What if you were an internally displaced person?

What is it like to be an internally displaced person (IDP) in Eastern Congo? Are IDPs like you and me? Do they have the same hopes and dreams that we have? Do they hope that their children will grow up to change the world? We love this story written by the Medair Comms Officer, Daniel: Vainqueur must live! The name of the child, who was treated in a Medair facility, is Vainqueur in French, which translates to winner, conqueror or overcomer! He has already had to overcome a number of things in his short life, due to ongoing conflict in his country. This story brings out the aspirations of his mother, Aline, for her children. 

The Bushagara IDP camp where Medair provides Health Care
@Daniel WAKANDU, Medair

The article contains this picture of the one-of-its-kind IDP camp in Bushagara. Officials in charge of managing the large influx of  IDPs saw the deplorable conditions in the informal camps where Vainqueur and his family were living. They planned this organized camp and then relocated IDPs from various informal camps. The health sector then chose Medair to provide health services in the camp. Bushagara is about 10 miles outside of Goma. 

Life in this and other camps isn't all rosy. Medair also supports a health center in Kibati. The blog post we wrote on the 9th of November described people fleeing to Kibati, where we have been working since that time. Last weekend, gunfire was heard right next to our cholera treatment center, on the outskirts of Kibati. The government staff, as well as the IDPs receiving treatment for cholera, all fled. Thankfully the fighting ceased, and the landlord of the treatment center got community members to protect the facility from looting. Those who fled returned over the next 2 days to finish treatment. This is the fragility of the situation that most IDPs live in. 

When we meet together as the Goma team on Tuesday evenings for devotions, we always look back at our prayer concerns from the previous week. Here are some of the answers to prayers we have had over the last while: 

A gathering with IDPs, to listen to their concerns and see how Medair
can best support them. 

1. Access to more sites here in Petit Nord Kivu (the province Goma is in) due to the security situaton improving;
2. Protection of the health center in Kibati;
3. Successful evacuation of Medair staff from Khartoum, given the situation in the Sudan;
4. Nutrition supplies being released from customs so that they can be used in our projects;
5. A Medair staff member successfully returning from his work site (Pinga), where he had been stranded due to insecurity stopping UN helicopter flights; 
6. Safety of Congolese staff who found themselves in a very insecure situation in Ituri province; 
7. A truck leaving Goma with supplies, passing through Rwanda and Uganda, before successfully reentering Congo to take supplies to our Butembo base; 
8. Provision of essential medicines, which are banned from importation into Congo, but which are in short supply within the country.

You can see that we rely on the Lord's providence on a daily basis for all that we do here (even if we don't find the time to always communicate these prayer concerns to you). We are humbled by the expressions of concern and prayer that we get from you through social media or email. And it means all the world to us that you support us, our colleagues, and our programming in prayer! Thanks from the bottom of our hearts!

Just one last story before we leave you. This morning one of the Medical Supervisors, who's currently in a very difficult to reach remote location, sent a photo and a caption to show that he was hiking 20 mins to the top of a hill to find cell phone coverage to check in with the team and send in weekly statistics. Our staff out in the field, are doing their best to support health facilities, in locations where other organisations do not go, demonstrating Medair's vision to 'reach the most vulnerable'.