Africa News Summary : News Headlines : Discussion Forums

GOMA - Five boys duck as flame shoots from an exploding petrol station, then giggle with excitement at the latest disaster to befall this Congolese city.

"Our town of Goma is turning into a village," said 16-year-old Balume, crouching for cover as another fat tongue of fire curls almost 100 metres into the sky from the garage.

Balume's words hint at the reality for tens of thousands in the city, where lava from nearby Nyiragongo volcano has forced much of the population of 500 000 into a hand-to-mouth existence.

In the latest setback up to 60 people may have been killed when hot lava set off a series of explosions at the petrol station excitedly watched Balume.

But no one knows. And for many coping with the aftermath of an volcanic eruption, the petrol station blast is a sideshow in a daily struggle to survive.

Survival is now a question of trudging through the steets in search of a working water tap, borrowing from neighbours or combing still smoking lava fields for anything that can be salvaged.

The explosion at the petrol station appeared to have been caused by residents scavenging for fuel.

But there were no rescue trucks or attempts to put out the fire, only an eerie silence around the blaze punctuated by the occasional exploding fuel barrel and the hiss of the flames.

On the crusted lava fields engulfing the town, young men pick their way across heaps of rubble, avoiding stretches of hotter metallic-looking rocks lying amid the debris.

Two-young boys stripped to the waste to avoid the heat jog past the burning garage carrying salvaged sheets of corrugated iron.

Balume's friend Bienvenue emerges from a burnt-out truck with a set of spanners.

"If you see an abandoned house and you see something in the garden, you just take it," said Andre Mashukano (55), who has found refuge for his 13 children in the grounds of a hostel on the shores of Lake Kivu.

Mashukano and his family tell a story familiar across the city where thousands of homes and livelihoods have been obliterated by the river of molten rock.

The Mashukanos said they fell back on US$10 worth of savings when they fled along with some 300 000 people across the border to neighbouring Rwanda.

Now they share their space under a corrugated iron awning with another family, bringing the total number of mouths to feed to about 30.

They take turns eating as there are not enough implements to go round. At night they huddle together for warmth, many possessing only the clothes they fled in.

The Mashukanos are now down to US$2, but the gaggle of boys and girls milling round their older relatives are not yet starving.

"This is all he could find yesterday," said one of Andre Mashukano's daugthers, 23-year-old Laisa, raking her hands through a plastic bowl of dried beans.

"It's just enough for today," she said. - Nampa-Reuters

•  Big Brother Africa 3: Hustle And Flow
•  Time Flies While Watching Strangers Shower