GOMA, DR CONGO // The small, 10-metre by 6-m house where Dezi Semiramba lived with her three children was cosy, but not crowded. Then the fighting broke out and villagers, fleeing a rebel advance, began turning up on her doorstep looking for a place to stay. "I couldn't let them stay outside in the rain and sun. I told them they can come in even if they would be lying on the floor," said Ms Semiramba, who brews and sells a local alcohol. "Someone who is running away, you cannot put them out. That is our custom here."
In the past three months, Ms Semiramba has welcomed five women with a total of 30 children into her wood-panelled house on the outskirts of Goma, the provincial capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. On a recent night, the entire household of 39 women and children gathered to eat around communal bowls of potatoes and cabbage in the small living room lit by a few candles and lanterns.
After the meal, the women moved the chairs and table into the kitchen area and lay a plastic tarpaulin over the dirt floor. Two dozen children curled up to sleep, wall-to-wall, with a few thin pieces of fabric to keep them warm. The youngest children slept with their mothers in the tiny bedrooms. "I cannot tell them to go," said Ms Semiramba, who is from the same village the displaced women and children fled. "It's better that they stay with me and we share what we have."
Of the more than one million people who have fled their homes because of recent fighting in eastern DR Congo, up to 70 per cent are informal internally displaced people (IDPs) living outside the crowded camps, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. These informal IDPs have sought refuge in abandoned schools and churches. Some live in makeshift banana leaf huts in spontaneous camps on the side of the road. Many others live with host families in Goma.
The IDPs living in camps receive plastic tarpaulins to make shelter, blankets, cooking utensils, fire wood, food rations, clean water and medical assistance. Those outside the camps are more at risk of malnutrition and disease, said David Nthengwe, a UNHCR spokesman. "The spontaneous IDPs are more at risk in terms of not having consistent assistance," he said. "They are more vulnerable." There are many reasons why displaced people choose to live outside the camps. For some, it is a matter of pride.
"Some people would rather go on working in the fields and living with a host family," Mr Nthengwe said. "Those people are too proud to ask for handouts." Others such as Mariabo Bihira and her seven children find that there is just not enough space in the camps. Ms Bihira tried to secure a place in a camp in Kibati, which is on the frontlines of the battle between government forces and a rebel militia, but her name was put on a waiting list and she decided to find a host family in Goma.
"When I came to the camp, there was no space," she said as her two-year-old son, Espoir, clung to her neck. "We couldn't lie on the stones so we had to continue." The UNHCR is in the process of moving IDPs from the Kibati camp and relocating them to new, larger camps away from the frontlines. But much of the land that the government allocates to the UN is rocky and away from a water source. "There is a land problem," Mr Nthengwe said. "We have to beg the government to find land."
The IDPs living with host families put an added strain on the host community. Goma, normally a city of about 300,000 people, has swollen to more than 700,000 due to the influx of informal IDPs. "People's resources are stretched to their limit by displaced people that have joined them," Mr Nthengwe said. During the day, the displaced women who live with Ms Semiramba look for casual labour ploughing fields or carrying goods to the local market. If they earn money, they will contribute to buying food for the household. But usually this is not enough to feed the three dozen mouths.
"Life is really difficult since they came," Ms Semiramba said. "Now today there are many people. When we prepare food we are not satisfied. My children come and see there is no food in the house. When I see my own children having nothing to eat, it gives me pain." The displaced women say they are grateful for having a place to stay. "We came here because we were welcomed here," Ms Bihira said. "If one day we go back to the village, we will never forget [Ms Semiramba]. We will come back and give thanks to her."
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