Change of scene

I’m sitting at the terrace of the hotel in Goma, enjoying the refreshing breeze that blows from the vast, eerily tranquil Lake Kivu. Yesterday morning at dawn I flew over 1,000 miles east from Kinshasa, to the land of the great lakes and what should be gorilla territory but is, instead, guerrilla territory. As I look up from my terrace, it is Rwanda that I see, just a stone’s throw away. Looking across, I am reminded of the excitement and awe I felt the first time I saw the lights of Jerusalem from the hills above the Dead Sea, on the Jordanian side. I felt as though I was being propelled into history, as though this place that I had read and heard so much about that it had taken an almost fictional quality was now proving its veracity, thus bringing to life all the events which until then had been but daunting images on a TV screen.

Here, as in Jerusalem, war and its aftermath remain tangible realities, ones that permeate through all aspects of life, not least the upcoming constitutional referendum on Sunday. Here, the lingering TV images lose their remoteness, but also to some extent their intensity, their fascination. Because the truth is that life continues, people just carry on. Only a few years after the terror and bloodshed, while people continue to live in an atmosphere of insecurity and fear, the vibrancy and dynamism in the town is rampant, an optimism and eagerness born out of sheer determination and the burning desire to live in peace. To me, this ability to simply pick up the pieces and start again with such energy and good will is as mysterious a characteristic of human nature as the propensity for perpetrating the kinds of horrors that people here and elsewhere have suffered and continue to suffer.
(Note: Picture courtesy of UNDP.)

As a consequence, I find myself lifted also by the enthusiasm all around me. Those of you who have talked shop with me will know that I can sometimes be quite demoralised and sceptical about the amount of energy and effort, not to mention money, that seems to go into achieving little more than sustaining a caste of idealists and do-gooders through an interesting, and often pleasant, career. But here, in the midst of preparations for the referendum, I am absolutely astounded at the level of mobilisation there has been both from the international community and from local organisations.

As I sit here typing away on my laptop, the tranquillity is regularly disturbed by low-flying planes and helicopters, most of which are white UN aircraft carrying vehicles, radios, election kits, as well as international observers who have volunteered from all over the world to come monitor the elections. And then there are the tens of thousands of Congolese who are being deployed throughout a country four times the size of France, with absolutely no road infrastructure whatsoever, to make this referendum happen: 52,000 election agents, over 40,000 police officers, some 50,000 domestic observers, all travelling on trucks, motorcycles, horses, by boat, on foot… It’s unimaginable.