[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 126 (Monday, September 12, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           TWO WEEKS IN GOMA

                                 ______


                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, September 12, 1994

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, we all have read reports and seen television 
news accounts of the horrific conditions in Rwanda and in the Rwandan 
refugee camps in eastern Zaire. Jay Katzen, one of my constituents from 
Markham, VA, who is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, 
recently had the opportunity to visit Goma, Zaire, and witness this 
tragedy firsthand. Delegate Katzen, a retired U.S. State Department 
official, has written a moving account of his journey which I would 
like to share with my colleagues.

       I have just returned from seeing things I hope never to 
     witness again: Acts perpetrated by those I had thought were 
     human, before a God I still believe to be full of grace.
       Picture as best you can fields of 1.2 million souls, 
     surviving literally cheek by jowl, in an unimaginably 
     degrading state of sanitation. Over 20,000 orphaned children, 
     30 percent of them likely to die from AIDS. Their elders, 
     suffering from, or only just recovering from cholera, 
     meningitis, dysentery, malnutrition, exposure, or malaria, 
     now await further calamity as the rainy season begins in 
     eastern Zaire, which will bring yet further misery to those 
     camped on volcanic soil separated from the elements only by 
     plastic tenting and banana leaves. Journalists appropriately 
     characterize the diaspora of Rwanda'a Hutu population as 
     apocalyptic.
       Some promising signs do exist. 80,000 bodies were being 
     moved into mass graves upon my arrival in Goma 2 weeks ago, 
     as team leader of a Virginia Beachbased Operation Blessing 
     group of eight doctors, nurses, and paramedics. The mortality 
     rate is dropping for the moment. Members of our team went 
     through one large camp of 250,000 at Kibumba, rehydrating 
     those in need intravenously, and moving orphans and those 
     requiring medical care to makeshift hospital units. Others, 
     at Ndosho, ministered to the young, whose casualty rate was 
     devastating. Beds of dying infants, which filled their 
     sweltering, fly-bedeviled ``clinic,'' were emptied each 
     morning and filled again, day after day. I hear their older 
     brothers and sisters, some singing despite their anguish, 
     they dying because of it. Yet others in our team began a 
     dramatic meningitis, measles, polio, and vitamin A 
     immunization program at Mugunga, aimed at helping 50,000 over 
     a 1-week period.
       That group was assisted by a large German presence. By the 
     time of my own departure, many of those of us who had arrived 
     as pioneers were being joined or replaced by others. Their 
     dedication and the generosity of their nation's people mark 
     the charitable side of a human nature whose goodness I had 
     every reason to question this past fortnight.
       I thank God Almighty for the courage and opportunity He 
     gave me to make this voyage. The people of Rwanda will, I 
     pray, have that same courage and opportunity to reunite, but 
     that prospect appears remote, and great despair remains in 
     the offing. For the moment, while I prefer to think of our 
     modest works of healing, my most searing memories are of the 
     overwhelming hordes, of the pathos, of the wetness, or their 
     cold at night, of the gunfire, the smells, the smoke, and the 
     cries. Of an infant trying to nurse from her dead mother. Of 
     those dying in our arms. And of a man who climbed in among 
     the dead, assuring us he, too, soon would die and, without 
     family to lay him to rest, that he was doing so while he 
     himself still had the energy to move.

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