Natural Disasters

NYIRAGONGO: A DISASTER NO LONGER WAITING TO HAPPEN.

Wildfires, windstorms, earthquakes, famine, drought, floods, epidemics and even volcanos - are part of the makeup of life on the African continent. Africa is bigger than the land masses of the US, Russia, Europe and China combined, and is home to some of the most diverse weather and climate patterns in all the world! It is something that will always affect African men, women and children . . . and even the missionaries who serve them. And in times of crisis - it is their prayer that the world will help them!

For many Africa is a country, few realize that it is a continent of more than fifty countries. Others associate Africa with heat and deserts. Africa, however, is bigger than the combined landmasses of the US, Europe, Russia and the People's Republic of China combined, with a topography encompassing huge arid deserts, the world's largest rainforests, as well as snow-capped mountains on the Equator itself. Many of those mountains are supposedly extinct volcanoes. Such diversity lays the continent open to all manner of natural disasters.

Nyiragongo, on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at 11,365 ft is one of those volcanoes. On the night of January 17th 2002, it erupted, spewing millions of tons of lava down its sides, killing everything in its path and all but burying the town of Goma. Thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands lost their livelihood under the crush of rock-like lava. Worse, many hundreds of thousands had to flee into refugee camps not only in the Congo itself but also neighboring in Rwanda and Uganda. The lava, the ash, the toxins, the gasses devastated the environment, polluting the lakes which once teamed with fish, and aggravating the misery of the survivors.

The events were well covered in the media which sent television crews scurrying into the heart of Africa. They arrived by jet and helicopter with their portable generators for their satellite hookups, their gallons of bottled water, and their gourmet camp rations. They took their pictures, filmed clips of their fearless, breathless, correspondents against background of smoldering ash, and left as quickly as they could.

The aid organizations moved in bringing relief to the stricken and the homeless with clean drinking water, emergency food supplies, shelter, clothing and as much sanitation as they could to the overcrowded refugee camps to prevent the spread of diseases such as cholera. Unfortunately, their efforts and resources are stretched too thin. They are too few, and cannot stay long.

I arrived in Rwanda shortly after the eruption and found parishes there collecting food and clothing for those chased from their homes. Tons of beans, potatoes, plantains, millet were sent from one poor people to another.

Long after everyone else has gone, it is left to the caregivers on the ground, such as the Missionaries of Africa who were there ministering before the volcano erupted, who were there after it erupted and who have continued since to work among those who have been the most effected by this tragedy. Unfortunately their work is complicated by the fact that their residence, church, rehabilitation center for the disabled, grade and high schools, vocational training schools, were all destroyed. In happier times this hub of activity was built in large measure by the people of Goma themselves with little outside help. But now they have other things on their mind, reclaiming their homes, their land, their livestock, searching for clean water, tending to those still traumatized by Nyiragongo, those whose flesh has been burned, and lungs scorched by the volcano's ash.

The short term emergency may well be over, but the needs are still many and desperate. Few roads lead to Goma. The disaster, the ensuing misery, the environmental disaster, the death and destruction have all been forgotten except for a small handful of Missionaries of Africa and Church workers who each day try to rehabilitate Goma and its people.

The world may have forgotten them, but we ask you to remember them by helping the Missionaries of Africa in Goma bring life more abundantly to the people of Goma.