March 2021 – writesimon

Pygmy Health Project part 3

I was a refugee from the fighting in Goma, and the threatened attack on Bukavu, temporarily settled in a friendly Rwandan NGO just across the border in Cyangugu. But the project was in ruins. We had been driven out of Minova by the M23 rebel assault on Goma, and my colleague and friend Jean Claude had had to travel into rebel held Goma to pick up his two year old daughter. I was at a loss, as I was thousands of miles from home, and yet still a half dozen of miles away from my colleagues

Bambela, Etogo, Zali

Naming our daughter among the Ewondo 1700 words/12 minutes Felix with Judith and la belle mere A few weeks after my daughter was born, in the Central hospital in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, Judith and I prepared to register her birth at the town hall. Having a baby in Cameroon is not as simpleContinue reading “Bambela, Etogo, Zali”

Fleeing the M23 rebels, a Refugee in Rwanda

While researching Pygmy peoples access to healthcare in the DR Congo, I hear the booming of artillery fire across Lake Kivu. The M23 rebels are attacking Goma, and we have to flee…