Bang Bang Bang by Stella Feehily

In December 2008, during my second time working as a reporter for the Irish Times in Eastern DRC, a moment of culinary surrealism among the drunken soldiers and the child killers caught me by surprise.
    In Lushebere farm, about six kilometres outside the commercial centre of Masisi in North Kivu, I watched as Muda Hikiamana wrapped two rounds of cheese and examined forensically the $5 dollar note handed to him. I’d stumbled upon one of the remotest commercial cheesemakers in the world. He also happened to be operating his business in the middle of a war zone, surrounded by four different militias and thousands of displaced persons. Through a local contact, I’d been told to wait there for General Edmo Gandi, from the FDLR militia group, one of the most feared and despised rebel groups in existence, made up of some of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 when one million Rwandan nationals were killed. In any circumstances, it would have been bad manners to leave without sampling the produce. Behind several disused buildings, Muda, the cheesemaker opened up a large store room where hundreds of rounds of Goude cheese were stored in rusting shelves, ready for shipment all over central Africa.
    The factory had been there since 1974, and the land was leased from the local clergy, who took a sizeable chunk of his profits in return. In so far as possible, the business had operated from then until now, despite the continuous cycles of violence that have raged in this province of Eastern Congo. In the late 1990s, following large influx of Hutu fighters from Rwanda, many of whom would later form the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), the factory ceased production, re-starting again in 2001. There were temporary stoppages also when the Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP) – the band of mainly Tutsi militia under the command of renegade General Laurent Nkunda – made advances in the region in recent years. ‘My grandfather and my whole family worked in this factory,’ Muda told me. ‘Thankfully the machines have not been stolen following each round of fighting so we have been able to re-start. From here, the cheese goes to Goma, and then onto Rwanda, Kinshasa, Uganda and all over Africa.’
    When I visited in 2008, Masisi was under the control of the Congolese army (FARDC), the FDLR and various other local militias, while the UN’s MONUC force also maintained abattalion on a hillside overlooking the area. At night, rifle fire could be heard on the hillsides outside our compound and the army were a largely inebriated and ill-disciplined bunch, in contrast to the rebels, who could be seen marching through the streets at dawn training child soldiers. Fourteen-year-olds in Eminem T-shirts and Nike runners manned border crossings or carried RPGs through the forests. There was a Mad Max feel to the whole area – at one point a sixty-kilometre journey took two days to complete, such were the security concerns. Cheesemaker Muda told me, proudly, there were ten employees working for Goude cheeses, producing one hundred and five rolls a week, which generated revenues of $2000 a month. Like any obsessive food producer, when I asked Muda what ingredients made his cheese so sought after, he remained tight-lipped, ‘Ah, that is a professional secret,’ he said. I casually remarked that Ireland did alright on the cheese front too. ‘Ours though is the better quality.’
    The real reason for me to be at this farm was not to sample cheese but to try get an insight into the minds of the rebel commanders and conduct a face-to-face interview. It was, in hindsight, a precarious position, and we had to make a judgement on whether or not our contact was trustworthy when he said the rebels would speak to us and guarantee our safety. As we chatted, my driver pointed in the direction of a laneway where we’d come from. Three khaki dressed rebels with AK-47s