Jet skis and IDP’s
Goma is a maddening, confusing, contradiction. We spend our days out amongst some of the most vulnerable people on earth, then we return home to our residence perched on the side of the lake. In the evenings we watch and listen as fishermen paddle their boats, and sing their songs, practising a trade they have been at for centuries – but at times this scene is obscured by jet skis racing across in front of our view.
Stores in town cater to folks like us selling everything from Guinness beer to cheese croissants – meanwhile even the cemetary’s are cultivated squeezing all possible sustenance from the ground to inadequately feed members the town’s ever expanding population.
It seems there is a linear progression to life here with the Internally Displaced at one end, and the jet ski riders at the other. I watch those watercraft with a certain indignation, but who am I to talk? I live much closer to those jet ski riders than I like to admit. Not only that, I prefer it that way. I like my comfort and convenience (I am writing this from a coffee shop with relatively good internet and good coffee).
In the midst of this place it is easy to fall into a paradigm believing what is needed is: equality and sympathy delivered with ‘first world’ intellect and intelligence. In fact there are dozens of agencies here in Goma doing just that.
Yet, I think, the bigger challenge, in fact my primary responsibility, is to seek justice and live with a sense of compassion from a position of humility. While there may be this great disparity of how life is lived in this place – and in our world – the common denominator, the common identification, is we are all human – jet skiers and refugees alike.