Hi kent
David here - had a go at the translation with systransoft.com - it's messy but essentially there - did it in little bits so might have lost/missed something:-(((
cheers
david
A mission to define
Rwanda. One is seized by a kind of decency at the time to write concerning Rwanda. The flood of blood spread in this country made run floods of ink. One hesitates to add to it.
Nevertheless, like much of others undoubtedly, we estimate that its specific character and its particular destination justify this writing. It is the report of a humane mission carried out in July and August 1994, near the Rwandan refugees, by the Witnesses of Jéhovah, in particular those of France and Belgium. We who led it, we feel held to report it with all those which had share there. Spent the time of acute crisis, we can also draw up a current financial statement.
The need for acting in favour of the Rwandan refugees was binding on us. We counted, at the end of 1993 approximately 2 500 faithful to Rwanda. Privileged links, whose francophonie, maintained them in regular relations with our national seat. Also we in Rwanda did not unload. That gave us some considerable specific advantages.
In spite of the general upheaval, certain structures of our organization remained. Local ministers of religion, faithful shepherds front their flocks had not given up. They gathered them, took care on them along the roads of the exile or in the towns of refuge.
One of our French friends had made many stays in Africa, in the area of the large lakes, and had tied close relations with Witnesses of over there. As of April 6, then the following days, it accepted from Kigali of the messages that it transmitted to us and who held us in alarm; disastrous news saying the massacre of many as of ours, their escape, their misery, but also invaluable contacts informing us about their needs, helping us to locate them. Three weeks later, our advisor was at the border of Rwanda, bringing helps, drugs especially.
From the very start of May 1994, the assistance near the refugees was already active melt collected at the French Witnesses, collects of more than one hundred tons of promptly conveyed clothing. Soon after, a medical presence was assured.
As appeared the new ones and immense needs for the populations in escape, the assemblies the faithful ones of France, of Belgium, of Switzerland, informed with speed and precision, were ready to provide in abundance with the least request an adapted help, conveyed without delay in our national center: money, food, drugs, etc. Source of funds limited, certainly, but reliable and immediate.
However, when at mid-July we received from Goma a S.O.S exposing us the lamentable situation of the refugees in this city where the cholera decimated the survivors of the massacres, we felt taken with deprived, like many humane organizations.
There was top priority. It was necessary to decide quickly. Our conclusion was that it would be an error, even a fault towards so much the unhappy one threatened of death, to neglect the least facilitated to act promptly. Such was thus the procedure: to collect the helps near the Witnesses, to condition them, convey them, distribute them and exempt care starting from the points of regrouping of our Rwandan companions, and to extend from there our assistance to the maximum of victims and our collaboration with other organizations.
The first part of the program was concluded in four days: volunteers devoted 17 hours working daily to the regrouping, the packing of the drugs, the hardware of first urgency, in particular for the provisioning of water, the processing of this one, etc. We chartered a cargo aircraft which was to take off Ostend to convey 37 tons of hardware intended for the refugees. Our mission started. The obstacles, the hugeness of the task, the anguishes, 1e shock of the horror will exceed what we could then imagine. But we also could act beyond our forecasts, to obtain more results than let us not hope for we, and food a extraordinary history of Christian love. A history which still lasts.
A mission to achieve
Our plane turns above Goma. Waiting lasts. So many apparatuses seek to land! A kind of fear us étreint. How will we face the horror that one made us have a presentiment of with the passing days? Will we be able to conclude our mission? We went down towards the country from death.
We landed in Goma, traversed its surroundings, of camp in camp. And we met death in each street, on each road. It is necessary for us to speak about it, because its obsessing presence gave to our mission its weight of anguish, but also its dash emergency and of fight.
In Goma, we initially recognized death with its odor. Odor of corpse, as of the descent of the plane, pestilential. Odor of the cholera that one of the doctors describes "not too strong, but tough and douceâtre, as that of dead which follows it". Or intense odor of decomposition and excrements, combined with that of the combustion of the green branches of eucalyptus, that one would believe balsamic, and which, seizing with the nose and the throat, will remain for some among us the odor even of died in Goma.
