Mugunga is a large area outside Goma where many have fled to during the conflicts and natural disasters of the last decade. In the last month, its population has swelled once again, as people have moved there to keep safe from the fighting North and West of Goma. I’ve included an excellent article by journalist Dominic Johnson, if you want to read more about the situation. This Flickr pool also has good images of the camp.

The Goma Student Fund has run a small primary school in Mugunga for the past year. The kids just started their new year, last Monday, so Eve (Devon’s sister) and I headed out there to visit, say hello to the kids, and observe some of the classes.

We didn’t know what to expect, but thankfully, the chaos of Mugunga hasn’t reached the area where the school is situated. Joseph, the director, told us that a they’ve taken on about a dozen kids from families that have fled to the area, but the school year has otherwise begun without a hitch.

As we drove on the main road out of Goma, we passed through a checkpoint of heavily armed Congolese government troops, armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. As far as I could tell, this was the edge of town that the army was planning to hold, should Goma come under attack. Just beyond there was the turnoff into Mugunga. There’s a UN presence in Mugunga (we politely made way for this armored carrier), but it seemed clear that Mugunga was outside of the protective bounds of Goma.

The Goma Student Fund school was a relative oasis of tranquility and smiles. Joseph and Prosper took us on a tour of the facilities, introducing us to each class and pointing out high-priority improvements that they would like to make to the facilities. In each classroom, the kids would all stand and shout “Bonjour, visiteurs!” in unison. Most aren’t city kids and are less used to us strange muzungus, so we got a mix of smiles and awed stares:

The rooms are packed; 40-50 kids per teacher. That might be an unmanageable class size in the states, but in Mugunga, you can have four kids to a bench, sitting elbow to elbow. They’ll quietly take in each lesson. When they have them, the kids will even happily share notebooks and pens: These guys know that they’re lucky to be in school. In addition, the Congolese teaching style is primarily didactic. The teacher lectures: the kids listen. For better or worse, the kids are not encouraged to speak out of turn or ask too many questions.

I’ll try to come back in the coming weeks; next time, I’ll try to stay and sit in on some classes. I really hope that this school year goes well for the little ones, despite the instability they know is just outside the school walls.

Read the Dominic Johnson article after the jump.

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A handful of us ventured out into town for lunch, yesterday, and found a swanky Rwandan joint called Soleil (Rwandan cosmopolitanism vs. Congolese hickdom is a frequent topic of debate; I won’t get into it, here.) On the veranda, a band was practicing, with a bunch of their dancers going at it out front. I was fascinated, so I took some video. This was pieced together from screenshots:

The movement is difficult to describe or to see from the montage, above. The closest thing to it that I’ve seen is krumping. The music itself was tame, in comparison, a variant of N’Dombolo:

Another notable feature in Congo culture is its sui generis music. The DROC has blended its ethnic musical sources with Cuban rumba, and meringue to give birth to soukous. Influential figures of soukous and its offshoots (n’dombolo, rumba rock…) are Franco Luambo, Tabu Ley, Lutumba Simaro, Papa Wemba, Koffi Olomide, Kanda Bongo, Ray Lema, Mpongo Love, Abeti Masikini, Reddy Amisi, Pepe Kalle and Nyoka Longo.

I’ll try to post something on YouTube, when I get home.

I would love to go see some live bands while I’m in Goma, but I would have to find safe (boring) places like this one. I’ve been warned several times by expats not to go to Congolese-only clubs at night. They say that I’d be looted upon entry. True or not, I’ll take their word for it until someone tells me otherwise.

UPDATE: Uploaded!

After almost a week of being stalled, I’m finally making good progress on OpenMRS. The problem turned out to be a stupid one: Corrupted files that I had downloaded from the OpenMRS site. Once I got onto the forums, the very responsive developers there were able to help me figure out the problem.

Geek details after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »