About a week after the Kalehe disaster, the victims are still waiting to be relocated. The provisional toll is 411 dead, hundreds injured and missing, but what worries them is the nauseating smell and the traces of blood visible in certain muddy places, certainly because of the rotting bodies stuck under the rubble.
Bertin Kalembe, lives in Mwimbiri. Using a cane, he turns over the rubbish piled up under a bridge, which gives off pestilential odors behind his house.
“Many bodies are still here. These are people who were sheltering unfortunately, they were stuck here by the floods, then they were covered by the mud. Look at all the flies here. It was the smell that alerted us. Besides, the health of my children is deteriorating. They have a fever, they cough, and I think it’s because of the ambient air, ”he explains.
On the main road, Espoir Lukungulika is also very worried. “I know that the number of dead announced is much lower than the bodies of the missing. If the machines intervened here you would see that it is true. We have to be given the drugs to fight against the risk of contamination. With these smells, I want to vomit, and I have no appetite”.
Most of the victims were buried in mass graves because, according to the government, it was necessary to prevent the decomposing bodies from spreading diseases. But the civil society of South Kivu denounces unworthy burials, made “hastily”. This is also the case of Senator Francine Muyumba, who points to unacceptable burial conditions.