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His skills and thirty two dollars are what Tuhambe needs to restart a life shattered by ethnic conflict and war. Tuhambe, twenty two years old escaped into the forest in 2003 running away from a senseless orgy of violence that has gripped his home in Bunya. “Life was very painful in the forest” says Tuhambe “I returned to Bunya only to find nothing, I had lost every thing I had worked hard for.”
Tuhambe is one case in hundreds of thousands of cases who roam around town begging for something to do to ensure that they get a days meal. Amidst enormous natural wealth of the eastern Congo, people like Tuhambe have to live from hand to mouth. They are strong, skilled and above all know what they need to kick-start their lives shattered by senseless violence. “When I am given a job, I can not negotiate for a reasonable pay,” says Tuhambe. The options are so limited that the few employers who exist pay what they wish to people like Tuhambe making it difficult for them to restart their life.
Tuhambe is a skilled carpenter and a farmer, before running to the forest he had a thriving carpentry business and a farm where he grew food for his family. When he returned from exile in the forest, he neither had the tools nor the money to buy them. He cannot go into farming as he neither has a hoe nor seeds to plant and he cannot afford them. “The capital I need to restart life in dignity is a hoe (US$3.5), an axe (US$4.5), a machete (US$2), and assorted seeds (US$12) or a hammer (US$3), a saw (US$3) and nails (US$4),”says Tuhambe. His total capital needs adds up to thirty dollars, this may seem small for an hour in the grocery store, but it means the whole world to many Tuhambe’s in the forgotten emergency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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