The endless war

Many of those who have suffered the most have abandoned Kivuye.

In the town of Kashuga, about a seven-hour-walk away, several generations of villagers from Kivuye live a hardscrabble existence in a refugee camp. They include Furaha Uwimana, who fled with her five children after fighters stabbed her husband to death.

She and other villagers had heard that the army was in control of their region. But nobody was planning to return to Kivuye. They had given up on their government and the U.N. peacekeepers.

“I can never go back to the place where they killed my husband,” Uwimana said, pain etched on her face as she stared blankly at the wall of her hut.

Last year, Chantal Mukamana also fled Kivuye and ended up at the Mugunga refu­gee camp in the shadow of the active volcano Nyiragongo near Goma. It was here where hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus sought refuge after the genocide. Now, two decades later, the camp is filled with desperate Congolese.

“The war in Congo is an endless war,” said Mukamana, 35. “We no longer know if even God can end this war.”

Back in Kivuye, Kamanzi was brooding inside his hut. Since the U.N. peacekeepers departed, along with their bright spotlight, questions have roiled his mind.

Will the militias return? Will the peacekeepers return?

And how long will the villagers’ market day — and their freedoms — last?

On this night, the answers were as invisible as the valley now covered in darkness.

Caleb Kabanda contributed to this report from Goma.