On December 25, 1997, as much of the Great Lakes Region was busy with Christmas festivities, 39-year-old Emeralde (not her real name) arrived at a refugee transit centre in the lush town of Gisenyi in western Rwanda, after hitchhiking from her village in Masisi in North Kivu province of eastern DR Congo.

Emeralde, her two children and another two orphans she had adopted, had escaped by the skin of their teeth the latest of a series of deadly attacks she believes were orchestrated by Rwandan Interahamwe in cahoots with Mai Mai militia.

(Read: Nexus between Rwandophones and the Congo war)

“The attacks that started in 1995 soon after the Rwandan Interahamwe militia entered Congo had become frequent. At first, we would spend the nights in the bush but I decided to leave one morning after my sister in-law was killed in her house. I fled, leaving behind my husband and one of our children; we were reunited later when we met in the refugee camp,” she recalls.

To get to Goma, on the border with Rwanda, Emeralde and a motley collection of other victims of violence passed through several roadblocks manned by Congolese army soldiers who, after ascertaining their Tutsi ethnicity, confiscated everything of value from them, including their IDs, before letting them through.

In Rwanda, the group was settled in Mudende refugee camp not far from the border with Congo. They had been staying there for almost a year until, in August 1998, the Interahamwe attacked the camp, killing scores. Emeralde is sure the attackers were Rwandan Hutu because they spoke with an accent native to Rwanda.

“Their Kinyarwanda was pure compared with the dialect we speak across the border. They were calling each other by name and some of them were familiar because they lived in the area and used to come into the camp quite often. For instance, there was Claude, a medical officer in the camp, who directed them to particular targets,” she says.

Although Rwandan authorities urged them to stay calm and even set up a military detachment nearby to assure them of their security, in December the militias struck again, killing as many as 1,600, recalls 45-year-old Francois (not his real name), a former science teacher who left Masisi in 1996 with his wife and child.

The survivors walked 30 kilometres to Nkamira transit centre in Rubavu district, where they stayed temporarily before being settled in the Gihembe refugee camp where life’s rhythm — birth, death and the occasional marriage — continues in defiance of the grim reality.

The massive camp, home to just over 14,000 refugees, is located in chilly Byumba in northern Rwanda, atop a hill surrounded by the beautiful landscapes that are typical of this part of the country. It is one of four Congolese refugee camps in Rwanda whose existence is often obscured by the more visible camps in south-western Uganda that come to prominence every time a resurgence of violence triggers panic in eastern Congo.

An odd patch of green lawn in the valley just below the primary school at Gihembe stands out in stark contrast in this place where vegetation competes for space with the compacted sea of humans. It is the filled-up cemetery where the dead of the camp over the better part of 15 years found their final resting place.

“That is a graveyard; it is full and a new site has been opened on the other side of the camp,” our guide says in a low tone, trying not to attract the attention of two tough looking men, members of the camp committee who man the makeshift entrance.

Frustration and fear abound in Gihembe where a carelessly spoken word can have fatal consequences.

“You can report anything else I tell you but my name — and no pictures please,” an old man catching some sun outside his dwelling tells us after a lot of hesitation and persuasion. He is soon going to attend a meeting camp authorities have called about the worrying levels of discipline among the youth.

Nearly 70 now, 17 years of a sedentary refugee life with little activity and health-related complications arising from age have taken their toll. When the skies suddenly open up, we have to help him stand up from his crouched position on a short stool, as one of his grandchildren scampers to get the clothes off the drying line.

Even in these deplorable conditions, he stands out as a man of substance. On this Sunday, affecting a normalcy that mimics his previous life in Masisi, he is smartly dressed in a dark suit, polo-neck shirt and leather hat.

His house is also different from the others: the walls are plastered with smooth clay decorated with coloured patterns and there is a carpet of sorts on the floor.

Memories of a past life

Like every adult in this camp, he remembers the massacre of Mudende that eventually led to his settlement here, where he has lived long enough to bury his wife and see some of his surviving children leave to forge their own destinies.

“They came out of nowhere in the night. And then they killed us; they killed many, many people,” he says in a whisper, turning his head aside every so often to eject a thick stream of spittle, a symptom of the respiratory problems he suffers from.

Back in Masisi, he was the proud head of a family, a successful herdsman with a big parcel of land on which 16 cows grazed. He lived in a decent house with plenty of room. Not every member of his household managed to escape and today in Gihembe, he is the head of a household mostly made up of young people — orphans. He struggles to eat the dry maize, boiled together with beans, the standard fare in this camp. His hopes of returning to his motherland are as frail as his voice and body.

A few metres from his house, we huddled with Francois, Emeralde and two young men in the confines of a two square metre space that passes for a sitting room in a dwelling with a total floor area of 12 square metres that an elderly woman shares with her son and a friend.

Above us, a gentle light filters through the translucent roofing sheet made out of tarpaulin — the only building material that UNHCR provides to the refugees, who must resort to their own devices to erect the walls it will cover. That is the standard house, regardless of how many heads may be under one’s care.

Emeralde dresses well but her appearance belies the hardship she has to contend with to keep her 10-member household alive, ever since she begot another two children and adopted another pair of orphans.

