When Jeremie Lumoo fled his home in the eastern Congolese village of Kimoka last year, he wondered if he’d ever see it again. Sitting in his tent in a displacement camp in the nearby city of Goma, he envisioned himself home in his favorite chair, listening to rumba music on the radio.
He was dreaming of returning in peacetime. Instead, in February, a rebel group called M23 occupied Goma and evicted the tens of thousands of displaced people living on its outskirts. With no other choice, Mr. Lumoo and his wife and two children headed home.
On the 11-mile walk, his son and daughter were so tired they could not stand. “Papa, buy us some doughnuts,” they begged. Instead, Mr. Lumoo raised a hand to cover his children’s eyes, so they would not see the bodies of civilians and soldiers sprawled in the dust.
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From Palestinians in Gaza, to migrants being deported from the U.S., displaced people around the world are being compelled to return to homes that are still unsafe. Here is what that looks like in one Congolese village.
Globally, some 120 million people – 1.5% of the world’s population – have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of conflict or persecution. International humanitarian law protects them from being forced to return to the places they fled. But many are not given the choice. Coming home, Mr. Lumoo says, “was not of our own will.”
A village demolished
A year ago, Kimoka sat just behind the Congolese army’s front line in its fight against M23. The rebels, meanwhile, held positions in the surrounding mountains, and fired rockets and mortars down on Congolese soldiers. Sometimes, they also hit civilians or their homes, residents say, a pattern Amnesty International has documented throughout the region.
On the February 2024 day that Mr. Lumoo escaped Kimoka, fighting killed six people and wounded 14, he says.
With the village empty, Congolese soldiers dismantled its homes piece by piece for firewood, residents say.
That destruction and continued attacks on the area left Kimoka in rubble, which is what the Lumoo family returned home to in February. M23’s decision to evict the family and others displaced in Goma was a violation of international humanitarian law, and a possible war crime, according to Human Rights Watch.
But for the Lumoos there was no other option. They strung up a tent in the ruins of their old house, and did their best to farm again, tilling land dotted with orange flowers.
When a Monitor reporter visited in March, hundreds of people were sleeping under similar dusty white tarpaulins they had carried from the displacement camps. A nongovernmental organization working in the area estimated about 1,900 people have returned to the village in the last two months.
As a result of their living situation, Mr. Lumoo’s wife, Amani Beani, fell sick with malaria. The only health clinic is down a winding dirt road at the opposite end of the village. It is also scarred by bullet holes.
Nurse Volonté Waladi and other volunteers say that they treat about 80 cases of malaria each week. Medicine and equipment was stolen amid the fighting, so nurses have learned to bargain for it at nearby pharmacies. Patients sleep on thin mats on the cement floor because there are not enough beds. Three people died of malaria in February, Mr. Waladi says.
Still, he finds solace in helping others. His face splits into a momentary smile when he recalls how residents worked together to clean broken glass and bullet casings from the clinic. “People help each other a lot here,” he says. “People love and support each other.”
Memories of conflict
The clinic is not the only place in need. At the local elementary school, the shelves are bare. Soldiers looted the books.
School director Albert Bihira once taught 1,000 children in a displacement camp, to keep them happy and distracted from the war. “I loved my job,” he says. “I felt deep in my heart that I needed to help these children.” Since returning home, he is doing the same here.
Loud noises send the students running, says Mr. Bihira. “They have changed completely,” he says. Mr. Bihira always tells them not to be afraid. But staff have found unexploded grenades in the schoolyard.
Gunshots still ring out regularly in the distance, and a bomb recently exploded on a farm in Kimoka, injuring three children and one man, according to residents. Working together, villagers say, they collect scores of live munitions.
From her home on a nearby hillside, Martha Kahindo watches the school below and mourns the fact that she can no longer afford the fees to send her three grandchildren there. She has been raising them since their siblings and their mothers – Ms. Kahindo’s daughters – were killed fleeing this village a year ago.
“I have nothing, but my wish for these children is for them to grow up. If I had the means, I would want them to go to school,” she says.
Shell casings litter the ground around her wooden house. Mortars tore holes in the roof.
Ms. Kahindo, like other residents, is rebuilding even while wondering if she might be forced to flee again. All over Kimoka, people are cutting timber to repair the holes in their houses, while fearing another exodus. For Ms. Kahindo, it would be the sixth time she has fled home.
A reporter in Congo contributed to this story.
