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1. Population of Congo: 57.5 million
2. Population of Goma: 700,000 (estimate)
3. Average life expectancy: 44 years
4. GNI (gross national income) per capita: $120
5. Adult literacy rate for females: 52 %
6. Estimated number of people who have died as a direct or indirect result of war in the last ten years in Congo: 3.5 milion
Learn more about Congo:
Congo in the NY Times
UN Mission to Congo
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GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
What is life like in Goma?
 Here is an example.
Roy and his wife live in this small shack, with their 6 young children. Like many homes in Goma, there is no electricity or running water. The land surrounding the house is covered with lava rock. Goma sits at the base of an active volcano that erupted in 2003 and covered roughly a third of the town with lava.
The inside of the house has plastic sheeting on the walls and dirt floors with occassional rocks jutting out. The house is composed of two rooms. One is the living room pictured below. The other is a bedroom, which contains a single mattress laid on their floor. There are 10 people that sleep in the house.
Overflowing with people
In addition to their six children, Roy and his wife have taken in two teenagers, relatives who have fled from fighting in their rural village. This is a common situation, where families that are already hard-pressed to feed and educate their own children, often find themselves opening their homes to a wide variety of relatives. Homes throughout Goma are literally bulging with people, as the war has escalated in the past year, and ever more people have sought refuge in Goma.
Lack of a Reliable Income
Roy is a talented and experienced tailor but his sewing machine was destroyed when the volcano erupted in 2008. With no funds to buy his own machine or rent his own workspace, he has been forced to work for other tailors in their shops. However, it is the accepted custom in Goma for the owners of those shops to collect 2/3 of the money earned from any sewing job, leaving the person who actually did the work with the remaining third. For an entire year of work, Roy might have earned about $300, less than a dollar a day.
This kind of hand to mouth existance, is extremely common in Goma. Most women sell food, clothes or other goods in the markets or in the streets. While a few make quite a good living, most make barely enough to feed their children, and often lack the money to send their children to school. The life of these women is not easy, often carrying heavy loads on their heads and children on their backs as they transport their goods.
Even people that work in government jobs often do not receice salaries in a regular and reliable fashion. This leads to a very high level of corruption. Virtually any "Service" in Goma must be paid for in some fashion. If you send for the police, you must have the money to pay them. It also leads to high levels of banditry and violence. There is a huge population of armed soldiers in Goma who have been poorly trained and who often work for months without any pay. Armed robberies during the night are often conducted by soldiers who are looking for ways to "earn" the salary that the government has not paid them.
Insecurity
Insecurity remains an extremely large problem in Goma. Although most people feel secure during the daylight, there is very little movement after dark. People lock themselves into their houses, and are happy to awake the next morning. The sound of shots being fired is common in Goma at night, and often people are unsure whether it is the guns of armed robbers being fired at their neighbors or whether it is the guns of police come to chase off the robbers.
War
The large number of soldiers in the area is due to the continuing war in Eastern Congo. In the late 90s, after more than three decades of a corrupt dictatorship, Congo fell into a civil war that lasted nearly 10 years and took the lives of over 3.5 million people. The war has been called the most deadly war since WWII. A nationwide peace accord was eventually reached, followed by landmark presidential elections in late 2006, bringing some measure of peace to the majority of the county.
However in Eastern Congo the conflict has continued to escalate. In October 2008 a rebel group which operates in the hills surrounding Goma, went on the offensive, claiming a vast amount of rural territory, taking control of the major supply road to Goma, and arriving on the outskirts of the city. The advance of the rebel group caused government soldiers to flee, looting the town of Goma in the process and leaving the town in a state of extreme instability. It is estimated that over 700,000 people became refugees during this time period in North Kivu alone, and this is in addition to the 700,000 refugees who were already living in camps on the outskirts of Goma when the advance started. In January an agreement was reached between the Rwandan government, the Congolese government,and the rebel group (CNDP). The agreement involved the integration of CNDP rebel troops with government forces as well as an influx of Rwandan troops into Congo. The idea was that the CNDP rebels, Rwandan troops and the Congolese army would work together to flush out the FDLR rebels. After a month of this offensive, the Rwandan troops pulled out of Congo, and the FDLR which had gone into hiding, returned to "punish" local populations for the offensive, despite the fact that the local population had little choice in the matter. To this day there continue to be CNDP soldiers, Congolese Army soldiers, and FDLR soldiers armed and operating in the region. Rural villages continue to be burned and pillaged in the night, women raped and civilians killed. For more information please see our blog.
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