In the summer of 2018, while on a teaching trip to Uganda, I traveled together with a friend to a Congolese Refugee Resettlement area close to the Uganda / Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) border. We decided to visit a project operated by Aime Kalangwa.
While in Uganda, I found out how little I knew about the suffering of the Congolese people. The Congolese war is one of the bloodiest conflicts since World War II, and it still rumbles on today. More than five million people have been forcibly displaced by conflict in the DRC. Besides the internally displaced, nearly a million refugees have fled to nearby countries such as Uganda and Burundi. There are over four million orphaned children in the Congo, and nearly half of the country’s children do not go to school.
Similar to how Iraq has vast amounts of oil, the DRC has immense natural resources and mineral wealth, thus making it prey to the major powers of the world who want to control their wealth, estimated to be worth approximately 25 trillion US dollars. (See this BBC article for a more thorough explanation of the situation.)
Due to security reasons, my friend and I could not enter the Congolese refugee camp, but we left a financial donation with the camp managers to purchase needs for the children, such as shoes, toiletries, and Vaseline for the children’s feet as a deterrent to jiggers, a type of flea that embeds itself in the soles of the feet and is common in the area.
I was a bit disappointed, as I had hoped to do more at the camp, but was happy to later learn about the results of that trip. My friend was able to return in the following weeks to visit the camp itself and check on how our gift was used and to bring further aid. He was also able to teach the Word to the refugees; their greatest need is the faith that the Word gives you to start anew and to keep praising God in the midst of your difficulties.
Meanwhile, back in Kampala, a supermarket offered to help another friend with her charitable work, and she worked out several shipments of rice to the refugees that we visited. I was thrilled how the Lord provided free rice for the project for months.
The photos give you an idea of how Congolese orphans live in the Kyaka II Refugee Settlement in Uganda, and how happy they were to receive the provisioned rice and aid items we purchased!