The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted September 7, 2007, 3:31 pm by Matthew De Galan

Rain and IDPs

Helicopters, day and night. Photo: Matthew De Galan/Mercy Corps

A strange couple of days. Yesterday, Thursday, the fighting intensified. Pretty much the whole town of Sake emptied and came here, and they are still coming. Now there are some 30,000 IDPs in Goma, most up in Mugunga.

Late Thursday afternoon, Oxfam decided to evacuate over the border into Rwanda — we thought about it, sitting up in the breakfast room, but called around and no one else was leaving, so we stayed put. Lots of helicopters flying all night. We were advised to have a small bag packed, and be ready to move. And no movement outside the hotel. Then it started pouring rain, the third night in a row — as if it wasn’t bad enough for the battered, terrified people walking into Goma. Thunder, lightning, rain as thick and hard as rain can be. Misery.

I hardly slept. In the middle of the night, strange sounds. Helicopters, but not flying north, as usual, but flying low and circling. Searching for something, perhaps. Then I heard a door in the hotel open and someone running fast down the hall, toward the steps. It was 4 a.m., dark. I went to the window, looked out. Saw no one, but heard a click-click-click of paws on stone and saw a low-slung dog with strange round ears totting at half speed down on the courtyard path, toward the security gate. In his mouth was something big. I feared for Bridget, the hotel cat, or one of her four kittens, who Chelsea feeds each day. I wonder if feeding them, petting them, has lowered their wariness, made them easier targets. The best intentions gone bad. Compassion, dependency, weakness — and then the jaws clamp down. Let’s spin that metaphor out, for the whole benighted country. In any case, Bridget was there in the morning, as were the kittens. Must have been a bone.