And then, we saw it, along the roads-mouroirs where seemed to be carried out with full the antiqu Rwandan curse: "Bad cold at the edge of the road, and that nobody helps you". Here, on kilometers, the ditches are full with corpses: deaths of the previous night were brought at the edge of the road to be collected by various vehicles, where young masked people providers of L ' "Hadès" carry out this routine work automatically. It is necessary to make quickly. Further wait, wisely aligned, rolled up in their yellow plaits, or of the pieces of blue covers, of died of all sizes, mummies intended for the common grave. Elsewhere, we see, of dead in heap, monstrous stackings from one to two meters on hundred meters length. One buries them with the bulldozer. The machine is activated under the glance curious and interested in the children.
But, paradoxically, they are the alive ones which composes the most macabre tables: child dying man fixed on his dead mother; émaciés faces, skeletal members of the exhausted patients, sitting at the edge of the path, giving up itself with death; hordes of tired walkers; dull procession in the dust of black lava, close to the trails to white lime, traces of died of yesterday, a resigned crowd, responsible for her thin possessions; or the bodies malingres which bathe, wash, drink in a pestilential water where they draw an unquestionable death: corpses of tomorrow; or fantastic vision of one of the doctors: "In an immense plain of black lava, to the foot of a volcano, a camp extends as far as the eye can see from white and blue tents. In front of each one, a fire. And the innumerable columns of gray smoke give to the unit the unreal and ghostly aspect of a world of departeds ".
"If the proof is wanted that the Devil exists, it is necessary to go to Rwanda! "a priest-doctor will say to the one as of ours on the aircraft of the return" I know it, I return from there "
We will not forget easily similar nightmarish sights. Nor either the terrible feeling of impotence which we sometimes tested. Not to be able to take along all these dying children, not to be able to tear off these condemned men with the stagnated ponds. Not to be able to bury all these bodies.
But finally, it was not the death which occupied us, but the life. It was for the life that we were here. We had weapons to fight against the "black horse" of the hunger and the "pale horse" of the stench about which the Apocalypse speaks, and of which it sinister race had terrible effects here. We convoyed tons of food, drugs, of hardware to look after, install, lodge. We had the intense desire to use all that as well as possible. We had competences, knowledge to be shared with the refugees of which we had the load, in all Kivu, of Rutshuru with Uvira. We had for them treasures of fraternal affection.
Ahead thus to go, come, transport, tranship, nourish, install, organize, inform, comfort but initially look after.
Nothing was simple nor easy. A doctor made at Goma evokes the dramatic situation which it met: "Arrived at the camp of Goma. We penetrate in a vast enclosure where five to six buildings grisâtres are on a ground of black rubble covered of dust. Hundreds of men and women with their children and their luggage pile up there, in small almost contiguous groups. Some animals play about around. On my left, a kind of large hangar where tens of families pile up sleeping by ground, on plaits or of old mattress. On my line, some quarters and, at the bottom, raised, the Room of the Kingdom - place of worship of the Witnesses zaïrois - which was used as point of rallying. We span bodies, rocks, jerrycans, to enter the room. There, lengthened with same the ground, a hundred people, the patients and their accompanying who support them, nourish them, put them on basins. No the cries, not out of failing, the cholera kills carefully... ".
I put myself at work immediately with the male nurse and the nurse who are there since the morning. While accroupissant oneself near the bodies, crushing toes, in the medium of the basins, plaits, covers, one places perfusions unceasingly. One suspends them on the windows, or one uses a relative who during hours will hold the bottle in his hand, admirable of devotion. When comes the night, the weak electric bulbs light hardly this scene of court of the Miracles. Moreover, there are unceasingly interruptions of current and it is with the flashlight that we should seek the salutary vein where perfuser glucose and Ringer-lactate. What difficulties to find veins in children with black skin when the tension already dropped! And what a disappointment when one succeeds in having it and that it snap as of the opening of the bottle! It is necessary to start again twice, three times. And the others which wait and new which all arrives, "urgent" them too. Us are called de.toutes.parts! Perfuser, perfuser, perfuser! What a nightmare!
