The light streamed through the curtains of the Ihusi hotel on the shores of Lake Kivu in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The hills on the Rwandan shores were wreathed in mist as the temperatures began to rise and the rain-soaked earth gave up its moisture. The sun had struck our side earlier, the mist has gone and kites wheeled and turned in the empty sky.

It was a scene of stunning beauty, a reminder of the unfulfilled potential of the DRC. Over the previous week, riding through the hills and woods on the back of trail bikes, I had been struck by the power of the landscapes. If there was peace and halfway decent roads, Lake Kivu and its hinterland would be one of the great tourist attractions of Africa. Instead the region is the scene of violence, misery and chaos.

There is also mystery. Killers come and go in the night; a militia is formed, then dissolves; hugely valuable metals and minerals are trafficked across frontiers in trucks that leave no trace. A reporting trip in the DRC is an exercise in sifting rumour, misinformation and speculation in the hope of finding something resembling fact.

My last visit was during the political crisis that followed president Joseph Kabila’s decision not to step down at the end of his second mandate in December 2016. The humanitarian situation in significant parts of this vast country has since deteriorated. More than 13 million people need aid, twice as many as last year, and 7.7 million face severe food insecurity, the United Nations said in March. More than 4.5 million are displaced, the highest number in the DRC for more than 20 years. There are outbreaks of cholera.



The priority for a reporter before travelling to the DRC is to decide where to go. The infrastructure is so bad, and the country so overwhelmingly big, that if you get this wrong you can be stuck days – if not weeks – away from where you should be to report any given story. A political story, as elsewhere, will usually require time spent in the capital, Kinshasa. But this story is happening elsewhere, in often very remote areas.

So I spent several days talking to experts, other journalists, observers, local UN, contacts and anyone I could find who knew what was happening on the ground. I talked, too, to anyone who could help me get to the places I needed to go to. In Africa, NGOs are often the only people with the logistic capacity to allow you to travel safely through many areas. But too often reporters end up spending their time in country within the bubble created by the organisation they are travelling with.

This is problematic, so I opted for a mixture of travelling with Médecins Sans Frontières, who I admire and who are operating in the relatively accessible but important area around Lake Kivu, and working independently. We agreed I’d spend three or four days with MSF in Masisi, a small town 50 miles west of Goma, the border town easily reached through Rwanda. They support a major hospital there, and run mobile outreach medical teams into further-flung corners.

But I also organised a few days when I could work alone, and tacked on a trip to report for our environment desk on the fight to save the Virunga National park and its gorillas from poachers and militia. I would be travelling for 10 days or so. Next came jabs, a visa, flights, cash and communications. As usual, I filled in a security log for my editors, explaining where I’d be, with whom, and what dangers there may be.

Within 24 hours of leaving my base in Johannesburg I was in Goma, after a smooth drive from Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Goma was calm, and I drove through its streets to see analysts and officials, a Jordanian officer on secondment to the UN peacekeeping mission, politicians and young, courageous dissidents, who I met in an inconspicuous café garden.

The local governor received me in his lakeside complex and described the region’s troubles frankly – though he denied the charge that senior government and military figures were linked to the local militias responsible for so much of the bloodshed. The governor denied, too, that the dissidents I had just met had anything to complain about.

In the evening, the Ihusi hotel was full of the usual crowd in such places – UN staff, pilots talking Russian, politicians, a Chinese businessman – and a heavy-set, sunburned South African who, with little attempt at concealment, handed over what appeared to be a very substantial amount of cash to a local man in a very sharp suit. What was the money for? I hoped a few convivial beers might unlock the secret. They did not, but I learned a lot about the Springboks rugby team.

A day or so later I was in Masisi. There was some fighting around the town, but not enough to stop us travelling out from the hospitable, if spartan, MSF base to more remote areas. This was done on the back of motorbikes, driven by local riders who coaxed their machines through troughs of liquid mud.

One destination was the small town of Niyabiondo, an hour or so’s ride through the forest. Families had been arriving there as skirmishes intensified among local militia and the army. These fugitives had nothing – no food, water or shelter. Many NGOs had left. The UN had an armed force of peacekeepers here until last year but pulled them out. Their helicopters were flying low through the valleys ferrying wounded from firefights.

I spent a day at the major clinic in Masisi, where there were wounded government soldiers and wounded rebels. I interviewed a young fighter from one of the factions. His name was Justin Kapitu, and he was 22, emaciated, in great pain. He told me he did not know why he was fighting. That was the job of his leaders. When he has to leave the hospital, there will be only very limited care available in the community. His chances of survival are slim.

Security threats against medical staff and their support workers were mounting. The leader of the MSF team was concerned about potential restrictions on their movements. But for the moment they could work, helping thousands of people each week.

A heavy shower had caused a landslide that blocked the road back to Goma. But the DRC is a land of boundless ingenuity. Within hours of the rain clearing, villagers rigged a single plank bridge across the worst of the damage and the bikes could get through, spraying grey-black mud into the air, engines howling as the riders kicked and pushed them through the debris.

An hour’s jolting ride across Goma’s grey lava to the north is the gateway to the Virunga national park, where I was reporting on the war being fought to protect wildlife and habitat. The road traversed villages, markets, checkpoints manned by surly soldiers. The Niyangoro volcano loomed above, trailing clouds.

Only a fraction of the Virunga’s 800,000 hectares was open to tourists. At the park headquarters, rangers explained that more foreigners had been coming in recent years and the park was on the road to recovery after decades of neglect. There were still running battles with local Mai Mai militia, poachers, smugglers and illegal charcoal burners, but the mountain gorillas were doing much better, they said. The 700 rangers are, for the most part, young. They are proud of their uniforms and mission, aware of the risks they are running.

A few weeks or so after my departure, six rangers were killed in an ambush, the biggest single loss for decades. A month later, one of the 30 female rangers was killed escorting tourists up the road from Goma. Two Britons were kidnapped and briefly held. The incidents led to a security review and the park was shut until until next year.

The story made headlines, focusing the international media on eastern Congo once more. My job is to get that attention to return as often as I can. The situation in the DRC is unlikely to improve in the near future, and elections will only fuel the instability. They are now only six months away, and levels of violence is rising. There are stories here that need to be told.