On your “live an amazing life” bucket list I highly recommend adding “take the boat taxi across Lake Kivu from Goma to Bukavu.” It’s a high-speed dart across a beautiful and nearly pristine body of water shared with traditional fishing boats and bounded by Rwanda on one side and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on the other. You’ll skim along the water in a boat that rides so low that you’ll actually be partially underwater for the sensational ride.

But before you go you should read this week’s story called “A Day in the DRC” by Armin Rosen at The Atlantic. Full disclosure: Oxfam helped fund his trip to Goma and environs to report on what he saw. Full disclosure: When we asked him to go, I didn’t care at all what he wound up writing. Full disclosure: he’s a damn good writer and you should hear his take on a region that has seen unspeakable crimes, still sees them, and yet still lives.

“I set out with James [a local tour guide] … to see things that had no overt connection to the eastern Congo’s many tragedies; to gather evidence that life here is more than just displacement and conflict, even in a city this battered, ” writes Rosen.

Children collect water from lake Kivu, near Goma, in late 2012. Photo: Kate Holt/Oxfam

“Even in war, people try to live their ordinary lives,” James tells him at one point. “It’s a reflection of the Congolese people. Even if you go to a death ceremony, people will cry. And then they start to relax – to laugh, to sing.”

The whole piece goes on like that. Really, it’s a great read.

Rosen’s story is the first I have read (and probably you too) that includes mention of a cobbled-together foosball table or teenagers breakdancing on the floor of a former church. These images are, really, the whole point of asking a great writer if he’d be interested in spending some time in an amazing place and telling readers about it.

You see, I’d argue that there’s quite an appetite, especially within the US media, for the stories about a brutal Africa. For the Africa of wars and child soldiers. For poverty and militias. Fascinating, necessary, stories all, and we need them to be told. And goodness knows that had some of these stories been told 10 or 20 years ago in this very place, some of the tragedies that people experienced might have been avoided. But we also need the foosball stories, the breakdancing stories, and the everyday life-in-the-world stories.

This is the Goma that I know. It is a place filled with people dealing with a sometimes brutal history, an too-often brutal present, and figuring out the best place to breakdance or kill a few hours playing foosball. It’s sticking your hand out the window of a boat, dragging your hand across the water, and marveling at one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

OxfamBuzzList is a blog series about the movies, books, articles, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. We welcome guest contributions.

Photo: Rankin

Huge news coming out of the UN today: this morning, delegates from 154 nations voted to adopt the first-ever international Arms Trade Treaty.

This is a historic moment. For the first time, the world has a treaty to help monitor and control the flow of arms and ammunition across borders. It’s a strong, effective treaty that will save lives and protect human rights around the world.

This momentous victory is the culmination of more than 10 years of campaigning by Oxfam and many other like-minded organizations and allies. And it’s the result of the actions of tens of thousands of Oxfam supporters like you – people who raised their voices in support of an Arms Trade Treaty, donated to fuel this work, and spread the word about this crucial issue.

For families in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Mali, and other countries wracked with armed conflict, the Arms Trade Treaty means a safer, brighter future. Ending armed conflict in poor communities is vital to righting the wrong of poverty, which is why Oxfam has been working to pass this treaty for more than a decade.

President Obama and his administration played an important leadership role to ensure the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty. Join us and send a message thanking them now.

When I catch the eye of the woman in the first photo below and recall the camps for displaced people I visited a few years ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I know why an international arms trade treaty is more important than ever. Conflict, fueled by a steady flow of poorly regulated weapons, continues to drive families from their homes in Congo—and in many other places around the world.

In November, photographer Katie Holt snapped these photos. Rebel groups in Congo’s eastern provinces had forced tens of thousands of people to flee.  Many sought safety in camps around the city of Goma. Study the pictures—the line of people lugging their belongings along the edge of the road; the plastic sheeting that serves as a home; the crowded water collection point—and you get a glimpse of what life is now like for countless Congolese.

“Chaos breeds chaos,” said Oxfam’s Humanitarian Coordinator Tariq Riebl in November. “Every day we hear of another attack against farmers as they work in the fields or traders as they go to market. There are hardly any places left that are safe from conflict and violence.”

Isn’t freedom from conflict and violence what we all want? The arms trade treaty could help pave the way.

Read my colleague Scott Stedjan’s blog on the truth about the treaty, and then write your senators and urge them to sign onto a letter to President Obama calling for his support of the treaty.