"There are only two WC And all these unhappy which has the colic! What a torment, and what a risk of contamination! ".
Measures had, urgently, to be taken: to establish other camps elsewhere, to reserve this one with the patients, to install them decently, to look after them effectively, make possible a strict hygiene, to move hundreds of people, to transport tons of hardware. We very few, are badgered by time... Other places where refugees gathered solicit us. More than 5 000 people hope for our assistance.
And we knew, like so many others the innumerable traps of the roads of the exodus. Sometimes correct, the roadways are often battered, dusty, stony. Close to Goma to the sight a spectacle of desolation is offered: trees cut down to make fire, thin greenery and, duster; but also the sudden dazzling of a sumptuous villa where, in the green of the immense trees, the blue glare of a swimming pool shines among the bougainvilleas in flowers. The intense azure of the lake Kivu is not deteriorated by the corpses that one throws there. In our more remote tours, we cross dark plains of black lava, but also of the green hills where, among the eucalypti, the frangipaniers, the banana trees, shelter peaceful villages.
We must leave early, returns early. All must be done between 6 hours of the morning and 6 hours of the evening. Because of night the security, already quite relative does not exist any more. But how to evaluate the time of a way? As of the morning, crowd moving encumbers, powdery way. Animals also, it happens that a cow runs up against our car. The drivers hoot unceasingly to open a narrow passage. Their noisy calls the tears of children and the cries of the cocks answer.
Old men, and abused, the vehicles which trimballent our people and our invaluable loadings throw us in perpetual concerns. That which brings us airport does not have brakes. The driver plays of the hand brake, and we learn, which hardly reassures us, that it crushed a pedestrian a few days before. Moreover, while rolling it is necessary to hold the doors of the machine. Another agree to start only in descent. Or the tires are so worn that we burst with repetition. A forwarding with 70 kilometers in the north of Goma where 80 refugees await our assistance requires that we rent a van. They is 100 dollars, plus the gasoline. Retailers precipitate to fill our tank. We charge, we leave. Almost at once, the engine starts to cough, smoke, spread the water of its radiator on the roadway. We wait until it cools in the shade of a banana tree. We push the vehicle on hundred meters, it sets out again. New worrying noises, new stop. We turn back but the engine explodes. We discharge our invaluable cargo and remain to take care on it, while one of us turns over to the city to seek another vehicle. It pren place on a truck which collects the corpses. For each stopping, it is necessary to pay 2 dollars. It is on board an old man 5 tons, that the fuel retailers took by storm to supply it, that we embark our goods. On the sown stone paths, we are shaken in this old truck as in a too dry hazel nut ", known as our doctor-poet.
It is an example, among good of others. And then, the frequent stoppings, especially the evening ago. The gendarmerie, the army control, worry, retain lengthily sometimes people that the urgency urges on. Negociations, difficulties of including itself/understanding, rackets of civils servant or soldiers whom the State does not pay any more create of the irritating situations, and sometimes distressing. Once, one draws some, after long negotiations, for a mineral water bottle. Often with blows of dollars. It happens that the tone goes up, and that the weapons become menaçantes among the cries and the invectives. Always drolatic the côtoie tragedy: to cross the evening a barrier closed, after long discussions with the gate-keeper, it asks us to bring back free to Goma six charcoal bags and its cousin. Concluded market; we load the bags, and the cousin, who will be used to us as safe conduct. In Goma, we discharge nuitamment and there cousin and the six bags.
