Meeting Families 4 Years After the War

Rick has returned safely from Lodja and forwards the following brief message before his next flight:

Back in Lodja, after three bumpy days of travel. We're staying at the Catholic mission, working with Caritas, the international Catholic relief agency. We have an internet connection, but not much time: we hope to get on a flight in a few hours for Kinshasa, but still need to do some work before we leave. So, this will be short.

We got here to Lodja last Friday with no problems - although the long, slow ascent in our Antonov-26 after take-off from Kinshasa made me a little nervous. Father Duda, from Poland, was at the airstrip here to greet us, and drove us into the forest the next day, to get out to areas where entire villages had been displaced during the war.

The first stop Saturday night was Katoko-Kombé, then onwards Sunday for a few more hours to the village of Omesende. The traditional chief rode with us, wearing his ceremonial necklace of leopard teeth, and we were greeted with singing as we drove through the villages. In Omesende, we met families still displaced by the war, one with a two-year old girl too weak from malnutrition to do little more than twist in her mother’s arms, her mouth stretched open with silent cries. Fertile land lies fallow and children go hungry because people have been unable to replace tools and seeds looted during the war four years ago.

After a full day of talking with people - former displaced, demobilized soldiers, nurses and teachers doing their best to provide some help with no resources - we headed back over the footpath that was our road to Katoko, then drove back here to Lodja yesterday. Today, it's raining, making us wonder if the plane from Kinshasa will be able to land and take us back. We hope so: tomorrow morning, we have seats on a UN plane going to Bukavu, to start the second part of our mission.