Bloody Mayhem!

I left Goma for the second time, this time heading South around the lake and then East into Rwanda and Burundi. It was a relatively short drive to get to the border from Goma. We arrived without incident at the Zaire border crossing. The gate was across the road but there was nobody manning the station. We were a bit confused by that. To not get the needed stamps and other paperwork risked major hassles later on. The driver was reluctant to go on. We hung out for a while. Some trucks came from the other direction driving fast and crazy. They didn't even slow down after the first truck raised the gate. We had no idea why there was nobody working the border. Eventually the truck driver decided he had to just continue down the road. When we arrived at the other side, there was nobody working that side either. Very strange is all we could think.

Again we hung out for a while and no officials arrived. More trucks were leaving heading back into Zaire. We took off down the road without our precious paperwork. We drove for a while and more vehicles were coming from the opposite direction than would be normal. Some of them were motioning at us to turn around. Why? We had no idea. The driver needed to deliver his load to get paid. He wanted to continue. I was a bit nervous about the traffic but since I had no clue what was happening up ahead I kept going with the truck. I was trying to imagine the gorillas I would be seeing in a few days and my enthusiasm was blinding me a bit.

We started to see people walking rapidly carrying whatever possessions that they could carry on their backs with them. They looked frightened. The driver finally got a clue and stopped to ask them what was going on. They told us that men with guns and machetes were killing everyone they could find. We looked at each other with confused looks on our faces. Who was killing who? We didn't know anything about the local politics but we were worried now. It didn't look like there was any danger to us other than the people fleeing and the crazy driving coming toward us. The driver kept driving until he came to a small village.

Much to our dismay the town was acting crazy. We saw people with guns and machetes milling around in the arrogant way that armed thugs do when they think they are in control of the situation. Then we saw the dead bodies. Men women and children along the road chopped up with machetes. We could see smoke from fires burning in the area and heard a few distant gun shots. The driver was looking for a place to turn around. I told him not to stop for anything or we were probably going to get killed. He kind of laughed a weird scared chuckle but his eyes were glued to the men milling around. They seemed to be ignoring us totally almost like we were not there. I wished that we weren't there but I was happy that they were not paying any attention to us.

To turn around he picked an isolated yard and pulled in to turn around. There were bodies in the yard. Freshly killed it looked like but there was no need to check to see if they were still alive because they were already dismembered. Now I was scared that we might not get out of this alive. Holy shit is all I could think. Africa is just one violent thing after another. This was worse than the prisoners getting beaten in Central African Republic. I did not want to get hacked to death a limb at a time. The driver put the truck in reverse and backed out of the yard and pointed us back toward Zaire. He hit the gas but was afraid to attract the attention of the dangerous looking men by driving too fast. They did have some guns along with their machetes. Instead he just drove quickly.

We tried not to look at the bodies or at the crazy acting men either. Catching their eye might also catch their ire and a barrage of bullets. As we left the small village some people jumped up along the side of the road and tried to stop our truck. We had no idea if they were the good guys or the bad guys because we had no idea who anybody was or what the hell was happening. We just knew that we did not want to be there anymore. Suddenly delivering the load in the truck was no longer important. The driver did not stop. I think the people that jumped up and tried to stop us were trying to get away from the men with the guns and machetes but in my driver's opinion it was not worth the risk of being wrong because it would be dead wrong. He did not stop for anybody or anything.

It took us a couple of hours to get back to the border and again there were no officials manning the border on either side. Our worries about not having the right paperwork on the return to Zaire ended up not being a concern after all, we just cruised back into the country. It is kind of ironic that retuning to Zaire made us feel like we had arrived to safety. Zaire back in 1972, when this was happening, was considered to be one of the most dangerous places in the world and yet twice now in less than two months I had fled there for safety. Later on we learned that an estimated 50,000 people were killed in about two days of horrible conflict between two tribes of Tutsis and Hutus. Millions of refugees were sent fleeing into Zaire over the next years only to get stuck in refugee camps that turned out to be just as dangerous as their homeland ended up being.

When we finally arrived back at Goma we went to the little store that sold beer and sat down to drink a few. While we were sitting there eating and drinking, military trucks started to arrive in Goma. Over the next week more and more military arrived and every day more and more refugees were showing up also. Little tiny Goma was rapidly turning into a busy place. I could not get out of town because the first thing the military did was close all the roads. My truck driving friend did manage to get out by driving north but he had to pay a bribe to get through the roadblocks. He was taking passengers with him.

I sat up my tent near the little store up the road from the bar/whorehouse. The bar was doing a booming business. There was no shelter in Goma except the little rooms they rented out in the bar. My store owner was being very nice and helpful to me letting me stay near his place. He helped me watch my stuff and by letting me set up my tent out of sight from the road, he gave me some safety from all the dangerous drunken soldiers wandering around at night. I avoided them as much as I could. I did not act afraid even though I was. Showing any sign of weakness around this place would quickly result in bad things happening.

For over a week I just ate and drank my beer near the store and watched all the commotion. A few days after we arrived, 34 foot stake sided trucks full of reeking dead bodies started to drive through Goma. I had no idea where they were going with the bodies. I am just glad they did not stop because the smell of death was already permeating the air even without the trucks stopping and leaking their loads of dead bloated victims all over the road. My Greek truck driver friend taught me to put perfumed cream on my upper lip to cover up the gut wrenching smells around town. It helped but did not come close to eliminating the bad smells.

I just wanted to get to Uganda to get out of this increasingly crazy place called Goma. East Africa was considered to be much less dangerous according to everybody I talked to in Goma. I was looking forward to some peace and quiet after this crazy violent war.

Today the war that essentially started at around the time this happened to us, is still going on. Millions of people have died from the genocide that began then and still continues to this day in the areas around Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire which is now called Democratic Republic of the Congo once again.

Here are some related pages explaining the situation then and now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutu#Post-colonial_history_of_the_Hutu_and_Tutsi

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/11/60minutes/main3701249.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Silence:_Rape_in_the_Congo

This last story of the violence going on against the women and girls is an outrage but the world is not paying attention. It goes on unchecked today.