The installations did not go without evil! Our most urgent task, as well in Goma-center, the first camp, as in the second and the third which we had established, consisted in digging of the latrines. Many reports announced the exceptional resistance of the volcanic rock. We run up against it too. One attacks it with the crowbar. It is slow, painful. The Israeli army lends a shovel to us. The machine cannot go down to more than sixty centimetres. It is necessary to give up making a rather major trench, to build on both sides excavation, on 8 meters, a low wall where boards will be placed. And here are of the suitable latrines!
Water also poses a major problem. We brought filters, products to cleanse in quantity. Still is necessary it to have water itself. The needs are enormous. The surge of the refugees, the need for setting up emergency of medical measurements to dam up the epidemic requires water in abundance. The Israeli army gets some to us in exchange of aqueous solution of Hartmann.
The H.C.R. promises some to us for the second and the third camp, halfway between the two. Elsewhere, it is necessary to go to seek it with kilometers. We get to the refugees haulage machines of local design: kinds of scooters, long boards provided with wheels out of wooden and even with before shock absorber, which make it possible to transport heavy jerrycans easily. And also wood and coal. We insist indeed on the need for not disfiguring the landscape zaïrois anywhere by cutting down trees.
To clean the ground, to choose, according to the wind, the site of the kitchens and the orientation of the tents, to draw up them, align them, equip the large "medical" tent being used as hospital of countryside, to distribute the curative or preventive drugs, water, food, that urgent tasks!
But what good is all that if the refugees do not respect elementary measurements of hygiene? To wash the hands after having gone to the toilets. To drink only filtered water or pulp. To clean the ground, clothing, the kitchen utensils. To obtain the compliance with these rules whose interest does not appear from the start with all the refugees, it is necessary for us to join together those, to convince them.
"During twenty minutes", known as a doctor, "I explain with many images what is it, vibrio of the cholera, how it multiplies in us, how to avoid catching it by being cleaned the hands. One translates into swahili and kinyarwanda.".
But the practices are tough, the difficult conditions, nearly general exhaustion and one quickly made forget the instructions. It is necessary to repeat them unceasingly, still repeat them, and to take care of their good execution.
Certain Rwandan or Zaïrois have an invaluable knowledge of the medicinal plants likely to prevent or cure the threatening evils. The medical team is interested and communicates in it search which it itself made on this subject. It is necessary indeed to envisage a return of the epidemics, if the departure of the French Army causes a new exodus. At the same time, it is necessary to train persons in charge with the use of the techniques and remedies which we bring. That they depend on us the least possible. To Goma, to Rubaré, Uvira, Bukavu, Rutshuru, Rumagabo, we say and repeat, we show and show.
We chose the limited action, but not insulation. We attend the daily medical point of the humane organizations. We are well informed there on the extension of the epidemic, on the means of disease prevention. We visit the installations of the UNICEF paralysed then by the lack of water, those of the Israeli army; the "Doctors without borders" German and Belgian visit one of our camps. Impressed by the command which reigns there, they promise to us of the assistance, in particular a pump. To the soldiers, close to our camps, very co-operative towards us, we bring tents. We help an orphanage of Goma. To associations burundaises which carried help to refugees in Uvira, we give tents, aqueous solution, drugs; with the "Pharmacists without borders" of Belgium, five hundred liters of aqueous solution. Exchanges which testify to the common will to help and to save.
All that leaves little place for the rest, few hours for the sleep. Tiredness creates a kind of effect anaesthetizing which prevents from feeling with full the horror, but not to unceasingly work to overcome the difficulties which we had had a presentiment of, and which we met, indeed.
Us misions also on specific facilities, which we did not miss either. Thanks to them our mission could use to the maximum all its possibilities.
When we land, of the Witnesses zaïrois await us. One of them, Claude, knows the ground "like its pocket", of Goma, in North-Kivu, to Tanzania in the East. Another astonishes us by his unexpected appearance in the heart by Africa: it is equipped as a cow-boy, completely bald person, large and robust, the clear dye with the coppered reflections. It is Ali. Habile, bold, informed, he will be an invaluable collaborator among so many others.
