon of war on a shocking scale. The UN says that more than 4000 rapes have been documented in South Kivu province so far in 2007. BBC’s Sarah Grainger reports from Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu and Jenni talks to expert in African women’s rights Victoria Brittain and Human Rights Watch activist Juliane Kippenberg about the causes of sexual violence in Eastern Congo and the widespread climate of impunity which allows these abuses to go unpunished. '
   
GOMA, DRC - Woman celebrate the recover of fistula caused bytraumatic rape.
  
CHIHONGA, DRC - A remote village bordering Rwanda, has suffered years of attacks from rebel groups. As they moved through the region they took the main cultural asset of livestock, raided crops ready to harvest, and raped and murdered innocent villagers; leaving the region with hundreds of orphans, lack of productive crops, and no livestock to sustain themselves. These woman head out to harvest a new Nigerian hybrid cassava, a staple food, given out in a micro-loan program by Empowering Lives International. Hearing of recent rebel activity makes this village community of over 11,000 families very uneasy to continue to plant.
     
  
GOMA, NORTH KIVU. HEAL Africa hospital.
   
MONUC, or the United Nations in DRC is the largest most expensive of all Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO), at $3 million per day spent.
  
Chihonga, South Kivu. 3 hours south of Bukavu, the largest city in Eastern Congo, woman sit and listen to training on high-yield crop growing.
     
  
BUKAVU, DRC - Internaly displaced kids demonstrate the cultural dance of Eastern DR Congo at the only school providing education to over 550 kids in the slum of Keredi, in Bukavu, DR Congo.
   
Chihonga, South Kivu. On November 1, 2006, Angeline Balungwe was a recipient of a micro-loan in Chihonga, a remote village in the South Kivu province in Eastern Congo. Angeline a 30 year-old widow. Her husband was killed in the war in 2002, and she has been farming the local cassava root, the staple food in this region, to feed her and her five children.Because of the war, rebel activity has taken out livestock of any kind, leaving people no manure to put back vital nutrients into the soil. The result is an extremely low yield crop, producing tubers the size of ones thumb, leaving the families like Angeline’s with very little food. Ten roots from the local cassava produces one kilo of cassava flour, and one kilo will produce two loaves of cassava bread, enough to feed three people for one day.Formerly: Ten roots = 1 kg flour = 2 loaves of breadNow: One root = 1 kg flour = 2 loaves of breadThe micro-loan introduced a new Nigerian-hybrid cassava that produces roots that are one kilo each, with up to six of these roots per plant. It starts producing these in less than nine months - less than half the time of the local version.Only eight months after planting, Angeline has now begun to harvest her first cassava roots. After pulling up her very first plant from the ground, she could hardly believe her eyes. With the roots from one plant, she exclaimed, she could feed her family twice a day and would have enough left over at the end of the day. And with this harvest, she will have up to 10 cassava seedlings to replant the next year, sell them in the community or give them away to friends and family.The idea is spreading through out this 100-square-kilometer region of 11 villages, and people are on their way to rebuilding a life in this war-torn part of the nation.
   
Keredi, South Kivu. Displaced camp turned into the regions largest slum.
     
  
After visiting family away from her village, Furaha Zirhumana the eldest of 6, returned home to find her parents burned alive in their hut in 2006. Because of the constant threat of attacks from Rwandan Interahamwe insurgents in her village, she decided to move to Bukavu. May 26th, 2007, eighteen woman and children were murdered in their homes in this same village.
  
In a village region in South Kivu, three hours south of the country's second largest city of Bukavu, is an area called Chihonga. This 60-squar-mile area contains 11 villages that roughly 22,000 people call home. Suffering from the wake of Interahamwe rebels fleeing the ’94 Rwandan genocide as well as from the Congo’s own instability and war, family life in Chihonga has been hit hard.During the last 15 years of conflict, this area has been wrecked by rebels moving into the village raping women, killing families, and stealing crops and livestock. A culture that is completely dependent on cows and livestock has been completely stripped of its most important asset, and the landscape in the beautiful hilly region is almost completely void of any livestock.In November 2006, Mirhima M’Muyahula, a 25-year-old widow with four children, was one of the 105 recipients of the goat-loan program. Using her new goat combined with the training she received, she used a zero-grazing unit for the goat, bringing the food to the goat. This does not only fatten up the goat, but it also enables her to collect the manure and use it for her crops. Mirhima is, “…thankful for the training [she] received and [for] the goat.” Before she only had enough beans to feed her children maybe once a day, and now, only seven months later, she “has more beans than she knows what to do with.”
   
BUKAVU, DRC
     
  
Separating the two provinces they are named after, Lake Kivu is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. The region around the lake relies heavily upon its fishing industry.
   
Keredi Slum, Bukavu, South Kivu. Children whos parents were killed during the war, ready themselves for school.
  
Internaly displaced kids demonstrate the cultural dance of Eastern DR Congo at the only school providing education to over 550 kids in the slum of Keredi, in Bukavu, DR Congo.