The weight of conflict

Photo: Katie Holt

People who flee conflict often escape with very few belongings. At a water point in Lac Vert Camp in Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a scrap of plastic, twisted tight, helps to keep water sloshing from this jug. Oxfam has been providing aid, including water and sanitation services, to people in three camps around the city. “We can’t shout loudly enough,” said Oxfam’s Humanitarian Coordinator Tariq Riebl in November. “This violence has to end. It has caused decades of suffering and grinding poverty.”

On the move

Photo: Katie Holt/Oxfam

In 2012, insecurity displaced more than 760,000 people in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. When government troops pulled out of much of the east to focus on a rebellion by a group known as M23, the number of other rebel groups mushroomed. By late November, at least 25 of them were active across the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

A rocky home

Photo: Katie Holt/Oxfam

Anchored by sharp rocks on rough ground, plastic sheets serve as shelter for Mahawe Francini and her three children in Mugunga camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Like countless other families, Francini and her children fled their home when fighting broke out between M23 rebels and Congolese government soldiers.

Clean water

Photo: Katie Holt/Oxfam

Taps in camps around the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo provided a clean supply of water in November to some of the tens of thousands of people who had fled recent fighting. But shortages of water and power in other parts of the city had left thousands of people with no option but to pull water directly from a nearby lake, heightening concern about the potential spread of waterborne diseases.

Since the start of 2012, more than 760,000 people in North and South Kivu have fled their homes seeking safety elsewhere, like in this camp on the outskirts of Goma. Photo by Colin Delfosse/Oxfam

If anyone wonders why a world so over-loaded with weapons needs a treaty to regulate their irresponsible sale, just listen to the words of villagers in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are words of the deepest suffering, almost impossible for some of us to fathom from the safe places in which we live, cocooned in the security that strong and responsible governments provide. They are blunt words like rape, mutilate, and despair—words for what happens when an uncontrolled flow of weapons washes over a region.

“They took my son of 18 years old. I paid $150 for him to be freed. He was released, but I found him already in a mutilated state,” said a man from Kalehe.

“Those who try to defend themselves or raise their voice are killed immediately,” added a man from Masisi.

“After having been raped, a woman can no longer go to her field, but then hunger will attack her family,” said a woman from Fizi.

Oxfam and local partners collected these words, and many more, during interviews with 1,328 villagers in the eastern provinces where new waves of violence have forced more than three quarters of a million people from their homes this year. On Tuesday, as machine-gun fire cracked the air, rebels overran Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu. And now, experts worry about the destabilization of the entire region. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to begin to understand some of the challenges the Democratic Republic of Congo faces today, there’s no better place to start than with Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, the history of the brutal exploitation of one of Africa’s most resource-rich nations. I read it a few years ago and instantly became a Hochschild fan, not only of his storytelling but also of his passion.

What, I wanted to know, makes Hochschild tick?

It wasn’t until last month, when I got my hands on Half the Way Home–a memoir and his first book–that I had the answer to my question. It’s the story of the sometimes difficult relationship between Hochschild, an only child, and his father, the head of a major mining company with interests all around the world. Raised in the kind of luxury familiar only to the top of today’s One Percent–house servants, chauffeur-driven limousine, a private summer estate in the Adirondacks–Adam Hochschild tells of his gradual awakening to what propped up that life of extreme privilege.

“All though it took a long time to sink in, growing up in such surroundings was the best political education I could have had. I did not need leftist theorists to convince me that class is the great secret that everyone wants to deny…As I grew older, I became more accustomed to this way of looking at life. What I mean buy that is an ever clearer perception of how the joys, the power, and the riches of the world are divided so unfairly: between classes, between countries, between races, between men and women. When you feel the injustice of that division in one category–and for me it was the first–then your eyes begin to open to the others as well.” Read the rest of this entry »

Skye Wheeler is a Humanitarian Press Officer for Oxfam America.

A best friend is getting married 24 hours after I get back from here. “Here” is the beautiful, troubled eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a recent surge of violence has caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

Marceline Habyarimana sews a dress in Kibati IDP camp on the outskirts of Goma, eastern DRC. Photo: Skye Wheeler / Oxfam America

The fact I have nothing to wear for a wedding is not at the front of my mind as I walk around Kibati camp on the outskirts of Goma town where Oxfam is trucking water and building latrines. The camp houses some 60,000 people and more are arriving every day having fled yet more conflict. In every direction are shelters of branches covered in tarpaulin. Inside are beds of leaves. Some families are sleeping out in the open and it seems everyone struggles to find enough food to eat.

But among the hundreds of white tarp-covered shelters is a splash of color. Marceline has set up shop. She cuts a long rectangle out of a piece of eye-wateringly bright material patterned with flowers and then, her foot paddling her sewing machine into action, she calmly turns it into a sleeve. The Congolese have a great passion for intensely colored material, boldly depicting drums or favorite beers, presidents, leopards etc. cut into dramatic dresses.