On our arrival with Goma, impossible to find hotel rooms. Submerged by the refugees, the Christian families arrange themselves to lodge us. It will be the same elsewhere. The devotion expressed on the spot towards the Rwandan refugees impresses us: to filter the drink water, a man remains at his item 48 hours of at a stretch. Because it is of night that the city provides the thin filament of water which makes it possible to fill the cans. One assistance-looking after zaïrois, Pleasant, well-named, is activated unceasingly in Goma. It ensures the guards of night and, of day, deals with small dispensary where it distributes the drugs to those which suffer from current pathologies.
Many Witnesses, zaïrois or taken refuge valid, available, devoted, clear, build, transport, organize the distribution of water, the food, the drugs, take care of cleanliness and hygiene, the equity of the distribution.
The majority of the Rwandan ministers of religion surviving gathered around them the refugees of their local assemblies, Témoins of Jéhovah, sympathizers, parents and friends of the ones and others, or simply people isolated and lost. These small units emigrated together, were accomodated by the assemblies and the Ministers for the countries of refuge. Committees of help, connection, information count the material needs and moral the unhappy ones traumatized by the massacres or struck by the epidemic, and thus direct us and assist us. They quickly gather the hundreds of men and women to whom we can lavish care, expose the medical rules, and bring comprehension and compassion.
The whole is carried out in a climate of absolute confidence, very favourable with the effectiveness. One has seen refugees to drink water polluted and mortifère because they believed that the chlorine pastilles that one distributed to them were intended to poison them. It is obvious that we do not encounter such problems. Sure of our fraternal benevolence, those which we help cooperate without reserve, even if some inertia obstructs us sometimes. Another factor of considerable confidence the ideal of honesty of all those which lend their contest to us.
We had considered in advance well the factors likely to promptly make our mission effective in spite of the difficulties, we could delight us by the results obtained.
A mission to evaluate
The results were good and fast, indeed. Most urgent was to stop the epidemic. It is it with what successfully the large international organizations got busy. For our part, we had satisfaction to see decreasing of day in day the number of deaths. The newspaper held by the doctor responsible for a small unit of care mentions: "Yesterday there was ten deaths. Certain children are in the coma and will die in the course of the day." Four days later: "still encumbered Room. A death on average per day "the following day: "Two dead." The next day: "One deplores the death of only one child." Then this bulletin of victory: "No death!"
Confirmed by: "Not of dead still today!" To make move back death, terribly present at our arrival, fills us with joy.
The disease remains, and much of people require of the assistance. Cleaned, disinfected, aired, désencombrée, the room of Goma is now a very suitable place of care: well aligned blue campbeds, hardware of perfusion installed well, easy circulation between the patients. In the other camps, the large medical tent offers the same aspect of command and cleanliness.
Around, the beautiful ordinance of the individual tents has something of resting. Here are our people with the shelter, before the rain season which approaches. Comfort quite relative, but how much preferable to unhealthy accumulations yesterday! And, a little insufficient still, food is assured.
We have in load much children and, among the refugees, of many teachers. Also, one of our first concern, after the installation of the families, is to restore the school. It is a factor of stability, a pledge of return to a certain normality.
Let us repeat it: we had happiness, thanks to the gifts collected in Europe and the advantages from which we profited on the spot, of helping more than 5 000 people, more of the double of our co-religionists. Here what a report/ratio of the H.C.R. attests on one of our installations with Goma: "the camp has of two doctors and four male nurses, of a dispensary which is downtown and accomodates the refugees without ethnique distinction, religious, racial or different." We gave them with joy the material aid that they asked us.
But with our brothers in the faith, we could give well more. We were for the majority, not professionals of the humanitarian, but of the religious ministers, and our presence near our companions in the distress got to them more than one material help. We could assist dying them, to comfort them, request with them or on them, to point out the evangelic hope of resurrection, and to thus give to their death of dignity. We listened to the survivors, rescapés of accuracy, sometimes only of their relationship, we comforted them, assured of our love sincere, and thus spread on their devastated life a little heat. We spoke about Christian forgiveness, of not-revenge, with people who had seen massacring their close relations, whereas themselves had not taken any share with slaughters. We revived their faith in the arrival of a world where "God will essuiera any tear of their eyes", where "death will be any more, neither mourning, neither cry, nor pain will not be more". Wasn't this as vital as to look after them and to nourish them?
