When I arrive in the Congolese city of Goma in March, I present myself to officials from M23. The Rwandan-backed rebel group has captured this city of 1 million two months earlier, leaving the streets littered with bodies.
“You are just a young girl,” one of the higher-ups says, looking me over. “Aren’t you afraid to be in a war zone?” We are sitting on the veranda of a hotel overlooking Lake Kivu. Waves lap the concrete below, as if to punctate his words. I smile sweetly. Let them think I am naive. Maybe they’ll ignore me. I have come to see how civilians are living in this new Goma.
On the surface, it does not look like a war zone. Vendors hawk bananas and doughnuts at small outdoor markets. Battered red motorcycles weave between cars and buses as I drive to visit my friend Lucie Kamuswekera. She is an octogenarian tapestry artist who for three decades has been stitching battle scenes on burlap.
Why We Wrote This
Journalists bear witness. But what they see can be almost impossible to make sense of, as our correspondent discovered in eastern Congo.
I first met her in July 2024. Back then, the walls of her studio were covered inch to inch with her tapestries. They depicted the long arc of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s history, including scenes of Belgian colonial rule, the civil wars of the 1990s, and recent massacres. Now, everything is packed in plastic bags. Ms. Kamuswekera says she is afraid they will be stolen by bandits roaming the city or spotted by dangerous agents. “If M23 finds this, they could kill me,” she explains quietly.
When M23 marched into Goma in January, Ms. Kamuswekera and her grandchildren hid without food or water. Afterward, she re-created those moments, stitching images of the carnage from the fighting.
We sit on low wooden benches. Old tapestries spool from the bags onto the floor, different moments in Congolese history twisted together. I ask how it affects her to document war over and over. “Sometimes I wonder if God exists,” she says.
Then, we clasp hands as she repeats the same thing she told me on my last visit. When there is peace in Congo, she will start embroidering joyful scenes, “of dance, where people are drumming,” she says.
On closer inspection, I realize signs of war are everywhere in Goma. My translator and I stop for lunch at a restaurant once buzzing with workers from nongovernmental organizations. Most of them have now been evacuated, and the only occupants are M23 soldiers. They watch us wolfishly from a table opposite.
Another day, I see army uniforms discarded in an abandoned military outpost. Nestled among the camouflage fatigues is a woman’s shoe. Once white, it is now the same color as the rusted bullet casing nearby.
Why was she there? I wonder.
Everywhere I go, residents of Goma are also asking themselves why. I visit Patient Bahati at his home.
When M23 occupied Congo at the beginning of the year, his wife, Neema, was nine months pregnant. During a firefight in their neighborhood, a stray bullet pierced their window and struck Neema in the ribs, killing both her and the baby.
Although the area was still under heavy gunfire, Mr. Bahati was determined to give his wife and son, whom he named David, a proper funeral. So he buried them in a nearby field dotted with purple wildflowers, committing the unmarked spot to memory.
He tells me his five children still ask when their mother is coming back. “And I have no answer,” he says. “I don’t know what to tell them.”
Afterward, I sit on my balcony and stare out over the lake, aching but too numb to weep. For journalists, it is our job to bear witness to suffering and to explain it to distant readers. I often carry a copy of Martha Gellhorn’s “The Face of War” on reporting trips. A famed war correspondent, Ms. Gellhorn covered every major global conflict from the 1930s to the 1990s, always focusing on civilians caught in the crossfire. Her writing reminds me why we are called to tell these stories.
But when I think of Ms. Kamuswekera’s exhaustion as she documents endless conflict and of what happened to Mr. Bahati’s family, it feels too heavy to make sense of. I do not know how to explain it.
