(ANS – Goma) – The new school year started on 9 September at the Don Bosco Centre in Goma-Ngangi. It was one week late because of the situation in Northern Kivu. In the precarious situation of war all around, and with the hopes that come with very new beginning, Monica, who has been working in the Salesian centre for 11 years, gives her account of that first day.

The playground is full of children, all of them looking for their teacher and their class.  Some come with eyes full of hope as they search for an empty place where they can begin their schooling. Unfortunately it is not possible. There just is not room for everybody. This year also only 3500 pupils, between children and young people, can be admitted. That is a big number, but it is not enough.

The centre reopens and resumes its old rhythm. The small children recite a prayer and sing a hymn to begin the day. The girls of the Mamma Margherita section learn to sew, to cut hair or to cook. The social workers listen to yet another story …

Activities resume and the war is forgotten, almost as if the warlords who are deciding our fate no longer existed. Now there are days of quiet. The people responsible are talking. Negotiations are going on, as if 15 days could solve a war that has lasted 20 years.

The homeless people in the whole of Northern Kivu number more than a million and about 20% of these are at the gates of Goma. There are so many people who cannot live a normal life, so many children whose education has been interrupted for years.

What will the adults of tomorrow be like when their education was built on insecurity and on help given from outside, while they live in a camp, as if that were a normal way of life? What affect will it have on them watching adults living on expediency, using every possible means to survive, maybe ending up cheating?

Living in the centre can sometimes make you forget this situation. You begin to think that because we are able to give some response that this is enough. But it is not enough! We need to condemn and to speak out, to make the people in charge realize what is happening, to prod them into doing something more, and to listen and never get tired of listening.

This is a forgotten war because this place has been forgotten. But for those who know this place, it leaves an indelible mark in their hearts, because, even though it is a place where justice does not exist, it is still capable of teaching you to hope.

Published 23/09/2013