We tried to do all that and their gratitude, expressed on the spot and after our return in tens of moving letters strong, shows the price that our friends attached to our Christian woman solicitude, of which they included/understood very well that it represented that of hundreds of thousands of Witnesses. They knew abstractedly, but in their terrible test, they concretely tried out their membership of a true international family brothers and sisters.
But themselves, in their misery, gave the rich who we are, a high image of Christianity. Taken in the collective fatal insanity which made hundreds of thousands of deaths, no Witness hutu, no Witness tutsi had poured blood. At the end of the above mentioned report/ratio, the H.C.R. mentions in connection with the Witnesses of Jéhovah: "None them took the weapons at the time of the conflicts and confrontations" We could thus help them without reserve and like them without reserve.
On our arrival in the villages where they were taken refuge, we found occupied them several times to request and study the Bible together. And intended we them to sing canticles with Jéhovah, of a merry and strong voice, dominated by the acute one of the children. Moved, we requested with them and sang with them.
Convinced more still from their same misfortunes of the need, for all the men, one era of peace, fraternity, happiness, they devote with heat their quite involuntary leisures to bring to their entourage imposed the hope of the Kingdom of God.
We came to give, and we received. We saw in action Christianity such as we conceive it. We will be very moved, later, by the cry of distress of a catholic priest holding the body of a child in his arms, in the medium of a miserable refugee camp "Where are the priests? he says. Where are the priests in this camp? Where are they?... They should be here." The pastors had given up their flocks. We did not have to deplore the same absence. The shepherds of the ewes were faithful and devoted there.
The urgency also has its following days. At at the end of August, we left Goma. Uncertainties were then such as it was necessary to wait a little and to reflect much before taking a broader action pursuant to our mission of crisis. We felt the need for withdrawing the refugees from the precariousness of their condition present.
For that, only one means: to help to acquire economic autonomy. Without it, it was impossible to ensure miserable, dispossessed and uprooted people, dignity that a prolonged statute of refugees and assisted would make them lose; without it, it was difficult to prevent the moral collapse which risk of the populations installed in the inactivity and precariousness.
One could consider two ways: the return to the country, if it were carried out with sufficient guarantees of security; the return, on the spot, with an activity which ensures the subsistence of the families.
Our role would be to get the essential means of production to them to allow the return to work, i.e., for these primarily rural populations, the return to the ground of the seeds of the agricultural tools, a small livestock.
At the wire of the months, as the possibilities were specified, of the plans of revival were set up. They ended up concerning more than 7 000 people. At the end of 1994 and the first months of 1995, we had satisfaction to see concluded most of this significant work of re-starting. Thus, the newspaper the Evening of Brussels of December the 3, and 4 1994 paid: "1 500 Rwandan refugees decided to leave Zaire (...). It acts of Witnesses of Jéhovah who had installed their own camp above that of Katale." Others remained, and we were conscious that the assets remained fragile, the fluctuating circumstances and that we all must remain vigilant, ready to support the courageous efforts of these people so tragically tested by maintaining our assistance, ready to react to each change of the situation. This one evolved/moved much indeed.
With the paddle of 1996, the recipients of our measurements of revival know in Zaire of various fortunes. The ones draw some rather well. Thus, at the rain season, a bean harvest and groundnuts were obtained at the end of two months and half. It took six months for the manioc. On the other hand, those which created small trade undergo the by-effect of the devaluations of the currency zaïroise.
All are in situation of precariousness. Political instability is large in Zaire and the authorities threaten the refugees of expulsion. Also the best way is it that of the return to Rwanda. Kigali knows certain calms. The large majority of the refugees