“(As we ran) I carried the sewing machine on my head and my husband carried the table,” Marceline said. She charges about 1,500 Congolese Francs to make a dress (less than $2). Her clients are from Goma town. “These people don’t have any money,” she says, indicating the sea of shelters around her with her large tailor’s scissors.

I wonder if I could pull off one of her gorgeous dresses. But it’s not for sale; it’s been ordered. Neither are fellow tailor Gaspard’s dresses and shirts. “I don’t have money to buy material,” he said “I have to wait for clients to bring cloth.”

I am not the only one looking for clothes. I meet a young man who was recruited by an armed group. He spent a month and a half carrying a bag of mobile telephones for a commander who frequently threatened to kill him. He escaped shedding the uniform he had been given as he ran, arriving in the camp in underwear. The blue jeans and shirt he now wears were loaned. “But he wants them back now,” he said.

Longtime supporters of Oxfam know that there is a lengthy and storied history of music artists working with us to raise money for, and the profile of, our work around the globe. The most recent example of such artistic kindness comes by way of the new album Kinshasa One Two by DRC Music, a collective of producers organized by Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, Blur) and recorded last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with contemporary Congolese musicians and local performers. 

Profits from the album’s sales will support Oxfam’s work in the DRC, which focuses on improving access to clean water and sanitation as well as promoting human rights and an end to conflict. “Not only will DRC Music shine a light on the incredible musical talent coming out of the country, it will raise much needed funds for Oxfam’s invaluable work here and focus the world’s attention on Congo once again, seeing it as a place of inspiration, creativity and hope,” said Oxfam’s DRC country director Pauline Ballaman.

Albarn, though best known for radio hits with his multi-platinum-selling bands, is also familiar to fans of the loose genre known as “world music” because of his album Mali Music, recorded during a trip to Mali in support of Oxfam in 2000. On this trip to Congo, he enlisted a traveling team of producers consisting of T-E-E-D (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs), Dan The Automator, Jneiro Jarel, Richard Russell, Actress, Marc Antoine, Alwest, Remi Kabaka, Rodaidh McDonald, and Kwes. The group recorded the sessions using only laptops and iPads.

The result is an album that I like more and more each time I play it. To get a feel for the unique sound, listen to the track “Hallo” (featuring Tout Pouissant Mukalo and Nelly Liyemge):

Kinshasa One Two is available to pre-order now at www.drcmusic.org, with digital delivery on October 3, and a CD and vinyl release on November 7. Take a moment and check out the trailer video for the album below.

Cassava dries in the sun in Kitgum, Uganda. Photo by Geoff Sayer/Oxfam

Hunger has no tipping point. It’s too blunt for that. A child has enough to eat and has the energy to grow and think and learn. Or she doesn’t.

But our perceptions about hunger can reach a tipping point: it’s the moment we begin to connect the global headlines–and feel a wave of worry.

It started for me last week with a story in the New York Times about a blight along the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda that’s ravaging the cassava, a tubby white tuber that is a staple there—and for 800 million people on our planet.  Called brown streak, it mottles the tubers with clumps of brown that look like rot. The virus is a mutation of one that has plagued farmers on Tanzania’s coast for seven decades, but this new invader is now marching through inland fields around the lake and could bring devastation to small farmers across East Africa. And if it jumps shores—to Asia or South America—millions more could be affected. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Nabil Elderkin

Every time I think about the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, I feel a mix of fury and fear. Here is where rape is used as a weapon of war. Here is where rape has now permeated community life. Here is where women and girls suffer unspeakable violence.

People sometimes ask me about the places I’ve been. Which is the most troubling, they want to know. Darfur? Haiti? Zimbabwe?

For me, it’s Congo–because the catalog of crimes against women is so long and so horrific. Read the rest of this entry »

At a center for rape recovery, Congolese women learn new skills, such as sewing, so that they will be able to support themselves when they return to their homes. Photo by Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

Violence in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has grown worse in the last year—a consequence of the UN-backed Congolese military operation against a militia group known as the FDLR. And, horribly, the incidence of rape has climbed with it. Since the operation began 11 months ago, about 7,000 women and girls have been raped. All sides are to blame.

I visited the region in spring of 2008 and it was hard not to be overwhelmed by all that we heard—the stories told by women who had suffered unspeakably at the hands of armed men, the currents of fear in remote villages where fathers worried for their daughters, the blunt assessment that rape as a weapon of war had worked in deeply corrosive ways and was permeating community life, too. Read the rest of this entry »