## Walikale: between hope and disillusionment
A week after the black flag of the M23 rebels left the cloudy sky of Walikale, the city breathes, a little, again. The inhabitants, marked by fifteen days of occupation, rub their eyes, amazed and fearful, while they begin to return to their homes. Almost 40 % of the displaced made the return trip. But what return? Life resumes slowly, like a child who learns to walk, but the crutches of insecurity remain present.
On this Wednesday, April 9, some pharmacies, makeshift markets nicknamed “Limanga” – these informal spaces where everything and nothing is exchanged – and some hairdressing salons have reopened, as a promise of normality. But most of the inhabitants of the city remain pending. Waiting for an operational public administration, a unbridled life, a minimum of security. Because for the moment, administrative offices are still ruins, vestiges of violence lived in March.
A deaf contradiction is installed in the air: on the one hand, there are radiant faces that come back to life among the alleys, on the other, the ghosts of recent events, which wander, carpet in the shadow of uncertainty. How to regain confidence in a daily life frightened by the rehearsal of a recent past? What will be the tangible consequences of these fifteen days of reign of fear? The mobile telephony networks, which have been cut for almost all except for one – Orange – recall this fracture, this isolation. Scattered communication, monetary transactions to absent subscribers. In a region where the informal economy lives, this cut is synonymous with paralysis.
And yet young people organize themselves. They gather to share their stories, their trauma, to reconstruct a scratched social fabric. These groups, it seems, are not only trying to cry the past: they also want to build bridges. But faced with the slowness of the newly “established” military administration, what can they hope? Because, in filigree, it is the question of the legitimacy that comes back, as an obsessive refrain. Why does silence persist on the return to the affairs of the authorities? Is it linked to an inability to straighten a chaotic situation, or perhaps the fear of shaking up still hot debris from past conflicts?
The fierce battles between the FARDC and the Wazalendo were not only shadows. They symbolize a control for control, not only of a territory, but also of lives, of destinies. This leads us to challenge the real challenges behind military operations. What does this apparent disorganization hide? Who is really in control when military action turns into administrative traffic jam? Is uniform a solution or a new cause of the problem?
It is disturbing to see this city, which has so much to offer, wavering between hope and disillusionment. Walikale is a bit like a hectic lighthouse, signaling both danger and refuge. The waves insist, noisy, by chasing the ships offshore. The inhabitants, relearning to navigate in the middle of the reefs of daily problems, come up against a simple question: until when will they be able to keep the course in this disturbed sea without a rudder?
While the reverberations of past days fade slowly, is a more serene horizon imaginable for Walikale? To this question, only rumors of the street seem to have an answer. For the moment, their echoes are lost in the wind.