April 15, The day the plane crashed into Goma

Birere is the busiest market in Goma, in a neighborhood surrounded by the city’s poorest slums, a place that some of our friends call home. The craziness of the drive there, the care you take to avoid the deep potholes full of mud and lava rock and vendors of all sorts zipping past you, the steep uphill you climb to find just the right product- they all lend to the overwhelming, polluted and poor environment of this district. Birere is also the market that we frequent regularly to purchase every kind of African fabric for the women who sew at HEAL Africa. Just a few days before the plane crashed, I was there with two coworkers, planes flying low overhead. On April 15, when the passenger plane crashed into the town and market in the afternoon, our staff person, Annifa, had to flee for her life before the plane went up in flames, leaving all things behind. My friend Agakhan stared with open jaw and shocked eyes as his neighborhood went up in flames, now cringing every time he hears the sound of a plane in flight. He is grateful his family is all safe, although many have lost someone they knew.
Goma’s airport has a runway was destroyed in the 2002 volcano and is not quite long enough to provide leeway for planes when they take off. Immediately where it ends is where Birere starts. Every time we are at the market and planes fly overhead, you feel the roar of the plane and ask yourself how this can be safe. And when the plane crashed this last week, leaving chaos as it charged through the town, tearing down stores and burning buildings, around 100 people were seriously injured and some of them did not survive. Because all the locals know HEAL Africa is the best hospital around, and the doctors at the General Hospital were on strike again, victims were rushed over to our hospital. Immediately, our incredible staff took care of the wounded, built temporary shelters for the immediate overflow of patients, sorted between the critical, the urgent and the patients that could wait and set about saving lives. The HEAL Africa staff is so capable and their fast and effective response to this crisis is to be highly commended! Dozens of families cannot express their gratitude enough as they leave the hospital, legs in casts, burns treated, and family members’ lives saved. Even when the medical supplies were depleted within the first few hours after the accident, staff and volunteers went around town to other hospitals collecting what they could of saline solution, tetanus shots and other critical provisions.
Yesterday was a day of mourning and shops all around closed to show their respects for the deceased and wounded. Life now is recuperating in Goma; it must always go on. I am continually amazed at the seemingly never-ending flow of out-of-the-ordinary challenges that Goma is confronted with, and even more in awe of how God continues to put Goma back on its feet, blessing it with a vision for a better, safer and fuller future. In Goma, that is our hope. Every day.