Writen
by Ed
McCallister
Photos
by Goran
Tomasevic
Reuters
Wire
Service
(Bunia,
Democratic
Republic
of
Congo) -
The
attackers
came
into the
village
at night
wielding
machetes.
Not even
two-year-old
Rachele-Ngabausi
was
spared
their
violence.
Mave
Grace
stands
with her
sister
Racahele-Ngabausi.
The
last
thing
her
11-year-old
sister
Mave
Grace
saw
before
falling
unconscious
was men
with
machetes
cutting
open
their
pregnant
mother's
belly
and
killing
the
unborn
child.
When
Grace
woke she
was
surrounded
by dead
bodies.
Her left
hand was
cut off
just
above
the
wrist.
Mave
Grace
lives in
an
Internally
Displaced
Camp in
Bunia.
"Around
us we
saw
corpses
everywhere,"
Mave
Grace
says.
Wearing
a green
patterned
dress,
she
squints
into the
sun as
she
holds up
her
handless
arm, the
scabs of
the
stump
still
not
fully
healed.
Mave
Grace
walks
with her
sister
Racahele-Ngabausi.
Mave
Grace's
home
village
of Tchee
lies in
the
eastern
Ituri
region,
where
ethnic
strife
between
Hema
herders
and
Lendu
farmers
has cost
untold
lives
and
forced
tens of
thousands
to flee
since it
started
earlier
this
year.
Information
from
Ituri is
hard to
come by
since
the
region
is very
remote
and
volatile,
but the
violence
there is
driven
in part
by a
breakdown
of
government
authority
which
has
sparked
conflict
in other
parts of
the
country
as well.
Mave
Grace
cries at
the IDP
camp
where
she
lives.
President
Joseph
Kabila's
refusal
to leave
power at
the end
of his
mandate
in 2016
has
undermined
the
legitimacy
of the
state in
the eyes
of many
Congolese,
with
deadly
consequences.
The
United
Nations
refugee
agency
UNHCR
expects
200,000
refugees
to reach
Uganda
from
Ituri
this
year,
stretching
limited
humanitarian
resources
there.
Mave
Grace
and her
sister
Racahele-Ngabausi
sit in
their
tent
with
their
aunt,
Claudine
Ngave.
Other
survivors
like
Grace
and her
family
have
been
forced
into
camps
inside
Congo.
Mave
Grace's
camp, on
a
hillside
on the
edge of
the town
of
Bunia,
is a sea
of
makeshift
blue and
white
tarpaulin
tents,
inside
which
its
temporary
residents
huddle
from
regular
rainy
season
downpours,
and the
cold.
Many
spend
their
days
praying
together
for a
way out.
Mave
Grace
sits
with her
sisters
Francine
Imani,
(centre),
aged 6,
Racahele-Ngabausi,
and
their
father
Nyine
Richard.
Their
bodies
and
faces
show
what
they ran
from.
Mave
Grace's
sister
Rachele-Ngabausi
bears a
diagonal
scar
that
runs
from the
bottom
of her
left
cheek,
past the
inside
of her
left eye
and up
to her
forehead.
Her
father,
Nyine
Richard,
is full
of
despair.
"Even if
I go
back to
my
village,
I do not
know how
to live
anymore.
I have
lost all
hope."
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