Hope And Chaos In The Congo

Hope amid chaos
Nov 4th 2010, 12:23 by J.D | GOMA

ON A basketball court in Goma, in eastern Congo, six groups of boys battle it out for the title of the city’s best dance troupe for 2010. The competition is as fierce as the heat. Twisting and spinning on their heads on the baking concrete, the breakdancers vie to show off their skills. As the electricity cuts out and the music is silenced, the competition stalls and everyone gets twitchy. But the power comes back on, the beat thuds around the court again, and battle resumes.

This is the climax of the annual Skiff arts festival, now in its fifth year, run by Yolé Africa, a cultural centre in Goma, along with Alkebu Film Productions. In the course of ten days, over 12,000 people flock to film-making classes, to see film-screenings and dances and to hear singing and poetry. Congo is a byword for chaos, corruption and rape. Petna Ndaliko, the centre’s co-founder, says the festival is a rare chance to show it in a happier light.

Throughout the rest of the year Yolé Africa, which was set up in 2002 after a similar venture in Kampala, capital of neighbouring Uganda, offers all kinds of classes, films, music sessions and discussions. “There’s nothing else for young people here,” explains Mr Ndaliko. “They need a space to dream in a different way.” For nearly two decades, Goma has been brutally buffeted in the swirling chaos of eastern Congo and genocide-afflicted Rwanda, just across the border to the east.

Mr Ndaliko has dreams of his own. He wants to build a proper cinema at his centre. The films he shows are in the open air, subject to the vagaries of Goma’s weather. He wants more girls to join his set-up: boys far outnumber them. But parents worry about tarnishing their daughters’ reputations and marriage prospects, he says, if they spend too much time with boys. He hopes that a permanent choir he is trying to form will prove satisfactorily innocent and encourage girls to join. Swaying in the yard outside Yolé Africa’s building, four girls sing in harmony, their voices ascending into the air.