‘We just don’t care’: A volcanic disaster in Africa

On the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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Men amid the still-smoking lava from the Mount Nyiragongo eruption in Goma. (Guerchom Ndebo/Getty Images)

A little boy named James frowns or looks frightened in every photo I’ve seen of him. At just 3 years old, he’s malnourished and listless, and he’s a refugee on his own.

During the madness of the nighttime escape from the May 22 eruption of Mount Nyiragongo near the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, James was separated from his mother and swept along with thousands of strangers running for their lives.

No one who arrived with James in the town of Minova, across the northern tip of Lake Kivu from Goma, knows anything about him. When given bread to eat, he only says maji, which means “water” in Kiswahili. Otherwise, he simply repeats his name.

When the volcano unexpectedly blew that Saturday evening, hundreds of thousands of people — by some counts as many as a million — fled to the nearby Congolese towns of Minova and Sake, as well as over the border into Rwanda. At least 31 people died, and many more remain missing. At least 5,000 homes were destroyed.

Earlier in the day, Goma’s residents had begun to smell sulfur, and as nighttime approached, the sky slowly deepened into a haunting red color. Darkness fell at 6 p.m. Central African Time, as it does every night of the year; the volcano’s caldera began spewing fiery lava at 7 p.m. With most of the power cut, the mass exodus from the city was, at best, chaotic. Nine people died in a car accident as they fled.

Over in Sake, which is about 15 miles from Goma, there is already a small cholera outbreak. With little to no access to clean water and thousands of people cramped together in unsanitary conditions, experts fear the outbreak will only get worse. 

And James is not the only child alone in this bedlam; about 1,000 children were separated from their parents during the initial panic. Most of them have been reunited, aid groups say — most, but not all. UNICEF estimates that 280,000 children have been or will be displaced.

And now these children, including those who managed to stay with their parents, are facing hunger, illness and homelessness.

But, as I wrote here, there’s a deficit in the America media when it comes to covering African stories, so perhaps you haven’t heard much about this.