"A Humanitarian Catastrophe."--UN Secretary General

This is taking place right now, this morning.

Please call ARC Headquarters at 612.872.7060 and ask how you can help to provide emergency funding to meet the crisis.





GOMA, Congo — The exodus has begun.

Women with babies on their backs. Families crammed into cars with coolers and suitcases stuffed to the windows. United Nations trucks. Aid workers. Businessmen. Panicky government troops literally running for their lives.

On Wednesday afternoon, countless people of all kinds poured out of Goma, a strategic Congolese city on the border of Rwanda, fleeing the advancing rebel forces massing on the outskirts of town.

--Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, October 29, 2008

A wave of humanity surged along under the hot sun - women with mattresses and pots on their backs, men shepherding cows and goats, children looking vulnerable, babies crying.

"We haven't eaten in two days," one family shouted out as our vehicle passed by on the road leading into the lakeside city of Goma.

For the last few nights, they had been camped about 15km (9 miles) north of Goma on either side of the main road.

They had fled fierce battles around Kibumba, 30km away (18 miles) - home to a huge camp for those displaced by the violence that has wreaked havoc in this region over the last year.

The trek took its toll on some - one woman had collapsed from exhaustion, people crowded round her trying to tend to her baby.

As darkness fell, it was not clear where the displaced people would sleep.

--Thomas Fessy, BBC News, October 29, 2008

Escalating violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is creating a humanitarian catastrophe and could have tragic consequences for the entire region, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday.

In a statement read by U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe, Ban said "the intensification and expansion of the conflict is creating a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic dimensions and threatens dire consequences on a regional scale."

--Reuters, October 30, 2008

News from Kiziba Camp.

It seems as if most of the news lately has been from Nyabiheke Camp, so I'm pleased to pass news of some exciting developments in Kiziba Camp as well:

Our beautiful new IGP Center is nearing completion. When it is finished we will have a permanent office, storage room, training room and exhibition area for the craft goods that are made by many of our groups.

Next to the new IGP Center we have for the first time been allocated some space for our IGP groups to grow vegetables. We will be adding new groups in the next few weeks and looking for some who are particularly interested in this activity. We will also be training others in the camp community in intensive gardening techniques that they can use to grow vegetables in even a very limited amount of space.

Two dozen of our Voluntary Savings and Lending Associations are preparing for year end share out meetings, at which each member will receive a cash distribution based on the amount of money that they have saved during the past year as well as the interest earned on loans taken out by members of the group. Most of these groups will start up again after the first of the year to begin another cycle of saving and lending.

And our Solar Energy Project Coordinator is working in Kiziba with a group of young men trained in carpentry to construct our first ever solar oven, which will be used to bake bread.

Gimme Shelter.

"Oh, a storm is threatning
My very life today
If I dont get some shelter
Oh yeah, Im gonna fade away"
--from Gimme Shelter, by the Rolling Stones








Shelter construction is a joyful activity, done by teams of refugees on behalf of their neighbors.

The shelters start out as wooden pole and plastic sheeting structures, but within a short time people will have "mudded" the walls of the their own homes and the new quartiers will be transformed into something more closely resembling a village.

Temporary, yes, but shelter from the storm.

New Faces in Nyabiheke.

Yeseterday I visited Nyabiheke Camp, where refugee teams are busy constructing more than 300 new shelters to accommodate almost 2000 new arrivals from the transit centers.

The first convoys arrived last week and several more are due in the coming days.

As with the population in all of the camps, about two thirds of these new arrivals are children.

Here are some of their faces.