Goma DRC, December 2007

• Photographer
  Alyssa Banta, United States
• Website
  http://www.alyssabanta.com

Banta01DRC: A boy plays with a tire rim in the Kibumba internally displaced persons (IDP) camp near Goma, DRC. Thousands abandoned their homes for resettlement camps to flee the country?s civil war violence. As a spontaneous camp, Kibumba receives no official aid from international organizations.

Banta02DRC: A nurse attends to a sick child at the Centre Nutritionnel Therapeutique in Virunga H?pital near Goma, DRC.

Banta03DRC: Orange tarp covered houses speckle the field at the Kibumba camp outside of Goma, DRC. Formed spontaneously as an escape from the Congolese civil war, Kibumba is an unofficial IDP camp, surviving with no international aid assistance. The tarps were distributed by the Congolese government.

Banta04DRC: Administering medication by window light, the Kibumba Health Clinic pharmacy attends to the hundreds of newly internally displaced Congolese who filter in seeking treatment. The long-term aid effort is primarily funded and supported by the aid organization, International Medical Corps.

Banta05DRC: A woman carries her daily firewood on her back along the lac vert, a hill-framed lake on the edge of the Mugunga-1 Camp for IDPs in Goma, DRC.

I am a freelance conflict photographer based in Texas and have covered wars in Asia and Africa for international magazines and NGOs since January 2001. I?ve won prizes for my work and have been widely exhibited. My specific interest is in the periphery of war and the lives that are affected by conflict.