Men's Journal

The actor writes about his journey of danger and discovery. Photo credit: photo by Marc Hom

DAY 4: THE REFUGEE CAMPS

It’s a 15-minute ride to Mugunga II, a camp of 10,000 Congolese displaced mostly from the fighting between the state and rebel militia, and the impossibly bumpy roads are like a ride on a barroom bronco. The buildings thin out as we leave Goma, and the people walking the roads become more trade-related. Boys with makeshift wheel barrel–like wooden scooters (I’m told they have organized races) cruise by, most hauling lumber or bananas. Women carry large sacks or other containers on their heads. Their sense of balance leaves me astonished. A few big open-top trucks with black-booted soldiers pass by, their AK-47s sticking out the sides like thorns.

At the camp dozens of tentlike huts fastened to roofs made of trash bags and straw are jammed close together. Getting out of the jeep, we are quickly engulfed by a crowd. Kids push against one another to get a closer look. Our guide today, Charles, walks us through the camp. The first thing he points out is the water system. Women and children with plastic jugs get water from metal pipesthat jut about three feet out of the ground. The gushing water is pumped from Lake Kivu to a storage well, where it’s chlorinated, then sent to Mugunga. It is probably the single most important part of the camp.

I look over and see a small tarp on which several heads of cabbage covered in grime wait to be sold. One reason the area is so dirty and barren is the nearby volcano. Hard rock from the cooled lava creates a black dust that gets into and onto everything. For a place with so many problems, it seems almost cruel that an active volcano adds to them.

A young boy in a faded red shirt is starving — for not only food but attention. He goes up to all of us and pulls at our hands, wanting somebody to hold his. He never smiles or makes an expression. Not knowing what I can do, I wrest my hand free of his and drift away.

Charles wants to show us how the water pump works, about two kilometers away, so we all pack back into the jeeps. Jimmie shuts the rear door, and the kid in the faded red shirt pops his face up into the back window. Jimmie tries to shoo him off, but he doesn’t listen, and as the jeep heads down a narrow dirt road, he chases us with a group of other kids. The driver stops a few times to yell at the kids to scatter, but as soon as we get going again they reappear. One time the driver brakes suddenly, comically sending the kids smashing into the rear door. At one point Jimmie leans over to see the kid in red clinging to the bumper. “He’s on the back!” Jimmie says, concerned. A huge pothole sends the boy flat onto the ground. He gets up, wincing, eyes blinking, and then begins to run at us again. But the cars have taken too much of a lead, and he can’t catch up. Charles continues talking about water distribution, but all I can feel is guilt for leaving that kid behind.

Mugunga I is our next stop. It’s an older and better organized camp. At Mugunga II the roofs are so poorly thatched that when it rains, buckets of water stream onto the occupants, but here most of the roofs have at least one tarp. Banana fields surround the camp, but they do not belong to the people here. I meet Prince and Hertier, brothers ages 11 and 9. They stand fast next to each other. Neither one goes to school or can read, and most of their days they spend playing soccer. Hertier made a ball out of trash bags and shoestrings strung together. Not even war and death all around them can crush these children’s spirits. The brothers are very different. Prince, the older boy, is quieter, more world-weary, while Hertier does most of the talking. Asked about their future, Hertier says that he would like to work and study. Prince looks at the ground. “Only God knows,” he says. That night Nabil and Jimmie and I go off to Doga, a popular restaurant and bar for the local NGO employees. Jimmie and I get Primus, the local beer, which has a few more points of alcohol than you get in the States. Pretty soon we’re all nice and dandy and talking with a woman Jimmie knows named Sarah. She’s a 30-year-old NGO worker who just got back from Iraq, with horror stories about avoiding hostage situations and receiving death threats. Sometimes it takes a lot of guts, even putting your life on the line, to make the world a better place. After we finish our beers, I drag Jimmie and Nabil back to the hotel. It’s a good thing, too, because Jimmie pukes all night, blood mixed in, and then diarrhea sets in. TIA, baby.

DAY 5: ONE FINAL STOP

It’s our last day, and we all cram into one jeep for the drive back to Rwanda. I reflect on the trip as we pass through the DRC border, thinking how important it is that these NGOs exist. Imagine if the refugees who came here weren’t given camps. They’d stand a good chance of being slaughtered. For a boy such as Prince, the support from NGOs represent a chance to take his destiny into his own hands. And for a rape victim such as Kimanizani, donations to Oxfam go toward her medical costs and food and give her a chance to rejoin the world.

More than 250,000 people are buried beneath us. We’re at our last stop before the airport: the Rwanda genocide memorial, one of the biggest mass grave sites in the country. Armed guards stand silently all around, and the place has the stillness of a church. Huge slabs of concrete, with no names on them, represent the victims who lie here as one. Inside the memorial building photo panels give a brief history of the events that led to the genocide — how the Belgians codified the Tutsi and Hutu tribes as separate races, primarily as a way of rewarding a small minority of Tutsi to control the majority Hutu; how decades later these fabricated ethnicities clashed, with the consequences still reverberating. There is also an exhibit here on other countries that have endured genocide: Germany, Bosnia, Armenia, among others. What links these incidents is that they all center around prejudice, hate, and propaganda and had desperate, crooked men orchestrating them, warping otherwise normal people into monsters.

For me this trip was an introduction to an inspiring people who live under the harshest of conditions and still try to make the best of things. Liz, Lyndsay, Nabil, Yao, and Jimmie challenged me every day to think a little harder than I had before. These are people who really want to get out into this world and participate in it. Now I look back at some of the earlier parts of this travelogue and almost chuckle at my naïveté. Maybe we can all come together to change the world. Still, as we fly away, Africa disappearing behind thick clouds, all I can see is that boy with the faded red shirt.

HOW TO HELP IN THE CONGO

A surge in violence this past fall displaced an additional 200,000 Congolese, making Oxfam’s work even more vital. If you want to make a donation earmarked for the DRC, you can do so by visiting oxfamamerica.org/drc or calling 800-776-9326. Specify that you want to contribute to the Democratic Republic of Congo Relief and Rehabiliation Fund. It helps with such efforts as installing latrines and freshwater systems in rural villages and camps; assisting rape victims; and reassimilating former soldiers, some still children, into communities through vocational training and reconciliation sessions.

For a photo diary of Hirsch’s trip, pick up the January 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.

Print this article