“I may wear decent clothes but it is a struggle to eke out an existence in this camp. I have to look for menial jobs outside the camp to supplement the camp rations. It is hard,” she says, as she struggles to hold back her tears. “It is a matter of luck, there is no guarantee that you will find employment,” she adds, and Francois agrees.

“It is difficult to take care of a family here. The rations are done every two weeks and we are compelled to seek loans, which we pay back either through our rations when we get them or (with money) if we are lucky enough to find some work,” says Francois, who has fathered another five children since he’s been in the camp.

“It hurts to live this life; I still hope to return to my earlier life. It is the reason I returned to school,” adds the student of international relations, recalling a better life in Masisi where he owned a four-bedroom wooden roadside house where he delighted in hosting people. It sat on a 15-acre piece land where he farmed and kept some animals.

The UNHCR gives each family a monthly allocation of 3kg of beans and 12.3kg of maize meal per head. In times of shortage, those rations are trimmed further to as little as 8kg of maize. Most times, the grain comes whole and refugees who may want to grind it into flour have to find the money to pay the miller just outside the camp.

Fuel is also a problem. Wood supplies are intermittent, coming once every couple of months. With all the wood lots around the camp owned by someone, refugee children searching for fuel often get beaten when they stray onto private land.

Health is another problem because UNHCR only offers basic medical care, Emeralde says. Serious cases are referred to the teaching hospital in Kigali, but it is a protracted process. “We get medical care only to a certain extent. UNHCR always weighs the cost of treating one person who requires a complicated medical procedure against how many more would benefit from the same quantity of resources. So sometimes, you find only three out of say five people who need specialised care getting referred,” she says.

M23 rebel group

Nobody will talk openly about M23 in Gihembe, but their awareness is palpable in the guarded posture refugees adopt when the subject is introduced.

“M23 are Congolese who have problems with Kinshasa. The international community should ensure M23 and (Congolese President Joseph) Kabila talk and resolve their differences,” Francois said casually, as if he were commenting on something he isn’t directly connected with.
For Emeralde, all she knows about M23 is what she has heard over the radio. She does not know of any youth who have left the camp to join the movement. Her yearning, she says, is to return home.

Her homesickness can be triggered by the simplest of incidents. For instance, one day, after working outside the camp, she brought home fresh beans to give her family a break from the monotony of the dry rations. Her children, with all their living memory shaped by camp life, asked their mother what the green stuff she had brought was.

“I don’t care who brings peace back to my motherland; I would go home any time peace returns. I really miss the green environment and the fresh food,” she says quietly.

She has not tried to go back to Congo. In 2002, some refugees accepted repatriation but were attacked and killed within days of their arrival. The orphans she has adopted survived that attack.

And despite speaking a dialect of Kinyarwanda, she cannot make a life in Rwanda. “I don’t have land where I can establish myself. Besides, the only documents I hold are those of a refugee, so I cannot just blend with the local population,” she says.

“Our hope (of returning home) is fading. We have waited so long. If anybody told us to return even now, we would go right away. Life in the camp is restrictive. We cannot plant our own crops and live our lives as we wish,” she laments.

For Francois, the idea of blending into Rwandan society is out of the question because, “It is not my country and I don’t speak the same Kinyarwanda as people here. They can tell right away that I’m Congolese.”

A question first asked in Rutshuru as we drove to Rumangabo comes up again. “If we were Rwandese as Kabila says we are, why would (Rwandan President Paul) Kagame keep us here instead of giving us citizenship and letting us settle here?” Emeralde asks.

John Muhire, M23’s deputy head of justice, explains the relationship between the refugee camps and the recurrent war in the Kivus.

“I’m surprised that Kabila can be comfortable in Kinshasa when so many of his citizens live as refugees in neighbouring countries. Does he imagine that young men will be contented to watch their parents die as refugees in a foreign land when they once led dignified lives?”

In Rutshuru, M23 has had to adopt a strict code to stop underage children from taking up arms, often motivated by a desire to avenge parents whose death they might have witnessed. Older youth, some separated from parents who now live in refugee camps, also join the ranks to fight for a just Congo.

In Gihembe, Antoine is an angry young man. He is of a dark complexion that grows a shade darker when he considers life in the camp.
He is 28, the age at which, if life’s cards had played out differently, he would be reasonably successful raising a family. “As it is, I am living the hopeless life of a refugee; what would be the point in me getting married in these conditions, to impose this suffering on my offspring? I think what Congo really needs is a regime change. We need a government that can protect all Congolese regardless of their ethnic background,” he says.

The refugees have repeatedly asked camp authorities when they’ll go home but, Emeralde says, “Every time the authorities say they can’t repatriate us because there is no security back in our country.”

Amani Babu, M23’s spokesperson, blames the lack of security on Kabila’s government. “They say they can’t bring back our people because there is no security here, but then what has the government done to make sure that this place is safe and stable?” asks Amani. “How can it expect people to fight and defend other people when their own mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters remain stuck in refugee camps?” he added.

Refugee repatriation features prominently in the 2009 agreement the Congolese government entered into with the rebels it’s currently fighting against. The conflict has created more than 250,000 new refugees and internally displaced people since it broke out in April.

For Emeralde, nothing saddens her more than being unable to bring up her children the way she would want to because of the conditions they live in. But, she says, “I inspire hope in my children that God-willing, we will go back home and rebuild our lives. I have taught them respect, hard work and discipline.”