“As if it were today” | Tales from Muhanga 5
From the diary of Father Giovanni Piumatti during his time in Muhanga (North Kivu). Reflections still relevant today
This diary page was written by Father John in 2009. Why after 16 years does it feel like reading an article from today?
Days go by and I don’t decide to write, because I don’t know where to start.
We were two weeks “stuck” in Kimbulu.
Insecurity more than usual: houses burned and dead, and groups of “bandits” waiting for anyone to pass…, armed and in military uniform of course. All this, while the capital Kinshasa proclaims that “peace is back in the Kivu,” and the West protects with the most scandalous silence of the century “the agendas” of the strongest, or the most covetous.
You know the reason: here we have one of the largest coltan deposits in the world….
**The tension has eased and we have been home for a few days now;
In this North Kivu that the international community (UN, France, Belgium, America…) threw there like a ball in the middle of Rwanda and Congo: hypocritically saying “play it!”; a coltan-gold-diamond ball…
It’s strange! but from this window you can read with incredible clarity all the manipulations and mechanisms of a world economy that certainly does not come from God … and yet makes it all spin.
On the great road, which connects Butembo and Goma, looting and violence continue….
(Father Piumatti, November 27, 2009)
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Source and image
G. Piumatti, Muhanga. Parole e storie d’Africa, pp. 96-97