Science Researchers Battle on in DR Congo Conflict Zones

"That day, we were almost in mourning," said Luc Bagalwa, a geophysics researcher in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, recalling the 2002 eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano.

While the ash and deep lava destroyed part of the northeastern city of Goma and prompted the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, the recording apparatus in Bagalwa's laboratory had no paper to note the spectacular seismic events.

Like his colleagues at the Centre for Research in Natural Sciences (CRSN), based in Lwiro about 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of the volcano, Bagalwa radiates enthusiasm for furthering scientific research but faces a pitiful lack of means.

Perched in the hills to the west of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, the CRSN is a miracle. It has survived two wars and incessant armed conflict that has wracked the province for more than 20 years. 

And when an earthquake rocked the region in 2008, the scientific institute escaped with a few cracks and scrapes.

Built by Belgian colonists in 1947, the premises consists of roughcast cell structures that could pass for a military training base or the home of some religious order. 

Its general director, Jean-Pierre Baluku Bajope, invites visitors into a vast room with green panelled walls to be seated in chairs upholstered in leather around a gigantic table. "It weighs 12 tonnes," he tells his guests.

Apart from signs of decay, the research centre appears to have been frozen in time. The feeling of jumping back 50 years would be complete if it were not for a large portrait of Congolese President Joseph Kabila hanging above the fireplace.

 

- Spared by the fighters - 

The institute employs about 120 researchers and a total personnel of almost 790 counting the technicians, administrative staff and workers who maintain the premises on 75 hectares (185 acres) of orchards, gardens and cultivated forest. In surrounding fields, local farmers grow corn, cassava and beans.

From the entrance to the CRSN, you can see the waters of Lake Kivu below a long crest of peaks in the forested Kahuzi-Biega National Park, a haven for endangered gorillas -- and also for some of the armed groups in the region.

Bukavu sits at the southern end of Lake Kivu, while Goma lies at the northern tip, a city of about one million people and the capital of North Kivu province close to the border with Rwanda.

Both towns have come under attack by rebel forces and other armed movements, whose activities include atrocities against local villagers. Massacres, rapes and looting have compelled hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

For Baluku, "the strength (of the CRSN) is that in spite of the wars, staff never abandoned the place, they went on working."

Indeed, when government troops or militia bands passed by the centre and stopped sometimes to sleep there, he said, "they didn't touch but they watched," as if intrigued by the research.

Today, the Congolese state pays the salaries of CRSN staff but its managers have to scrounge for the rest of the funds needed. With financial assistance from abroad, money given by visitors and donations from foreign researchers who come to work for a spell, the centre amasses a monthly budget of 5,000 dollars (4,600 euros). Baluku dreams of having twice that amount.

A studious atmosphere prevails in the library, where standards are high as any European reading room, apart from a lack of recent publications.

The electricity has been cut for four days, a frequent occurrence for those in the vast central African country lucky enough to be supplied at all.

Visitors use the light of their portable phones to go upstairs to the herbarium, where thousands of specimens of local plants are carefully archived in cardboard pouches, stored in metal cabinets.

The range of biodiversity in the DRC is enormous. In the laboratory where rodents are studied, scientists enthuse about their recent discoveries: a new species of shrew and a hitherto unknown kind of bat.

 

- 'Contribution to science' - 

Unfortunately, only one such bat was found and it has been whisked off to Chicago, since the team that financed the research came from the United States, according to CRSN scientific director Robert Kizungu.

While Kizungu yearns for funds to pay for more field trips, he gets excited when asked about "his" bat. "It's fantastic, you discover something that nobody else has ever found, it's a contribution to science. Other people have won Nobel prizes for that!"

In the phytochemistry laboratory investigating plant processes, Melchi Kazadi Mizangi presents his work on local oleaginous products that could serve as a food source for cattle.

In the meantime, his colleagues across the way are studying ticks in the hope of finding remedies to the diseases the tiny insects transmit to livestock in the region.

The most recent publications by CRNS staff lie on the large table. Baluku says that in 2014, the centre produced about 70 articles in international scientific reviews. The goal for this year is that each researcher should be published at least once.